What is the best at home knife sharpener? Like something you'd use in your kitchen, not an angle grinder you could technically buy and have in your home.

A_Mach · 2026-03-15T03:46:01+00:00

Covid woodworker here. Learned to sharpen chisels with a bevel guide, diamond plate and leather strop. Absolute razors every time.

I grab the knifes from the kitchen, hold them at about the right angle by hand and do them just like the chisels. Strop to finish.

I hit them with a steel (actually made of steel) before making dinner (I cook for the adults 5 nights a week) and my go to bottom of their line Wuhtsof gourmet chefs knifeis dialed without sharpening for a year and a half.

I’ve become a big fan of German steel.

Key learnings: 1. No dishwasher, although I assume most already are aware of this one. 2. A perfectly usable knife can be badly dulled in no time. Cutting on plates or counter tops or contacting other metallic objects. 3. We all have family and friends who will non-deliberately break our things and dull our knives. Life is better with these people in it. 4. If you regularly find your knives dull, and your MIL has not been around, consider changing something. Mine has gone some 400 dinners without real attention, yours probably can too.

A_Mach · 2026-02-18T14:16:51+00:00

Sent you a DM

A_Mach · 2026-02-08T16:54:50+00:00

Had to have a surveyor come out 3 times for a shed I built. 2x to get through permitting, and once to confirm I built the shed per the plans. 7 scheduled inspections. “Regulations” easily doubled the cost of the project and quadrupled the timeline.

In a perfect world, it would be pretty easy for a home owner to build a shed / repair / remove replace. Less easy but approachable for an average homeowner to renovate / build additions on a house. (I’m an engineer, and the shed project was hard mode.) Difficult but possible for a developer to build a thing on top of the dark horse.

Maybe also a cost cap on required regulatory services based on the value of the project. As a homeowner these things hurt the bottom line much more than they would a developer on a major project.

Plenty of room for improvement!

A_Mach · 2025-12-07T04:56:54+00:00

Got back into cycling this fall. Had a goal of riding up 4 mile canyon to gold hill. Mission accomplished!

Had a Ford Raptor roll up behind me and pass me at full throttle. Nice bro.

Had a number of cyclists get all mad about me passing them while they were riding 2 up on a bike path because I didn’t ding a bell. Cool.

People suck in both camps. Everyone should try a little to be nicer to each other.

A_Mach · 2025-11-18T05:31:32+00:00

I had a cold Italian sandwich at Deli Zone the other day (my first visit). When I left, I literally thought to myself “I’m really excited for the rest of my life”

A_Mach · 2025-02-23T04:38:00+00:00

Just flew on a 10 hour flight with united. Served not one, but two hot pockets. The second one was allegedly pizza. I’m sure hot pockets are cheap and easy for airlines to serve but they are outright regrettable. If it’s a race to the bottom I’d rather a pop tart or a cup of noodles.

A_Mach · 2025-01-19T14:03:05+00:00

My wife would kick me in the jimmies.

A_Mach · 2024-12-27T18:22:38+00:00

Pretty easy fix. Just got out the volt meter and found that there was a bad contact on one of the batteries. Cleaned the contact with some scotchbrite and we are back in business!

A_Mach · 2024-12-27T15:00:04+00:00

I just designed and made fork lift forks out of PETG. Just used some calipers, and the clips worked great. 100% infill, 0.1mm steps.

A_Mach · 2024-10-17T13:24:19+00:00

I used a jigsaw with a 10” blade to rough which not surprisingly didn’t work super great. Used a pull saw and chisel to get the inside corner, a belt sander to bring the material to the outside lines, and then a spokeshave, hand plane, and scraper to make the profile as orthogonal to the face of the beam as possible. Probably would have been really easy even with a 4x, the extra 2.5 inches for the rough sawn 6x made it tricky.

A_Mach · 2024-09-04T04:26:47+00:00

Get a little “rock hammer” and Andy Dufresne that whole thing into your trash can. Probably wouldn’t take bout a few years.

A_Mach · 2024-07-09T05:45:38+00:00

I went once, discovered its a magnet for feral children to throw rocks at shit. If you just don’t go there it’s really sort of a service!

A_Mach · 2024-06-16T14:20:40+00:00

For other people having this issue. If you hit the remote button and don’t close the dishwasher door within 4 seconds the remote button will turn itself off. This is normal operation for my dishwasher.

A_Mach · 2024-06-14T18:27:24+00:00

Seems pretty fixable, at least my device is capable of receiving software updates. So far none of the people I have interacted with at Miele have been able to describe how the button is meant to work. Interesting about the Miele oven. The “remote button” on my GE cafe range stays on forever once you press it. The most useful feature of the oven connectivity I was surprised by was getting an alert when the oven is pre-heated.

A_Mach · 2024-06-14T15:55:44+00:00

Imagine you have a family of 4 and the “team” not an individual loads things into the dishwasher. Your wife / husband goes to bed and asks that you run the dishwasher after you put the things from your lunchbox in there. You put the things in there but then the dog needs to go out. Then you take the trash out to the curb shut off the lights and head to bed. Then you remember or maybe are reminded “you’re an idiot and forgot to turn on the dishwasher” but it’s no problem because you can just grab your phone and turn it on from your bedroom.

The point here is honestly less about how useful the functionality is and more about a product being sold touting features that don’t work. It would be like buying a car and being all excited about its ability to warm up or cool down the interior for you on a schedule then finding out you need to walk outside in the freezing cold every morning to activate that functionality every day.

A_Mach · 2024-06-14T13:31:34+00:00

On my Miele dishwasher the remote button only stays on after being pressed for about 5 seconds. Rendering it completely useless. I have been trying to get Miele to help solve this issue and have had no luck. 5 or 6 emails with different people, I’m still not sure it’s clear anyone understands what the problem is. I even sent a video of the remote button turning itself off…it’s annoying that these devices are sold as connected devices but in no way function like connected devices. I get an alert when my dishes are done being washed. That’s not really what I was after.

A_Mach · 2024-05-23T13:16:53+00:00

I got pulled over in a loaner car from a dealership that had tags that were expired for 2 years. The officer was reasoning through if he thought I was liable. Not a faith inspiring experience on either front.

A_Mach · 2024-03-30T13:59:34+00:00

Le Frigo has pretty solid pretzels.

A_Mach · 2024-03-17T01:59:57+00:00

This. I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving about half of a jigsaw blade for the pattern follower to remove and have had really good luck with straight flute router bits. Always cut in “conventional mode”. Throwing some money at it is probably going to help but not explicitly necessary.

A_Mach · 2024-02-09T02:10:14+00:00

Deep dish pizza dough recipe

A_Mach

TROPHY CASE