Knife Sharpening

I have a water stone, which is probably why I sharpen my knives once every two years

No, it's because you're content with dull as fuck knives and probably also because you don't cook a lot. Even if you cook just one meal a day every day as a homecook you'll have to sharpen once a wekk if you want to be cooking with a truly shapr knife. If you don't let the edge deteriorate too much just a few passes on each side on a fine stone are enough, to need to go through the whole grit procession.

You are probably bettet off with something coarser if you only get one

1k is quite fine and can't reshape an edge on a big knife without hours of work

Until you get your bevels dialed in you should be more concerned about that and less about everyday upkeep

I'm using a whetstone, it works well even though I just started learning how to sharpen.
My advice would be for you to try to learn with some cheap knives first and at least get the basics right.

I just buy $4 kiwi knives and throw them out when they become blunt, which takes ages

Whetstones in 3 different grits to sharpen knives
Rod to realign the edge and a piece of wood if there's a spine to remove

no you dont

I use a DMT diamond steel (extra fine) for normal maintenance.

When I need to resharpen I use synthetic water stones (Chosera). I have a 400, 1k , and 5k. I almost never use the 400.

the one thing most of you jokers miss out on is using a strop with jeweler's rouge to take the fine burr off.

After you learn how to really sharpen a blade, drag it across leather saturated with a jeweler's polish, that can be red or green. 4 strops in both directions so the burr flakes off. That'll give you a blade that'll cut paper.

I just put my knives with the ones at work and a company swings by and switches them with other knives while they sharpen them.

It takes a day before I get them back but I hardly cook at home since I can just eat at work.

A blade fresh off a 500 grit stone will cut paper.

That is a shameful waste user. KIWI knives are pretty good for their price, they deserve better. For just a minute a week on a whetstone you will never have to suffer blunt knives ever again or buy a new one for many many years.

Why the hell would you ask Veeky Forums if you're actually looking for the best?

While it is true that Veeky Forums is filled with idiots, there are also some knifespergs here who know quite a lot.

Can anybody recommend which stones to get if I currently have none? Any particular grit(s) I should have? Recommended manufacturers? Also, any tutorial resources (websites or videos, etc.)?

A good Japanese combo stone from King or Naniwa with two grits, one side about 300-400, the other between 800-1000. That is all you need for German steel, for japanes knives you can get an additional 3000-6000 grit stone.

Oh, and if you can get a 200mm version, they are more than worth the additional cost over a 150mm one if you want to sharpen chef knives 8'' and up.

I use a $8 steel and $10 400/1000 stone on my $30 prying tool that's also useful for cutting stuff. Chose that stuff because it's versatile and won't stop functioning if some molded plastic breaks. Cutting stuff every day since I like to eat only whole plant foods most of the time :^)

Gets the job done.

Just get a Lansky sharpening kit.

You can sharpen a fucking spoon with one of those things.

Guided systems are for faggots.

What about something like this? It's cheap as hell @ $20.00 but looks like it would be able to maintain a consistent angle with the guide and has multiple stones.

Those ruxion systems are absolute shit tier Chinese crap.
Seriously, don't waste your money, they're poor quality, the stone wear out too fast and they are really badly designed.
Get a Worksharp if you want a good compromise between freehand and guided systems.
If you have the money get an EdgePro.

Why does nobody ever recommend a mounting block and sandpaper?

How do you ensure you're keeping the proper angle without a guide? Unless your sharpening 8 hours/day and it becomes second nature, it seems to me you could never maintain the precise angle. What am I missing here?

are the clamps compatible with the EP? I mean if the stones are the only issue it could be a good deal. I got my EP before all these knockoffs came out but I haven't even touched the default stones

I have a masamoto HC and a king kds
Pretty slow process but It gets me to an edge where I can push cut freestanding newspaper

it costs more in the long run
t. been there done that

autism

freehanding is great and all but it does take some practice

a lot of internet experts misrepresent their own skill level because their pride can't deal with not being a level 9000 weeb stone samurai guru IRL

>What am I missing here?
Maintaining a consistent angle is nowhere as difficult as you think.

Unless you're a klutz you should get it down after just a few minutes of practice.

If you are sharpening Japanese knives with a single bevel then it's virtually impossible to fuck it up since you can simply hold the bevel flat against the stone.

...

