Hi, I'm Peter, and I started Honewood. For about ten years I lived with knives that couldn't cut a tomato without squashing it first.

It's not that I didn't care. I'd bought decent knives. I'd even bought a whetstone after watching a chef sharpen on YouTube. I used it twice, made my paring knife worse, and quietly put it in a drawer where it still lives. I tried one of those pull-through sharpeners from the supermarket. It worked for about a day, and I later learned it was slowly tearing metal off my blades at a random angle.

So, like most people, I cooked with dull knives and paid a sharpening service twice a year when it got embarrassing.

The question a friend and I couldn't let go

A few years ago a friend and I started turning the same question over. Why is it still so hard to keep a good knife sharp at home? We kept trying things on our own knives, and we kept landing on the same answer. The angle is the whole problem. Hold the blade at a locked angle, let a real abrasive do the work, and anyone can sharpen. Nobody had made that simple truth easy to live with.

So we sat down with expert chefs and professional sharpeners and worked on it until it was real. A magnetic base that holds the knife at the exact angle for you. A solid walnut roller with real diamond that glides along the edge. Ten seconds a side, no skill to learn. The first time I tried it I sliced a tomato paper-thin with my oldest, saddest knife, and I got a little emotional over a vegetable.

So we built Honewood

Together with the chefs we set three rules we refused to compromise on.

• A real N52 magnet. Strong enough to hold a chef's knife upside down, because a knife that slips mid roll isn't a bargain, it's a hazard.
• Real industrial diamond and ceramic. The #400 disc rebuilds the edge and the #1000 disc polishes it razor fine. The same two steps the pros use.
• Solid walnut, hand finished. A tool that earns its spot on the counter, because the sharpener you see is the sharpener you use.

We make it in small batches, and every single unit gets checked by hand before it ships. The magnet, the spin of the bearing, the finish of the wood. Not because it sounds nice on a website, but because I'd rather ship late than ship a bad one.

Why the guarantee is for life

"If I'm asking you to trust a brand you've never heard of with knives you love, the risk should be mine, not yours."

That's the whole logic behind our Lifetime Sharp-Again Guarantee. Use the Roller on every knife you own, for as long as you own it. If your knives aren't the sharpest they've ever been, send it back any time, with no deadline, and we'll refund every cent. The bearing and the magnet carry a lifetime hardware warranty on top.

Since we launched, my favorite emails are the ones with a photo of a ribbon of tomato attached and nothing else. Keep sending those.