Thread: ONE COTICULE HONING

Hi Sham, Not speaking for Bart, but i have been wanting to reply.

I use very much the same method on every stone, sans the tape strategy. which I mean back and forth on one side, then the other; followed by a balancing smoothing with diagonal strokes on the flip flop. Each stone is worked like Bart's single stone method with variations in intensity, time spent one motion vs any others, etc

Our human error is no more likely to be minimized by passes on each side in pairs. All the issues you raised about inequality of strokes are really not so vital to the process of sharpening. There is only one edge.

Primarily, the bevels do not need to be equal, nor is there any way to precisely judge that the true edge is in the exact center of the blade body.

However with some observation one can judge the condition of the blade(- one side may have already been honed asymmetrically- balanced maintenance would only prolong the "defect".) And decide which face needs more and which less to create as much as possible equivalent, continuous, planer bevels on each face. It other words make it happen actively, not by passively following a regime.

I imagine Bart had some long discussions with himself before selecting 30 as a compromise between too little and too much to assure a beginner getting results. (Hi Bart)There is no magic number or necessary count of strokes- such info is for the unsure.A starting point you might say.

"sharpen as needed until sharp" would not make for a popular tutorial but is really all you need to know