Thread: Knife Honing

Yeah I was actually commenting on the disuse of ceramics in professional kitchens. It's typical to refer to steeling as honing and the use of stones as grinding. With single digit edges I'm quite sure you wouldn't be able to use a steel much (and hopefully the use would mean you wouldn't have need for one very often either). With chefs knives you can usually manage almost a week on a steel in a busy kitchen. That can be a hundred plus uses of a steel. Personal knives can go years. If you were to take a stone to a knife every time the edge needed a steel you'd likely be left with no knife after a handful of years. You'd also spend a couple hours a month wasting time that you can't afford to waste. Maybe Sashimi chefs who spend more time learning how to prep their knives than learning how to use them are willing to take that time. In an american kitchen if you whipped out the stones the first time your knife needed a steel, you'd be fired before the dinner rush.

Originally Posted by IanS

Yeah I was actually commenting on the disuse of ceramics in professional kitchens. It's typical to refer to steeling as honing and the use of stones as grinding. With single digit edges I'm quite sure you wouldn't be able to use a steel much (and hopefully the use would mean you wouldn't have need for one very often either). With chefs knives you can usually manage almost a week on a steel in a busy kitchen. That can be a hundred plus uses of a steel. Personal knives can go years. If you were to take a stone to a knife every time the edge needed a steel you'd likely be left with no knife after a handful of years. You'd also spend a couple hours a month wasting time that you can't afford to waste. Maybe Sashimi chefs who spend more time learning how to prep their knives than learning how to use them are willing to take that time. In an american kitchen if you whipped out the stones the first time your knife needed a steel, you'd be fired before the dinner rush.

This is so wrong...
I have not heard any of the pro chefs the frequent the knife forum say anything like that, a quality Japanese knife does not require more than a touch up on a CrO strop at the end of the day and quick touch up on a finishing stone at the end of the week. If you are comming from Henkels/Wusthof you will be amazes how much different a quality Japanese knife is, and what kind of edge it can take.

Well, you 're looking at up to ~10 points difference in hardness between many Western knives and Japanese blades in steels like aogami or shirogami. With the rockwell scale being logarithmic, that's a massive difference in deformation resistance. These hard blade steels also aren't terribly tough, with the high carbon content and hardness close to as-quenched levels. They shouldn't roll much, and using a steel would give a significant chance at chipping the edge instead, imo.

In my own experience with my EDCs (not heavy kitchen use) I found that stropping on loaded leather worked as well as steeling for the time needed to perform the task, and the results in the short term, while being better in the long run.

I acquired RAD only because of my love for sharp knives...and in particular the enjoyment of sharpening knives.

I went the Shapton route because they seemed like a good fit for my razors AND my knives.

Feel free to PM but here are my two honest suggestions...neither are very fancy

If you want to try to sharpen a knife that is still in fairly good working order get one of them and be done with it. Strop on some simple newspaper.
Amazon.com: Spyderco Sharpmaker Knife Sharpener 204MF: Sports & Outdoors
It's a glorified crock-stick sharpener. It is hands down the easiest, most user friendly device I've seen for getting a knife very very sharp. It ruins the notion that you have to do it "old-school" to get a truly sharp knife. Don't mess around with other crock-stick style sharpeners. I have. Buy this and be done with it.

If you want to do use your hones then my next suggestion is do what this guy does.
YouTube - Sharpening II 001