Yes. Any knife can be sharpened to a razors edge. The quality of the blade/ hardness of the blade material determines the strongest angle for the apex of the blade to be sharpened at.   If you want to cut with ease a sharp knife is what you want.

I tell everyone you have three options with a dull knife. 1) sharpen it, 2) buy a new knife, or 3) use a dull knife. Buying a new knife is expensive, and a dull knife is difficult to work with. Sharpening on the other hand is not expensive and gives you a new edge to cut what you need to with ease.

The quick answer is between 6-12 months.

The longer answer is, It depends on how much you use the blade, how you use the blade, the material the blade is made of, and the surface you are cutting on. Each one of these subjects gets further detail elsewhere on this page.

There are two important things to look for in a knife. The quality of its construction and the handle design.

By quality of construction you are looking to see if the knife was made to last. A quick way to determine this is by brand name. A solid knife company that has been around for a long time generally make knives meant to last. As with all brand shopping be prepared to do some research as brand names get sold and quality can be reduced after a sale.

If you are looking by yourself the most important thing to check for is if the handle has a full tang. A full tang knife has the same piece of metal going all the way through the handle that becomes the blade. This makes the handle stronger and prevents it from breaking on you.

The second thing to look for is the handle design. What to look for here is really what to feel for. How does the handle feel in your hand? Does it feel natural? Do you feel you can control the blade easily from the handle? Is the handle too round? too square? to bulky? too slight? designed for the right or left hand? Find a knife handle that fits your hand and cutting will be comfortable.

Scissors, shears, and garden tools are overwhelmingly made of steel. Knives are made of a variety of materials but steel still dominates.

There is a reason for that. Steel is a light weight for a metal and also strong and hard. Steel can also be made to be highly stain resistant. There are trade offs on each of these aspects of steel. A hard steel stays sharp because it does not bend, and is also light weight because it has more carbon and less iron.

Ceramic has become more popular in knife making recently. Ceramic is very hard material. Ceramic does not rust or corrode like steel. And can be even lighter than steel. However, ceramic’s hardness causes it to be brittle. A ceramic knife never gets dull in the traditional sense, where the apex peak becomes rounded and soft, instead the knife chips and parts of the blade break off leaving you with a blade that looks more like a serrated knife. This turns your ceramic knife into a saw where a smooth cut cannot be made and a back and forth sawing action is needed to cut.

Cutting boards come in a variety of materials.

Glass and metal cutting boards are as hard if not harder than your knife. This means they dull your knife faster than other cutting board materials.

Bamboo cutting boards are the gentle on the blade of your knife. However, they are porous and can absorb juices from your food. It is recommended to use different ones for raw meat and vegetables, and also different ones for sweet vs spicy vegetables. If not dried properly a bamboo cutting board can develop mold so be sure to give them lots of space and time to dry out, do not put these in the dishwasher if you want them to last and be mold free. And as a natural material it can warp and crack if not oiled and dried properly. Bamboo cutting boards are not a single piece and are glued together, so check to make sure the glue used is safe.

Hardwood cutting boards are traditional and have been used for thousands of years by humans. They are softer than glass and metal but are still on the harder end of cutting board materials. Also they are more porous than bamboo and similarly to bamboo need to be oiled to prevent cracking and fully dried to prevent mold development. Most are also not a single piece of wood and are glued together like bamboo cutting boards.

Plastic cutting boards are soft and non-porous. They are great for preserving your knifes but can introduce small plastic particles into your food. Plastic also warps over time and will not stay flat,especially if cleaned in the diswhasher.

Using the blade dulls it. Every blade dulls a little bit each time it is used.

Dropping a blade dulls it. Whether they are scissors, shears, or a knife dropping a blade will cause an impact shock to the blade and will cause it to dull. For scissors that can mean the two blade knock into each other Theses impact shocks can cause either nicks in the blades, a change in the tension needed to cut for scissors, or ever so slightly bend the blade. Be sure to put down your knife, scissor, or shear gently to maximize how long your blade stays sharp.

Scrapping the apex of the blade against a cutting board or other surface will dull a blade.

Water will dull steel blades. Water is corrosive and no matter how much corrosive resistant materials are put into your steel it still contains iron which rusts when wet. This includes humidity, and small droplets that can get stuck in-between the two blades of a shear. Be sure to fully dry your blades when storing them.

A magnetic strip on a wall or standing magnet stand is the best way to store a knife. A magnetic strip keeps the blade from pressing down on anything while being stored, fixes the knife in place so you know and can clearly see where the blade and handle are when reaching for the knife. Be sure the side put against the magnet is completely dry before putting a knife on a magnet or rust can develop. Magnet strips do not work for ceramic knives.

A knife block is a good option so long as the blades are pointed sideways and not down, as then gravity will have the apex constantly pressing against the material of your knife block. When using a knife block it is also important that you dry your knifes completely so that no water gets in the slots and resides there with the knife.

Loose in a draw is a bad way to store a knife, or a shear. Loose shears and knives will roll and bounce around in the drawer hitting other objects when you open, close, and reach into the drawer. A knife especially is very dangerous loose in a draw as it has an open blade that can cut you when you reach into the drawer.

If storing blades in a drawer a sheath is highly recommended as they protect the blade from impacts and your hand from the blade.

Yes, we sharpen serrated knives. A serrated knife usually does not need sharpening as it is similar to a saw. But when the teeth become worn down and lose their point it may be time to sharpen your serrated knife. Special tools are needed to grind down the blade between the teeth making the valleys deep again so the knife can cut as it is intended.

When a blade sharpened the small amount of the blade material that was the dull edge is removed to make a new edge. The new edge is ground to an to an apex/ peak that is sharp.

There are always small pieces of the blade material that do not fully detach from the apexed edge called a burr. To ensure the blade remains sharp longer the burr needs to be removed.