Thread: recommendations for kitchen knife hones

I use an 8" x 2" Sharpening Supplies soft/hard Arkansas combo stone with Norton "food safe" honing oil to sharpen my carbon steel kitchen knives. Does the trick for me, especially with a little pressure in starting out with half-laps. Then a fine steel for upkeep for weeks on end before a return to the stone.

Ive got naniwa 220, 400 and 1k for knives. Works just fine in my house.

Another vote for Diamonds, a dual grit 400/1k plate from CNTG at $30 is a great large knife hone.

Also, large vintage dual grit India stone are inexpensive, easy to find and quick cutters.

Lastly, vintage Washita, 6 & 8x2 are easy to find and not expensive, they cut quickly and work exceptionally well on carbon and Super Steels, edges are smoking and a bit toothy though less than a 1k diamond plate edge.

For large knives, a hard stone will not become tip damaged like a soft water stone, unless you are very proficient with large knife honing.

If you want to go synthetic, Nubatama made a hard nice marbled 1k a few years ago, that cuts quickly and polishes a bit higher than most 1k and is a great knife/tool stone, if you can find them. The 4k is very soft, but nice 4k finisher. Or go Shapton Glass.

Also look into a good vintage steel, there is a current thread on vintage steel restoration, I think it is in the, What are you working on thread. A good steel and learning how to use it, (not hard) will keep your kitchen knives cutting a long time.

That is what I’ve heard, need to get my good buddy Roy on that. Heard the Dicks were the best

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody! I ended up just buying a Naniwa SS 400 grit stone. I will use the Chosera 1k that I already have and get rid of my King 1k. After giving it more thought, I decided there's no reason I can't use the same stones for knives and razors.

Originally Posted by joelkerr

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody! I ended up just buying a Naniwa SS 400 grit stone. I will use the Chosera 1k that I already have and get rid of my King 1k. After giving it more thought, I decided there's no reason I can't use the same stones for knives and razors.

I use the same stones for both, though I've heard that it's a bit taboo to do. I really only drop as low as the DMT 600 when I need to reprofile a blade that is in extra bad condition (e.g., my parents and their pull through sharpener!). Mostly I start with my 1000 Naniwa SS and from there up to the 3000 SS.

I've fiddled a bit with going higher than that, but for the amount of work involved I've come to the conclusion that the returns have diminished too much (at least for me) after 3000. One thin I do, however, maybe because of that prohibition against using the same stones for knives and razors, is dedicate one side of the Naniwas to razors and the other to knives. I'm really not convinced that even this is necessary though.

“After giving it more thought, I decided there's no reason I can't use the same stones for knives and razors.”

You can, but I too would use one side for knives and the other for razors. A knife tip can and will tear up a soft stone like a Chosera and have to be lapped quite a bit to get flat enough to hone a razor or you can easily snag a razor edge and cause a nasty chip.

Remember to remove a 1/8 in gouge, you have to remove a bit more than an 1/8 inch of the rest of the stone. Do that a few times and it gets old fast.

If you can hone a knife on a gouged stone, just hone around the gouge and a knife edge will float over the gouge.

Or keep the King until you get the hang of freehand honing and the tip from gouging.

Edge trailing strokes also work well, especially when working off the burr. Strop on a paddle strop or piece of cardboard glued to a board & pasted with metal polish. Finish on plain leather, wood or cardboard.