Wedging when cutting two celery stalks

Hi, all, I need your help. I wonder if anyone has experienced this or can diagnose. I'm newish to sharpening on stones, but I have done it several times usually making decent improvements to whatever knife I have sharpened. After my latest sharpening (Wusthof classic 8"):

I can push-cut a single carrot or celery stalk pretty easily. But if I line up TWO celery stalks side-by-side and try to cross-cut them both, the knife hits resistance about half-way down the stalks to the point where it is hard to complete the cut (or get the knife out of the celery). It's really surprisingly difficult. This effect seems to occur along the whole length of the blade but is most pronounced 3" or so from the tip (where the belly curve gets more pronounced). It feels similar to when a tall knife gets wedged in a cantaloupe, but this is just celery!

The knife has recently been thinned behind the edge on both sides, so it's possible I thinned badly and changed the geometry. It's also possible I just sharpened badly and did not hold a steady angle. Could either of these common rookie issues cause the "can cut one but good luck cutting two" phenomenon?

I tried but could not get good pictures of my knife...has anyone else experienced (and fixed) a similar issue?

Well a wust is a pretty beefy block of stainless steel. Most of the action happens behind the cutting edge, so even if you sharpened it properly, it's still going to wedge due to its size and grind. I know you said you "thinned" it a bit, but i bet you didnt even put a dent in it...you'd have to thin that stainless monster so much to reduce wedging that it just wouldn't be worth the effort or the amount of stone it would eat away at.

Keep that knife for beefy tasks that require a thick, soft steel and perhaps look at getting a knife with a different grind that would be more suited to cutting produce sans wedging. Just my 2 cents.

1+

Wustie is way to thick behind he edge...

It's probably true it hasn't been thinned enough, I don't have a good sense of that. Still seems weird that it wedges in two celeries but not one. Like it steers in opposite directions at different points along the edge.

But maybe I've just never cut two celeries lately so never noticed how thick it has become.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

Perhaps a photo of the edge area and behind it — on both sides — may lead to some useful suggestions. That steering question intrigues me. Are you left-handed?
If by chance you have a caliper you may get an idea whether the thinning you mentioned was sufficient.
It may be helpful to find out under which angle the blade cuts at its best. Try to let it find its own angle by pulling through hard vegetables without exercising any pressure, with the loosest grip, and see which position it takes.

Flip the celery upside down and see if you get the same resistance.

Try using the profile more. A wusthof is not the most push cutting profile. Try putting more motion into the cut. With a smaller surface that your cutting, you may be able to get away with less motion, but you may have to adjust with more product. Also wusthoffs are no laser like the others mention, so you can't expect them to perform the same. Or else we wouldd all just use wusthoffs

I agree about technique, however there is some weird physics
with celerly...

IE, if its seems to be acting like a keystone holding up an arch...
...then as mentioned you're options are to flip the product,
(eliminate the arch), use a different knife (elimiante the keystone),
or simply use the tip (variation of same--different geometry).

9/10 times is not the apex that is the problem but the cross-sectional
geometry ... i've seen this with very sharp and very TBE
edges, and the issue from what I could tell was higher up...

distal taper knives give you more options,
straight spine less .

hope this is helpful.

many knives will wedge some when lining two or more side by side (some even get stuck if you try to do like 4). try stacking instead.

TLDR: D'oh! In reading all of this I realize that it's possible that I had never even attempted to push-cut parallel stalks of celery with that knife before and I learned a lot from these responses.

Benuser:

Thanks, I will try finding the knife's magic angle. I'm learning there's more to be learned than by cutting paper and this is very useful. For what it's worth I don't believe my knife is "really" steering in opposite directions, I worded that poorly. It just felt like that because the wedge was surprisingly strong. It felt weird, like some physics trick. "Bet you a dollar you can't cut through these two celery stalks with one slice!".

XooMG, Jville, HRC_64, Panda:

The tips on technique and profile are spot-on as I think about it. I was thinking "this is weird, I must have broken my knife and I should fix it" rather than thinking practically. Home cook, so no big deal, but obviously I should have considered the possibility I was just doing it wrong under the conditions. Turning the celery over did help a bit. I didn't even think about stacking but d'uh!

A wusthof is not the most push cutting profile

Click to expand...

This was the ah-ha moment as I read these replies! For years, until the past few months really, I mainly used the tip-to-the-board rock chopping on shorter produce. I've been push-cutting more in anticipation of getting a carbon knife (which is now slowly making its way to me). So it's even possible I had never tried push-cutting two stalks of celery before. But I didn't realize this because I sort of forgot that I had been gradually changing technique. So I guess I don't even know if anything changed about my knife in this regard.

Anyway, I'm glad to know it's not so surprising of a phenomenon. Thanks for the help, everyone!

The tip of the Wustie is probably not too thick...for technique I'd probably draw (pull) cut using only the tip.

If the tip is not too high — it's a Wüsthof Classic after all, and its high tip is unusable for short people like me.

The ends of rhubarb stalks share that kind of physics for some reason...