3 Things You Should Never Do With Your Knife

Knife people are smart folks, but hey, we all do stupid stuff every now and then. Here are three dumb things you should avoid doing with your knives.

1. Don't pry. This one should be pretty obvious, but every day countless people mistake their knife for a crowbar. And this lesson here isn't limited to prying -- quite simply, you shouldn't use your knife for anything but what it's designed to do.

Need to pry something? Use a prybar. Have a can of beans that needs opening? Use a can opener. Cut wire with wire cutters and drive screws with a screwdriver. You get the idea.

We all tempt fate, of course, at least for a while, even when we know we shouldn't. If we persist in such foolish abuse of our knives, we're begging for a broken tip or a chipped edge -- it's inevitable.

2. Don't chop -- cut. Most knives aren't designed for chopping, and yet some people insist that their knife is an exception.

It's probably not, so it ends up on YouTube with half-moon-shaped chunks missing from the edge. Most often it's the result of chopping -- even something as flimsy as, say, a thin twig or branch -- and putting uneven stress on the edge. That can cause even a great knife to fail.

Our advice? Use your knife to do what it was meant to do (cut, that is) and either buy an axe (or another type of purpose-built chopper) or just stop chopping. It's a stupid thing to do with a good knife.

3. Keep your knives out of your dishwasher. We're talking about all knives here -- kitchen knives, hunting knives, pocketknives, everything.

Dishwashers use heat and aggressive chemicals to get food off of dishes, and that's horrible for your knife. Pressure-washing your blade with abrasive food and gunk is a sure way to ruin it.

Despite our advice, we know that nobody's perfect. So when your dumbness trumps your common sense and you end up with a damaged knife, don't throw it on the scrap heap -- many knifemakers will happily fix it for you. The service may or may not be free, depending on the warranty, but we've seen some pretty messed-up knives come back as good as new. It's worth a shot.