You are absolutely correct in your statement about sharp knives. We use to say you will never get cut with a sharp knife. I worked retail at A&P in Connecticut and they had a knife sharpening service, and it was ok but you had to wait a week or so to get sharp knive again. I also worked for A&P in the Scranton, Pa division and every dept. had a belt sander type which will destroy a knife and a set of sharpening stones. As a production meat cutter at that time I never had time to use the stones so I used the sanding belt until the tempering in the knife edge was ruined. The metal actually gets brittle and you can use the point to floss your teeth. LOL>

Then one day I got a promotion to be first cutter in the largest and most modern supermarket in our division in Scranton. My department manager was from the old school and twice my age. I was about 30 years old. He was a shrewd manager and acted like his meat department was really his meat department if you know what I mean. He was a smoker as we all were back in the late 60's and every morning he would come into the meat room very early before the doors were even open and have his Lucky Strikes at his desk with black coffee and he would sharpen everybody's knives so they would be ready when we all punched in. He only used the stones and kept turning them from coarse,to medium to fine in pure mineral oil. They would be glistening waiting for us. Phil was smart and led the division in gross profits and overall meat tonnage and a big part of his success was keeping his cutters knives sharp as razors. Even during the day when we were balls to the walls, he would check the edges.

He never used a metal honing steel  to keep the edge in line. It was white and I believe it might have been ceramic. It worked wonderfully. We used to break the grinder head with our metal steel and one day when I was really pressed for time I accidentally grabbed Phil's steel and I herd a sickening snap. That cost me $18 bucks. Back then that was big money for a cutter.

Hope this helps.

our company uses a grinding service. but we still have a multi stone in the store. i personally use my own knifes be cause the knifes they supply are poor quality. had the same 3 forschners for over 10 years. the trick is to tune and clean them everyday. never let anyone else clean them . they end up in a lug full of parts on the sink

clean up guys are like knife poison!

I have tried a few differ knifes since starting my career, I have settle on Forschners, the only knife for me, touch it up every morning, hit the tri stone once a week.