I just convex mine.
All you need is a mouse mat and varying grades of sandpaper.
Probably the sharpest profile you'll get.

im not the guy youre responding to but ive seen you devolve multiple threads with this topic. plus im most positive you arent correct in your posits

Good info, thanks

My knife block sharpens them for me, with those little ceramics. Come at me nerds.

I'm a completely different guy,

Read over my posts again and tell me what isn't correct and if you honestly believe sharpening rods are the same thing as a honing rod you are a fucking moron

Why would you want knife block that does a bad job at sharpening when you could do a better job via a different method?

Or do you just not give a shit about how well something is done? Perhaps you were unaware of how poorly those work?

It's actually very simple - with just a bit of practice you can hear and feel it when you hit the correct angle and the whole width of the bevel is on the stone.

Sharpening and honing are both abrasive processes that remove metal from the blade. The only difference is that "sharpening" tends to imply a coarser abrasive whereas "honing" implies a finer abrasive.

The idea that a rod "straightens and realigns" a bent edge is silly fiction that needs to die, but for some reason keeps getting parroted over and over again.

Pic shows an antique knife set with it's "honing steel". Notice how the steel has teeth on it just like a file, and how using said rod has removed so much metal from the blade that the edge is now concave when it was once convex.

I just buy a new one when it gets dull. Same with dirty mice and keyboards

Here's another example. You can see this anytime you wander by an antique store or flea market. Positive proof that a "honing steel" does in fact remove metal.

While you're completely correct, you're also an anonymous poster on a Chinese cartoon site, so hone-vs-sharpen guy is going to unleash his special autistic brand of knife trivia fury on you and question your intelligence, your moral character, your age, your sexual habits, and the brand of personal consumer electronics you favor, before launching into a diatribe laced with some truths, some falsehoods, and some not-even-wrongs. And maybe some phone book stabbing webms for good measure.

Your post, and all posts you are about to post (assuming you keep this up) are going to go to waste.

A honing rod's main use is realigning the blade. And it would take off an inconsequential amount of metal over time. But yes, over time it adds up.

I don't really understand why you're posturing up so much.

>I don't really understand why you're posturing up so much.
Because the whole concept of "realigning the blade" is fictional, and that ought to be immediately obvious to anyone that knows anything about knives.

Blade steel is hard. That's the whole point. It doesn't "bend" such that it needs re-alignment, unless you're talking about a really really shitty knife that isn't hardened properly. And the fact that there are serrated teeth on the "honing steel" ought to make it even more obvious that its function is to make the blade sharper by removing metal like a file or a stone does, not some sort of mythical "straightening" procedure. If the goal was to "straighten", then the steel would be a smooth mirror-polished surface, not file-like with dedicated teeth on it.

Sharp metal is thin, though. Thin anything can be bent if you apply force to it.

>Thin anything can be bent if you apply force to it.

Depends on how hard it is. Hard objects are prone to breaking rather than bending. On a kitchen knife that would be seen as chips on the edge, which is a very real thing.

And again, if we were merely talking about bending something back then a perfectly smooth rod would be the tool of choice, not one that has had file-like teeth deliberately cut into it.

I only use them to cut up McChickens you nerd
They last years

1) Why are you even on the food and cooking board if that's your only use for a cooking knife?

2) Why the fuck would you even need to cut up a mcchicken anyway?

I want to understand what's wrong with your head.

I' afraid you're wrong there user. I have an Eicker Migrogroove steel that has very tiny and rounded grooves that are non-agressive and do not remove any metal and it is still absolutely and very noticeably effective in restoring cutting ability to a knife that I have given a good edge with a whetstone, but with said edge now bent and out of true. You can see it from the reflection of light coming off the apex and you can also feel it in how well it cuts.

>taking me this serious on an Indonesian chicken breeding discussion board

BTW I think the purpose of the "teeth" of a normal grooved steel is not to remove metal but to concentrate the force the steel exerts on the edge into one samll point.

And you can also buy perfectly smooth rods from Eicker, btw.

Barber detected

Sounds great. Can you supply a photo showing the before-and-after of this mythical "bent edge" and how it's straightened afterward?

I've been looking for pics like that for ages but nobody seems able to supply them. I even found a nice report discussing sharpening tests performed by a group of professors at a major univeristy. They have some great electron microscope images of blade edges before and after various tests, including using a steel. Nothing there shows any indication of "straitening an edge".

Check it out.
www.bushcraftuk.com/downloads/pdf/knifeshexps.pdf

>And you can also buy perfectly smooth rods from Eicker, btw.

