Knife sharpening thread

imagine you are a pirate and you sharp two knives together bloodthirsty, it's how it works. Actually just sharp two shit knives together, don't you.

For 5$ more you can get a Lansky 4 rod, which won't tear out chunks of your knife.

First, get a usable steel. 98% of all steels ever made are useless for honing the knives they were sold with. With a steel, length counts. If you want to know what size steel you require, go into any supermarket and ask what is the longest steel they sell. Go away and buy one at least 50% longer. The steel must be at least four inches longer than the blade to make safe, efficient honing possible. A 14-inch steel is a sensible length for most purposes.
If you still have a butcher in your area, get to know him (Buying meat from him is a good way to achieve this). Look at the steel he uses (and if he isn't using a steel, he isn't a butcher). Butchers rub up their knives in the same way snooker players chalk their cues. It is a reflex before making a cut, whether across the joint or into the side pocket.

The basic principle of safe honing is very simple. Hold your elbows so you can get your hands within a foot of each other but no closer. Now take a nine inch knife in your right hand and try cutting your left hand without moving your elbows. Surprise, surprise - you can't do it. That is the whole principle of safe sharpening. Learn to hold your elbows still at a distance that makes cutting the other hand impossible.
Now you can relax and concentrate on the angle of the knife to the steel, confident that fingers are not going to land on the floor. Stage two is simple. Lay the edge of the base of the blade, half an inch down from the tip of the steel aiming for the same edge angle as when you were working on the stone. Now let the blade sweep like a wiper blade down the steel.
The knife is flicking through 90 degrees. It is not moving bodily; it is pivoting from the handle. This way your hands stay safely out of reach of each other. To practice the motions, get a blunt knife, wooden spoon or whatever. Once you are confident that you will not amputate valuable bits of your anatomy, try honing some knives.

You can just do it the pussy way too.

I put the tip of my steel in the corner of the gutter of my cutting board and hold it vertical.

Yeah, that works, different techniques are interesting.
I collect knives on a casual basis, but I use knives seriously. As I explained to a Police officer in the House Of Lords, 'I expect my knives to reduce any pig into delicate slices of meat in a few minutes'. I am still at liberty because I managed to persuade the officer concerned that I am a professional, if highly eccentric cook and I do expect my knives to carve a couple of hundred pounds of pork in an hour or so.
But then he knew, as well as I did, that if you want a serious weapon, a knife that will carve one lump of meat will carve any lump of meat irrespective of species or whether the meat is dead. The difference is that a cook's knife is not on the whole a good killing knife. The British Army has always, for good reasons, preferred the point in combat, but this is not relevant. Here the edge is all important.
I make a lot of my own knives, grinding down old carbon steel table knives or salvaging cook's knives from incompetent cooks. I prefer carbon steel to stainless because I have always believed that the steel for a blade should be chosen for its ability to take and hold an edge rather than because it is easy to clean.
Forget the point. Most cooks use the point because the edge is dull. Sharpen the bloody edge. Go for a nice belly in the blade - a nice convex curve seriously improves cutting. My latest cut-down bone handled table knives have a near quadrant at the tip and cut unbelievably. I gave one to a friend with the warning 'this knife is really sharp', whereupon he tested it on his finger and then dripped blood on my carpet for the rest of the evening.
Remember, a knife is there to cut. The sharper the knife the better it cuts. The only way to ensure you always have a sharp knife is to learn to sharpen them yourself. Once you have learned, you will find endless blades lying unused, just waiting to be sharpened by someone who knows what they are doing.

I must say it seems like a great option, but it's not 5$ more, it's twice the price and about the same price of my knife set...

But it might be good to get the right tools to begin with, fuck up my shitty knives to get the hang of it. When I'll get a better set I won't be scared to sharpen them myself.

Just get a whetstone, it is so much more practical than all those weird and wonderful high (and low) tech gadgets. If your knives are shitty anyway that means all the less worry about fucking them up. I swear I have no idea where all this almost pathological/superstitious aversion to whetstone sharpening comes from.

Is using a whetstone harder than angled rods like the Lansky?

Dont ever fucking use those. They fuck up edge beyond recognition. Used it once, never again. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but there is no way in hell I a going to try to learn how to use this monstrosity if I am capable using cheap waterstone.

spend the extra $10 and get a hunter/lebeau honer, it's worth it

This is your reason.

No, it's not. I have never used the Lansky but I suspect it makes it actually more difficult to hold the correct and uniform angle because it moves the blade sideways as you go up and down.There are plenty of instruction videos for waterstones on youtube. Watch the ones from Japanese Knife Imports, or from Korin, or from Global, for instance.

This guy must be retarded or something, this will never happen if you sharpen your knife 2-3 times a year...

My shitonku knife is already bent from prying plastic straps off christmas toys

You don't know how to use it then, or you got a cheap one. Those should be used as daily maintenance and whetstones should be used every once in a while for heavy maintenance

If he is a professional cook with cheap ass knives with soft steel he probably sharpened them daily, as one would have to with such knives.

Dont get one of those ordinary steels with a surface like a file. I have a smooth steel, it does a great job with realigning the edge of a knife (but only if it is already sharp). It causes no wear at all.

what if I have rust spots because I put them in dishwasher? Is there a way to get those out

>sharpening serrated knife with this gadget
wew lad

use polishing paste. or just dont give a fuck.

See
It all about technique. The steel,is used to hone not sharpen.

The correct angle with a crock stick sharpener is always vertical, a very natural angle to maintain.

You realize he said "low end knives," right?
Who the fuck cares about some $10 banger? If you actually wore them down like that, just get another one.
>using a pull-thru on a serrated knife
Also that guy is fucking retarded in the worst possible way.

He's not talking about the angle, he's talking about the motion. You have to pull the knife down AND pull the knife back AND the angle of the sticks is pushing the knife to the side. It's awkward.

>it's awkward
Only if you have Parkinson's you fucking cripple.

If you're going to do that then just go to an outdoors store and get one of those sharpeners.

It's the least awkward of unguided sharpening methods.

A retard can put a microbevel on with a dual angle crock stick sharpener. Next to no one using a stone has enough consistency to do the same with a stone, especially not with a western style blade as you pivot towards the tip.