Can knife sharpening wear down the blade?
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Can knife sharpening wear down the blade?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife wear“
About Sarah
Sharpening a knife does wear down the blade. However, most knife users need to sharpen their knives so infrequently that there will be only insignificant and unnoticeable wear. Someone who uses a knife all day, every day and aggressively sharpens the knife, possibly a couple of times a day will see a significant change in the blade dimensions in a relatively short period of time.
Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, who has a reputation for his amazing knife work in the kitchen, wears out knives at a surprising rate. The picture below shows some of his knives, ranging in age from new to about three years old.
See the video here: Simply Ming S11 – Ep04 Morimoto & Knives HD Watch – Dailymotion Video
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Original question: Can knife sharpening wear down the blade?
Yes it can and in fact does. When you sharpen any blade it removes metal to create a thin wedge to make it easier to cut through different materials. Some blades are not hardened all the way through leaving the spine still a soft steel that can be sharpened but wears down easily. Most of your Bowie knives and other “fighting” knives are made this way to in order to make them durable enough that they are harder to break.
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Every time you sharpen a knife, you do it by removing metal. A high quality knife only needs very little sharpening and if done properly it will last a lifetime. Cheap knives need more sharpening and more material is removed shortening their life. But the thing that really destroys a blade are cheap sharpeners that you draw the blade through. These shave a visible amount of steel with each pass. Any blade will have a short life when these are used.
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There are two forms of sharpening. Honing and grinding.
Honing involves stroking the blade against a sharpening steel or strop to restore a slightly dulled edge. This removes negligible amounts of metal.
Grinding is used to resharpen significantly dulled blades. This is accomplished by using abrasive tools or grinding wheels to remove enough metal to restore the edge and (ideally) maintain the bevel angle. This will eventually grind away significant amounts of metal but if done properly with frequent honing used between infrequent grinding a good knife will last for generations of careful users.
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Yes, I have a paring knife with a blade that has lost about 1/8 of the blade height in about ten years of sharpening. I find that stainless steel blades seem to wear down more than high carbon steel blades. I think that is because the high carbon steel blades hold their edge longer and need less frequent sharpening.
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Yes over a period of many years. But don’t worry, a good knife, even if used often and sharpened regularly, will usually outlive it’s owner.
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I have I have a couple of Pen Knives that go back to the late 1800s and I would say that the blade has probably been reduced maybe a third maybe a half of its original size does that answer your question?
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The sharpening of knives will always gradually wear away the metal blade, since in order to keep the edge Sharp removal of metal is needed to do so and happens within the grinding or sharpening process. Nicks or gouges in the blade need to be taken out and the edge kept as fine as possible in order to produce a complete sharp cutting edge.
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It does, practically by definition wear down the blade. Now proper sharpening that is done correctly has a minimal impact on blade wear, we are talking often times of less than one thousandth of an inch. So proper sharpening doesn’t wear a blade away in any great hurry.
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I’ve used kept the same set of knives for over 30 years. While sharpening does remove some material the amount is microscopic [unless you are doing something terribly wrong]. On mine you wouldn’t be able to tell a 30 year old blade from a new knife by looking at them. You’d need a micrometer (measures to the thousandths of an inch) to distinguish which is which.
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Of course it can. That’s what its doing when you sharpen a blade. Speed it up and you’ll be grinding..
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