Lately I am being bombarded with it.
The HORL knife sharpener.
Instagram. Facebook. Websites. Videos. Suddenly everyone seems to be rolling a little wooden cylinder across the worktop and then effortlessly slicing a tomato into wafer-thin slices.
And to be fair: it looks great.
The advert also reached me at exactly the right moment. My kitchen knives had become quite blunt.
Until now I used a simple knife sharpener from IKEA. Pull the knife through a few times and done.
At least, that was the idea.
By now the result was no longer what I wanted. The knives did get a little sharper, but I could no longer get that truly sharp feeling where a knife almost glides through a tomato by itself.
So I thought:
Maybe I should approach this a bit more professionally.
And these days that almost automatically leads you to HORL.
But before spending that much money on a knife sharpener, I wanted to know one thing:
Is the HORL really that good, or is it mostly the marketing that is very good?
So I did not only look at sales pages and promotional videos, but above all at the experiences of people who actually use the device.
And in the end I made up my mind.
I bought the HORL 3 Walnut HO3N-SET knife sharpener in walnut wood.
So now I can not only look at what other users think of it, but also find out for myself whether all that advertising is actually based on something.
What is a HORL, exactly?
The principle is surprisingly simple.
Instead of moving a knife freehand over a whetstone, you place the knife against a magnetic holder. It keeps the knife at a fixed angle.
Then you roll the cylindrical sharpener along the edge.
On one side there is a diamond disc that removes material from the knife. You use the other side to refine the edge.
So the clever part is not really the sharpening itself.
The clever part is the fixed sharpening angle.
When sharpening on a traditional whetstone, you have to try to hold the knife at roughly the same angle during every stroke. That takes practice.
With the HORL, the magnetic holder takes a large part of that off your hands.
And that is exactly why the system is so appealing to the home cook.
Why I chose the HORL 3
What I really wanted was to get rid of my simple pull-through sharpener.
Not because I suddenly plan to become a professional knife sharpener, but because I want to look after my good kitchen knives properly.
Of course I also considered a whetstone.
You can get fantastic results with it and probably sharpen even sharper than with a HORL. But you do have to learn to hold the same angle consistently while sharpening.
And that is exactly the problem for me.
I want to cook.
I do not want to put a collection of whetstones on the worktop every Saturday afternoon and then spend an hour practising the perfect sharpening angle.
So the HORL 3 seemed like a good middle ground.
More control than my simple IKEA sharpener, but considerably more accessible than sharpening completely freehand on whetstones.
That is why I finally chose the HORL 3 Walnut HO3N-SET.
Honestly, the walnut finish played a part too. If a thing like this is going to be on my worktop regularly, it may as well look good.
But in the end it comes down to one thing:
will my knives actually get sharp?
What users like most
One thing comes back in almost all positive user experiences:
the HORL is easy to use.
And that is probably its greatest strength.
You do not have to practise for years to learn to hold a constant sharpening angle. The magnetic holder does that for you.
For ordinary kitchen knives, many users get a decidedly sharp edge this way.
That makes the system especially appealing when you think:
I want sharp knives, but I have no desire to turn knife sharpening into a new hobby.
And I can relate to that quite well.
But ease of use is of course only one side of the story.
Does a knife really get razor sharp?
This is where user experiences start to diverge.
Many users get their knives clearly sharper than they were. Tomatoes, onions, meat and other ingredients become much easier to cut again.
But people with experience of traditional whetstones or professional sharpening systems are often less enthusiastic.
With other methods they get a sharper and more refined edge.
That does not mean the HORL sharpens badly.
It mainly means that:
good and sharp and extremely sharp are not the same thing.
For the average home kitchen, good and sharp is probably more than enough.
But if you expect every knife to be sharper than when it left the factory after a few rolls, you may be disappointed.
The problem is often the tip
I found this one interesting during my search.
A kitchen knife usually does not have a completely straight edge. Towards the tip, the blade curves upwards.
Meanwhile the HORL moves horizontally across the worktop.
That can make sharpening towards the tip harder.
Users report that the straight part of the knife becomes excellently sharp, while the curved part towards the tip responds less well.
So your technique turns out to matter after all.
And that immediately takes away a little of the idea:
Put the knife down, roll and done.
Apparently it is not always that simple.
Small knives can be tricky too
The same goes for small kitchen knives.
With a large chef’s knife there is enough height to place the blade neatly against the magnetic holder.
With a small paring knife it is different.
Depending on the shape and height of the knife, the geometry can mean the sharpening disc does not end up exactly where you want it.
There are techniques and solutions for this as well, but once again:
the HORL takes a lot of work off your hands, but not everything.
And then there are Japanese knives
I would be careful here.
Japanese kitchen knives can have a different sharpening angle and a different geometry than an average European kitchen knife.
If a knife was originally ground at a different angle and you then place it against a 15 degree holder without thinking, you are not automatically sharpening neatly along the existing edge.
You may be forming a completely new edge.
That takes time.
And material.
One user, for example, described how his Japanese knife actually became blunter at first after using the HORL. The problem turned out not to be the HORL itself, but the difference between the original sharpening angle and the angle he was sharpening at with the HORL.
That is important information, and it of course sounds a lot less appealing than a video in which someone slices a tomato in twenty seconds.
