Hello
S
Steve Rutledge
and welcome to Blade Forums. It's good you're reaching out for answers!
I do think you're asking the wrong question though. Instead of asking what knife you should get so they stay sharper longer, I think the question you should be asking is, how can I get and keep the knives I already have sharp?
Your Henkels and Wusthoff should sharpen readily and I would not chalk it up them being cheap knives. But you need the right tools and proper techniques. In fact, cheaper softer knives are generally easier to sharpen than harder steel knives. And as said, all of the knives will dull eventually.
You can send your knives out to a professional. There is no shame in that at all and as long as you don't mind the effort and mild expense, then it is vastly superior to dull knives. You can find folks on here such as
REK Knives
that do professional sharpening or look around locally. If you go this route, I'd suggest having a backup knife to use when your primary is out.
Or you can decide to sharpen them yourself. Here, while there are many, many, many options, I'll offer two:
1) An 8"x3" Norton Crystolon Course Stone. Shipped in the US that will be around $30. Get a bottle of laxative-grade mineral oil (supermarket pharmacy aisle) and a red permanent marker for less than $10 combined. Oil is obviously for the stone and the marker is to mark your edge bevel. When you work the knife on the stone, your goal is to fully remove the marker. Do this on one side until you can feel a burr on the opposite side your working and then flip and repeat. Now get your self a smooth piece of 2"x2" or 2"x4" around 10-12" long. The big home improvement stores will cut them for you if need be. But you want a smooth section. This is your strop. Very lightly make edge trailing strokes on each side to remove any remaining burr. That's boiled down to some real basics and it will take some practice but what I just described will give you workable kitchen edges of you do your part.
2) Get a Work Sharp powered sharpener. It's basically a mini belt sander. Now, you need to be conscious of not going too slow as that can wallow out the blade and possible alter the heat treatment of the steel. And be mindful of the tip that you don't get all wiggly and round it off. But really, these machines are very easy to use. I've recommended them to a number of folks and have never had any be unhappy with the results. Here again I strongly recommend stropping for burr removal. You can actually use the backside of an old pants belt but I lean toward harder mediums for burr removal. Eventually, when one of the sanding belts wears out you can put it on inverted (backside out) and use it as a quick strop.
For the cutting tasks you describe, I actually find the Dexter Russell 7"x2" Chinese chef's knife (SKU S5197) fantastic and it sees a lot more use in my kitchen than many of my knives costing as much as 5x more! And you can just about get it sharp with a stern look.
Also, wood cutting boards only please.