You can also buy pills that supposedly increase the size of your schlong, but that doesn't mean they perform as advertised.

A smooth rod might be good for stropping as long as it's one of those more ovular ones
Only in a pinch though, as it'd be very tedious to keep a consistent angle, and much less forgiving as a strop as a result of that.

It would be useless for stropping because it wouldn't hold the abrasive. Stropping is a form of lapping, but it's done with a flexible substrate (the leather strop) rather than a rigid object that would be used for most types of lapping. The idea is to embed an abrasive into a relatively soft substrate which holds the abrasive in place. In industrial lapping that's usually done with a piece of brass or other soft metal. In the case of a strop the abrasive is loaded into the leather. The result is basically a really really fine "stone".
A hard smooth rod would be useless since it wouldn't hold the abrasive.

THank u cliff

You my friend are fucked in the head.

It isn't fictional, though. Just because one extreme statement isn't completely true, that does not make another extreme statement to be true. Have you never seen a rolled edge? Have you seriously never repaired one with very gentle treatment on a rod that did not require grinding the blade down well past the current edge?
That's because you're realigning some of the edge.

It does both. Metal snaps after bending back and forth a few times. It's gross when someone uses a steel and doesn't clean a knife. I always rinse my knife and steel after honing, which I do before cutting instead of after, because some believe the edge gets stretched and then "relaxes" to a more dull state over time. And it's better to store it in the slightly more dull post-use state so it's less fragile.

Someone on reddit said in Vietnam scissors are used instead of knives as much as possible. Is there any truth to this?

My dullest knife, sharp enough to cut a week into three days, can cut paper. Am I doing it wrong?

And as we can see here, there are a lot of knife spergs who don't know anything

As with the coffee threads, the knowledgeable people are here to shitpost, and the ones trying to give an earnest opinion are usually wrong. Imagine not knowing anything about a topic and trying to make sense of all this garbage.

I personally visit every thread, write down every meme of the week, and test shit on my own at Sonona Williams/Sur la Table before buying it on Amazon

bf is finally learning to feed himself like a proper adult, and needs a knife. He likes to be a special snowflake about everything, so should I get him this cheap thing instead of something with a more conventional point?

I have no idea about the actual numbers, but I've seen scissors used often in youtube videos of cooks and wet markets in Vietnam.

>Have you never seen a rolled edge?
Nope. I've even tried to create one deliberately and failed.

>>Have you seriously never repaired one with very gentle treatment on a rod that did not require grinding the blade down well past the current edge?
I've touched up an edge using both a traditional grooved steel and my personal diamond-coated steel many times.

>>That's because you're realigning some of the edge.
No, it's because the abrasive steel removes a small amount of metal from the edge which results in the edge being sharper.

You can also tell this by wiping your steel with a very clean rag or paper towel after using it. You'll get some gray residue on the white towel. That gray reside is tiny little bits of steel that the abrasive edge has removed from the steel.

I got one of those the first time I got a bunch of kiwi knives. The profile is shit. Get their chef's knife if you just want a basic knife to to learn techniques. Or if he wants to be a snowflake you can get the nakiri which is thin and great for veggies.

Never mind, found something at a kitchen store I can buy with a gift card my mom gave me.

Should I bring my Victorinox to Williams-Sonoma for free sharpening if I'm going there anyway to spend a gift card on one of the few items that isn't overpriced even with the card value applied?

>sharpening knives
lmao this is an american board poorfag

This was bound to happen, thread ruined

>I'll enjoy watching this thread degenerate into ignorant shit flinging.

He says, as he loads up his shit cannon.

That's cool.
I'm just as black as you.

Dude, did you even read that thing you linked? It repeatedly talks about plastic deformation of the edge, it's got two pictures of the flattened burr, and it concludes
>The SEM micrographs show that the action of the steeling on the 600 grit blades is one of wrapping the bur formed by the wheels around to one side of the edge and deforming it up against the face.
>The net effect is a slightly straighter edge

Do you think a vanishingly thin burr produced by sharpening is the same thing as straightening out a mythical "rolled edge"?

I can only tell you that it works, and the difference is very noticeably when you hold the edge aginst the light so that the glint reflects of the previously dull edge. That glint is gone afterwards and the knife cuts better. I could hardly beleive it myself when I got the smooth rod but it does work, even better than my grooved rod.

