12 Inches Sharpening Rod Combination Honing Steel Professional Knife Sharpening Steel with Loop Ceramic Rod Perfect for Chefs and Home Cook

Not coarse enough this is only a finishing steel, it will not bring back a blunt or well used blade.

Rubber end fell off and handle is cheap

I have a Stellar ceramic rod which is fantastic but I can’t find another so I bought this instead and it’s useless. It’s light, no substance to it and it simply doesn’t sharpen/hone anything. I can tell by the ring of the metal on the rod whether it’s working and there’s no tone to this. Deffo not recommended.

Simple to use. Better than a regular steel

Very easy to use, hones the knife well.

This is a new one on me - a ceramic knife “steel”.The sharpening rod ( I don’t suppose you can really call it a steel if it isn’t made of steel) works on the same principle as a traditional steel, you quickly run the blade of your knife up and down it while holding it at an angle so the very edge of the knife is worn to a point.The ceramic rod is very hard and certainly managed to sharpen my steel knives to a vey fine edge, reading up on ceramic sharpening rods they are said to be better than diamond sharpeners as they have a finer, less coarse surface which in turn produces a smoother and neater edge on your knife.What I wasn’t keen on with this sharpening rod was the handle, it felt plastic-y and a bit cheap if I’m honest, a wooden or stone one would have been much better.The bing in the end is for resting on a surface while you run the blade up and down but I found it easier to rest the end on a chopping board and lie the rod at an angle like that so a squarer end would have worked better in my opinion.However the rod did do a good job or sharpening my blade and I would say it was ok, so three stars from me.

I had not used a honing rod type knife sharpener before, but I was keen to try the Taidea Honing Steel Sharpening Rod Combination as my block-type knife sharpener with the fixed angle sharpening stones is not suitable for serrated edged knives whereas you can both hone and sharpen serrated blades with a ceramic rod.It was surprisingly easy and quick to use the ceramic rod and the illustrations on the box for how to use the rod are self explanatory. At around 30cm in length, the rod is long enough to accommodate long bladed knives in one sweep. It easily accommodates my bread knife and chefs knife which are the longest blades in my knife collection.Honing the serrated blades was just the same as honing/sharpening straight blades, but sharpening the serrated blades involves working on each scallop by drawing the rod slowly away from the blade to protect your hands from the sharp edge of the knife. This has to be done with the rod in the air rather than resting on a hard surface. It is time consuming, but it works and does not need to be done often (1st time in over a decade for my serrated knives!).Some of the terminology used in the description of the Taidea rod is confusing - it states "our honing steels are made of high-quality hardened carbon steel" whereas the rod is obviously ceramic. The headline description includes " Sharpening Rod Combination Honing Steel Professional Knife Sharpening Steel with Loop Ceramic Rod", but I don't see the combination or the sharpening steel. None-the-less, I like this product and it is a very useful addition to my kitchen tools. It is good value for money and I give it a 4 star rating.

12 Inches Sharpening Rod Combination Honing Steel Professional Knife Sharpening SteelThis looked very pretty when I first unpacked it from the box. This sharpening steel is white in colour with a chromed plastic handle, along with a textured black plastic grip. This is despite the Amazon listing claiming this doesn't have a plastic handle? The other discrepancy is that this is described as a steel, yet the shaft appears to be a smooth hollow white ceramic tube?On first use I was a little disappointed to find the rubber rest on the end of the ceramic tube popped off. There was evidence of glue remaining on the shaft but this clearly didn't hold the rubber rest in place.Despite the issues mentioned above, this does look nice hanging on the wall alongside my kitchen knives. Although described as a sharpening steel, this doesn't actually remove any metal as a normal kitchen sharpener would do. Instead, this corrects any deformities along the blade edge where the metal may fold over itself giving the impression that the blade is blunt. I run my trusty kitchen knife down this a few times where it did seem to bring back a certain amount of sharpness. Once used the pretty white ceramic tube does tend to get marked by the knife blade which I'm sure is perfectly normal.This does seem to hone the edge of an existing sharpened knife, adding that little extra sharpness. But it will not sharpen a dull knife.CONTENTS:1 x Sharpening RodThank you for reading my review, I hope you have found it helpful.