A fixed angle does not make you a knife sharpener
This is perhaps the most important thing I came across during my search.
Even with a HORL you need to understand a little of what you are doing.
When sharpening you remove material until you can feel a very small ridge on the other side of the edge. This is called the burr.
Then you have to sharpen the other side and finally remove that burr neatly again.
Only then do you get a good edge.
So the principle with a HORL remains:
sharpen → form a burr → sharpen the other side → remove the burr → refine the edge.
The magnetic holder keeps your angle constant.
It just does not tell you when you are done.
And then the buying begins…
I had to laugh a little while reading user experiences.
You buy a HORL because you want a simple system.
HORL on the worktop.
Knife against it.
Roll.
Done.
But then you come across users who buy extra sharpening discs.
A finer disc.
An even finer disc.
A leather strop.
Polishing compound.
And before you know it you have turned the simple alternative to whetstones into a complete sharpening system after all.
Of course that is not necessary.
For normal kitchen knives the standard set may be enough.
But it is something to keep in mind when you compare the purchase price with other sharpening methods.
It is not cheap
And that was my biggest doubt beforehand.
After all, we are talking serious money for a knife sharpener.
You can buy a good whetstone for much less.
Only that is perhaps not a fair comparison either.
A whetstone is cheaper, but requires more technique.
With the HORL you do not only pay for a sharpening surface.
Above all you pay for:
convenience + a fixed angle + a beautiful and solid system.
And in the end that was also one of the reasons why I bought it anyway.
Is a whetstone better, then?
Technically, you can get fantastic results with good whetstones.
Probably even better results than with a standard HORL.
But there is a trade-off.
You have to learn to sharpen.
You have to learn to hold the right angle.
You have to understand when you have removed enough material.
You have to learn to deburr.
And you have to be willing to put time into it.
For someone who finds knife sharpening interesting, that is probably the fun part.
For someone who just wants to cut an onion on a Tuesday evening without the knife slipping, it is different.
In my view that is exactly the target group of HORL.
And I probably belong to it myself.
And my old IKEA sharpener?
That makes the difference even clearer.
A simple pull-through sharpener is fast.
Knife in.
Pull a few times.
Done.
But you have much less control over what exactly happens to the edge.
Depending on the type of sharpener, such a system can remove material relatively aggressively. For cheap kitchen knives that need not be a disaster, but with good knives I now prefer a bit more control.
And that is exactly why I started looking at the HORL at all.
I do not necessarily want to learn to sharpen knives professionally.
I do want to take better care of my knives.
That is something different.
So: is the HORL nonsense?
No.
After reading a great many user experiences, I think that is actually too easy a conclusion.
The HORL is not a device that only exists thanks to clever Instagram advertising.
The sharpening system really works.
The fixed angle is clever.
The construction is simple.
And many users get their kitchen knives nicely sharp with it.
But the marketing sometimes makes it look easier than it really is.
You still have to understand what a sharpening angle is.
You have to know what a burr is.
You have to take the shape of your knife into account.
And with special or expensive knives you should not simply assume that 15 or 20 degrees is automatically the right choice.
Why I bought it in the end anyway
After everything I had read, one important question remained for me.
Not:
can the HORL sharpen knives?
It can.
But:
is the convenience worth the purchase price to me?
My knives were blunt, my IKEA sharpener was no longer up to it, and I wanted a better method without first having to fully learn sharpening on whetstones.
So in the end I bought the HORL 3 Walnut HO3N-SET knife sharpener in walnut wood.
Not because I expect it to be a magic roller that makes every knife razor sharp after ten strokes.
Quite the opposite.
After reading all the user experiences I now know that a bit of technique is still involved.
But if the HORL makes it easier for me to keep my kitchen knives consistently sharp, then it has done exactly what I bought it for.
And now to test it myself
And that is where it actually gets interesting.
Up to this point my verdict is mainly based on the experiences of other users and my reasons for buying the HORL 3.
Now it is here with me.
So the next step is simple:
sharpen my own knives.
Not sharpen one knife for five minutes and then enthusiastically declare that it is great.
I want to actually use it for a while.
My chef’s knife.
Smaller knives.
Knives that have become quite blunt.
And above all see how long they stay sharp and how much effort it takes to touch them up afterwards.
Only then can I say whether my HORL 3 is really worth its money.
My conclusion so far
- The HORL really does sharpen.
- The biggest advantage is the fixed sharpening angle.
- For ordinary kitchen knives many users are positive.
- The system has a much smaller learning curve than traditional whetstones.
- The tip and strongly curved parts of a knife need extra attention.
- Small knives can be trickier.
- With Japanese and other high-end knives you first have to know which sharpening angle suits them.
- A HORL does not make knowledge of sharpening completely unnecessary.
- With extra discs and a leather strop you can refine further, but the costs rise as well.
- Experienced sharpeners can reach a better result with whetstones.
- For someone who mainly wants convenience, that is exactly the strength of the system.
- That is why I chose the HORL 3 Walnut HO3N-SET in walnut wood.
Perhaps that is in the end the best description of the HORL:
no miracle cure, no nonsense, but a clever and rather expensive way to make a tricky chore a lot easier.
Will I still think so after a few months of use?
I will find that out in due course.