No. I do think that if you're trying to make sure no one believes bent edges can be straightened, linking a paper that demonstrates straightening by bending metal isn't much of a gotcha though.

You seem to have missed the point.

That article has dozens of photographs of edges, yet none of them demonstrate this mystical "bent edge being straightened" effect that some people claim. And in those photographs that show the edge after the "steel" has been used, you can clearly see how the steel has abraded the metal.

I'll gladly stand corrected if someone can show photographic evidence of a before-and-after "edge straightening" using a steel. I've asked for that countless times and nobody can deliver.

I think that's because it's a fictional concept. It's no different than the often-quoted "sear your meat to seal in the juices" you hear from cooks--even high end ones like Ramsay. It's a case of "being right for the wrong reason". A steel does indeed make a knife sharper, but it's because it abrades the edge, not "straightens" it. Just as how searing meat is a great idea, but because it creates the malliard reaction not because it "seals" anything.

I'd be very curious to see some proper before and after photos too at this point, particularly of a knife that's been dulled after some use. Without that, I don't think that paper is completely clear evidence either way though.

It shows abrasion from the steel, though they say it's no improvement over the 1000 grit stone, and it shows improvement by flattening a burr from the 600 grit stone, but that isn't exactly normal wear.

The thing is, the size of the burr in figs 18 and 19 is comparable to the area the steel abrades, maybe a third of the size, and it's been completely folded over and deformed by the steel rather than removed. So it seems like a steel is potentially both abrading away and deforming wear in a way that improves the edge, but without a reference for what normal wear looks like, if anything I'm less sure than before.

For someone who wants to come across as someone knowledgeable and who can back-up with sources, you sure do jump to a lot of conclusions when it suits you. Ever cook with an aluminum pot or pan, even just boiling water in one? Ever wiped it with a paper towel before and after? Get a whole lot more grayness on there after heat was applied, right? You don't believe that is due to abrasion and little bits of metal coming off as a result of abrasion, do you? There's also a whole lot more to searing a steak than just the maillard reaction. You are just making a myopic assertion and backing it up with hyperbolic statements and an inadequate simile while appealing to an article that has been posted time and time again and also been shown to be wanting time and time again.

3k/1k wet stone and an iron. once the five-ten passes each side on the iron dont help - stone, and i generally use the iron each time i cut something harder than ham.

and i use a Really cheap knife that i once killed via an electric "sharpener" aka pay us 30 bucks so we can destroy your knives. yet the knife is still good enough to cut up meat for jerky, took a fucking Lot of grinding on the stone after the electric menace tho.

got one question, how bad are plastic cutting boards? because mine feels a lot harder than wood.

So I just sharpened my masamoto HC 255mm for the first time
I've never owned a big knife or an asymmetrically beveled knife so it was overall a very new experience
Also don't have a very fast cutting stone (King 1000 and king 6000).
After about 1.5hrs of trial and error though I managed to get a push cut through some creased newsprint but still can't get the dreaded uncreased newsprint vertical push. It doesn't make much difference since I'm not cooking in a very demanding kitchen but it still irks me. I can do just fine getting a scary sharp razor edge and mirror polish on my paring knives and petties, but this is gonna kill me. Should I buckle down and get a few faster stones? How about the technique for sharpening this gargantuan beast of a blade? Any tricks to adjusting to sharpening it a bit more consistently?

i have two shuns, a victorinox and several custom jap knives and that thing is the first to fucking cut me when sharpening

>tfw cut myself sharpening for the first time today
Put my knife down on the carpet beside me so I could move my bench and shift my ass and whoopdefuckingdoo ended up catching the edge on my finger tip
It was nice though, already sharp enough at that point to just effortlessly slide through my finger without feeling much other than a slight sting
No catching or tearing. Might make the fingertip cut test my new sharpness gauge

Yeah that's why the "start with 1k and move up" meme needs to die

Big knives are a bitch to reprofile, you'll need either an incredible amount of patience and focus to maintain consistency while grinding down that edge, or a much faster cutting stone

A DMT D8C could work, but then you'll be polishing out the scratches for a while.

Or you could get an Edgepro, the smaller custom stones are pretty cheap, and you can mix and match stuff like diamonds and shapton and arkansas stones and so forth. An EP is theoretically somewhat slower than the largest of the bench stones, for a given stone type, but the angle consistency becomes much less of a problem so if your mind wanders for a bit while you're grinding and grinding and grinding, it's not the end of the world.