Care
Always keep your knife dry and clean.
Hand wash with warm soapy water. No abrasive sponges.
Never put your knife in the dishwasher or leave it soaking in water.
Dry your knife completely using an absorbent towel.
Regularly rub the wooden handle of your kitchen knife with oil. You can use mineral oil, olive oil or peanut oil.
We recommend storing your knives on a magnetic wooden strip, protect them in a sheath, or store in your knife roll or wrap.
Maintenance
We recommend a professional tune-up at least once a year, even if you are sharpening at home. If you do not sharpen your own knives, we recommend you have them sharpened when they start to feel dull. A sharp knife is always safer than a dull knife.
In between sharpening, a leather strop and honing rod can be used to help maintain a sharp and even edge. Honing rods do not sharpen the knife, but remove microscopic bits of steel helping to true the edge of the blade. We never recommend belt or machine sharpening, as these techniques are often too abrasive, are not able to achieve as fine of an edge, remove too much steel, and can heat up the blade, potentially damaging the structure of the steel.
Steel
Most of OOOMS kitchen knives are made from AEB-L.
AEB-L is an expertly designed steel, balancing high hardness with good corrosion resistance, and maxing out the amount of carbide that still maintains high toughness, sharpness, and blanking performance for razors. Those qualities make it a good knife steel in many ways as well.
With its high toughness and good potential hardness, AEB-L excels in applications requiring thin edges like razors, fine slicing fixed blades and folders, and kitchen knives. Especially in knives where corrosion resistance is desired. It also does well in knives that require high toughness that will be subjected to hard use.