"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
. net...
"Victor M. Martinez" wrote in message
...
animaux wrote:
I bought the border spade and fork, both stainless steel with
beautiful
wood

They are indeed nice looking, but will they be strong enough?


More important, stainless steel is very hard, which is why better
kitchen
knives are NOT stainless. The material is almost impossible to sharpen
without a machine, and chefs need to touch up knives constantly, using
a
steel. This relates to spades because they get dull quickly, and
should be
touched up with a flat file kept in the garage. The performance
difference
is amazing, in case you've never tried this. It takes about a minute
to put
the spade in shape to cut through soil like butter (almost).



You use a soft material so that it can be easily sharpened but loses its
edge quickly?
And you don't use a hard material that keeps its edge longer than a soft
one because it is too hard to sharpen?

By this logic there would be no use for hard steel at all.

Not all stainless steel is especially hard. Most chefs' knives
(including the better ones) in the specialty equipment shops around here
are stainless steel and this does not stop them being polished on a
steel or sharpened with a stone. If fact some of the "better" chefs'
knives are ceramic which is so hard that they cannot be sharpened at all
except in the factory. All of whcih probably has nothing to do with
spades.

David