Knife sharpening and usage

Sixten_26971

I felt that the knife sharpening lessons available on ChefSteps lacked a little bit of depth and would like to point everyone to a resource that I found to be very informing. It's a video series made by Korin Japanese trading by two of their sharpeners, where the head sharpener ad co-founder Chiharu Sugai shows how to sharpen traditional Japanese knives and his student Vincent shows how to sharpen westerns knives and provides some general information about sharpening equipment.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsSxXLQSZIe__A5THcrFGto9_PSkXWiN6

or http://www.youtube.com/user/Korinjapaneseknives

I also tend to use a workflow at my cutting board that I learned from a video about using carbon steel knives. Also immediatly after using a carbon steel knife I clean it and oil it lightly with jojoba oil, you can use camellia oil or any food grade tasteless non-perishable oil.

http://youtu.be/tza5pymb5yg

I would love to see some other resources, which has anything to do with sharpening your kitchen tools or just how to use your knives e.g cutting techniques or just tips about informative things to try.

For example I found it informative to sharpen a knife for builders (mora knife) with a rough stone (400 grit) and marvel at how effectively you can remove the massive bur by simply stropping it on a leather belt a few times.

Sixten_26971

Thought I'd share my experiences about soaking your water stones and what kind of stone fixers you may want to use.

Not all water stones need to be soaked in water before use, for exampel most stones of at 3000 grit or higher only need a splash of water and they're good to go, you might even create a crack in your stone if you oversoak it. Luckily this is pretty simple to figure out, as all you need to do is to splash a bit of water on your stone and if it immediately seeps into the stone then you need to submerge it in water for a few minutes, at least until it stops bubbling. What I found with my 3000 grit stone is that it's enough that I submerge it for a few seconds and drip a few drops of water every now and then. With my 6000 grit stone I only need to splash some water on it before use.

Picture of a 400 grit stone a few seconds after submerging. Note the bubbles.

3000 grit stone, where can see that the water forms a film on the stone and is very slowly being absorbed into the stone. The plank is something I made in jiffy to fit snugly across my sink, for easier clean up after sharpening.

My experience with stone fixers is that if you decide to get a dedicated one, don't get the cheapest ceramic stone fixer you can. My first Togiharu brick stone fixer had imperfection on the edge, where large grains would stick out, leaving large scratch marks on my whetstones, minimum price for a stone fixer would be about 20$. Still even if you get a Naniwa 220 grit flattening block for about 70$, it'll still leave scratch marks on your stone. You should note that the scratching effect will reduce with use as those bad grains along the edge tend to be removed with use. Furthermore ceramic stone fixers need to be soaked for at least 15 min before use, as they're very porous and will consequently take a long time to dry out.

Personally I prefer to use a 180 grit diamond lapping plate (150-300 grit should be ok), which leaves absolutely no visible scratch marks on my stones and doesn't need to be prepared before use, which is very good when I only want to have a quick go on my splash and go 6000 grit stone. The downside of a diamond lapping plate is the price tag (mine was about 100$ at a specialist for woodworking tools). Don't be cheap and go for any with a plastic back, use the ones made with a solid piece of steel, or you'll lose the benefit of the diamond plate.

Of course it's also possible to not spend all your money on a stone fixer. You could just use your roughest stone as a stone fixer to fix up your finer stones, but this usually takes more time then a dedicated stone fixer and may wear excessively on your sharpening stone.

As for knowing when your stone is flat, you simple make a quick grid on your stone using any pen and keep grinding it down until all marks are gone. The sides will usually go last and if the marks on the center go last, you may have a problem where the stone warping from the soaking and drying cycles. I've seen people claim that they fixed warping by removing the pre-attached plastic foot and fixing it to something more solid.

Grid before and almost done, note the corners.

This became a wall of text, but I hope you found it interesting enough. I may add some things about over honing later.