Knife Sharpening 101
by: dionesius3
The purpose of this short guide is to give a basic overview of knife sharpening techniques and supplies.
- First determine the type of steel you are sharpening. Is it a cheap pocket knife? Or maybe a mid-priced kitchen knife? Or perhaps it is a very expensive knife? Which ever it is it is useful to know the type steel and its relative hardness.
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- Cheap pocket knives and cheap kitchen knives are usually made of lower grade stainless steels. They will be fairly soft and easy to sharpen with any type of sharpening stone. I usually use a two-sided diamond stone that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $12 to sharpen these types of knives. The sharpener has a coarse side (225 grit) and a fine side ( 400 grit). I make about ten strokes on each side of the blade on the coarse side of the stone. Then switch to the fine side and do ten strokes on each side of the blade. Any type stone will do have one coarse and one fine.
- Mid-grade knives like pocket knives costing between $20 and $80 and kitchen knives costing between $20 and $80 will usually have better grades of stainless steel. These also tend to have hardened blades. You can sharpen these with Wet stones, oil stones, Diamond, ceramic, and several other abrasives. I prefer diamond stones. I have a set of DMT diamond stones that I use for all these mid-grade knives. The set costs around $80.00 and has Coarse, Medium, Fine, Extra Fine, and Ultra Fine stones. It also has an aligner system which is useful if you have not sharpened many knives.
- Higher priced knives, Over $100, are a another matter. If you have experience and feel you can do it go for it. But if you just started and are thinking of sharpening your William Henry you need to realize you will likely ruin the knife's value. These knives are better off being returned to the factory for sharpening where you wont get the blade ruined. Most companies offer a sharpening service that is inexpensive so use them untill you gain a whole lot of experience.
2. Determine how bad the edge is and decide if the edge needs to be reshaped and small chips need smoothed out. If the edge has no visible chips and is not totally rounded off then a touch-up will be all you need and not a true sharpening.
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- Routine touch-up will keep a knife in perfect working condition almost indefinitely. For touch-up maintenance use ceramic rods. You can get a base that two rods sit in at an angle for sharpening. These sets are inexpensive and should be used regularly. Once a week or after every extended use. I touch up the edge on all my carry knives about once per week. Usually three or four strokes on each side of the blades will restore the hair shaving edge.
- Reshaping the edge or true resharpening means removing enough metal to restore the proper edge angle and to restore a nicked or chipped edge. This can mean using coarse stones first to establish the correct edge angle, and to work out the nicks and chips. Them working through progressively finer stones untill you can pass the knife over your finest stone and feel no bumps, catches, or rough places.
- Then the knife is ready for the final step.
3. Putting the final touches on the new sharpened edge, or stropping as it is called.
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- Stropping is using leather of other materials to deburr and give an edge its final finnish.
- Stropping is done by using the material (usually a soft piece of leather) and pulling the knife across the leather while applying light pressure.
- This action serves to pull the little fingers of metal that have been peeled back from the edge by the sharpening process back flat against the edge.
- The edge of a knife viewed under magnification looks kind of like a straw broom. After sharpening there are numerous straws that are pulled back and away from the edge and stropping is like combing these errant straws back into alignment with all the others.
- Stropping will remove very very small particles of metal and will pull the others back into alignment with the rest. This produces and edge that has the best chance to be super-sharp.
- Stropping should take ten to twenty passes on each side of the blade in order to be effective.
- Stropping should be done everytime you resharpen or touch-up your knives.
Recognize that some types and grades of steel have very coarse grain. meaning the straws are thicker and harder to be pulled back into place. Other grades of steel have fine grain and are easier to produce a razor like edge on.
Most mid-grade or better pocket and kitchen knives will take and hold a razor-like edge very well.
Few cheap knives will take or hold an edge like we are talking about.
All top-grade knives should come with and easily retain a super sharp edge, even better than razor sharp.
