Do you sharpen both sides of a Japanese knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “japanese knife sharpening jig“
About Reagan
Written by: Reagan
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Do you sharpen both sides of a Japanese knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “japanese knife sharpening jig“
About Reagan
Yes. Gensue means sharpen on one side only. But not in the anglo way of thinking. In Japan workers can only sharpen 1 side of a knife blade. In some work areas. Then after shift. Give the knife to the knife sharpener. To sharpen the other side & rework the blade. So both sides are sharpened. There fish & meat cutting factories are big on this. Tradition. But if it is your knife. You need sharpen both sides.
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It depends on the knife. If it’s a single-bevel knife, you will wreck it if you sharpen it on both sides. The hollow/ura side IS NOT INTENDED TO TAKE A BEVEL. If you put a bevel on that side, there’s no point in having a single-bevel knife. You effectively doubled its edge angle, set the edge off from where it should be in relation with the handle, and substantially worsened its performance.
To fix that, you have to bring the hollow/ura side back to zero grind. This takes a MASSIVE amount of work if no electric grinder, even if the bevel is just 1mm deep. By doing that, you will shorten the knife, permanently shorten its lifespan drastically, permanently make it harder to sharpen, and you may mess up the alignment of the cladding (jigane) with the cutting steel (hagane). The cladding may start riding up to the edge as well. The jigane is mild steel or iron…it won’t take an edge like the hagane that’s supposed to be at the edge. So you destroy the knife. If there’s no cutting steel left, the knife is useless.
If it is single-bevel, DO NOT put a bevel on the hollow/ura side. Even with microbevels, be cautious. You should do all your sharpening on the beveled side and when you’re done, lay the knife flat on the hollow/ura side and only a couple of light finishing strokes are needed.
The above probably illustrates my point better. The dark steel is the cutting steel. If you put a bevel on the side of the ura, you have to do a lot of grinding to make the ura even again, removing a lot of the hard cutting steel. Also, the less hollow space there is at the ura, the harder the knife becomes to sharpen.
Below is what happens when you are stupid and put a bevel on the ura side. I am sure you can imagine what this does to the size of the knife, the balance, the length, and your arms if you have to do all the steel removal manually, as most of what you’re removing will be hard steel, probably around 62–63 HRC:
In conclusion, do not do it if single-bevel knife. You should sharpen both sides if it’s a double-bevel knife.
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