Do Maintain

‘Buy this book and get some stones.’ – Josh Donald, author of Sharp & founder of Bernal Cutlery

Blunt kitchen knives, scissors and garden tools. Dry wooden boards. We all have them. But maintaining your stuff is easy – when you know how.

Professional knife sharpener Gareth Heaton draws on years of experience – both at his kitchenware business and running workshops – to provide step-by-step instructions on how to correctly sharpen your tools. Using whetstones and other abrasives, you’ll make them more effective and safer to use, and discover the hidden joy and satisfaction of maintenance. In Do Maintain, you will learn how to:

- Properly sharpen all types of kitchen knives
- Sharpen scissors, secateurs, spades and more
- Use a whetstone and ditch ineffective home sharpeners
- Treat wooden chopping boards and season cast-iron pans

It’s time to start looking after your everyday tools and utensils, break the cycle of buy and replace, and learn the lost skill of knife sharpening.

Gareth Heaton lives and works in Ilkley, Yorkshire, where he runs Community Cutlery, a kitchenware business specialising in kitchen knives. Sharpening professionally since 2019, Gareth has restored thousands of knives for both domestic and professional users. After discovering there was a huge appetite for learning, he has gone on to teach countless people how to sharpen their own knives and tools, in person and online.