What are the steps to sharpening a knife and what can be used if there is no store bought sharpener?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife sharpening chandler“
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Written by: Adalyn
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What are the steps to sharpening a knife and what can be used if there is no store bought sharpener?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife sharpening chandler“
About Adalyn
The steps to sharpening a knife are taking it to a professional sharpener and having it professionally sharpened.
You probably mean the steps to honing a knife, which is something that professional cooks should be doing daily, while home cooks can get away with doing once or twice a week. These are:
Buying a honing rod, something you can get off Amazon for around 10–15 dollars and for even less through Aliexpress or Wish (there are posh ones that cost up to 80 euro, but I had mine from Ikea for 12 euro and it works great for my needs).
Using it once or twice a week, immediately before using the knife (make sure you wipe the knife before between honing it and using it).
I strongly suggest you get yourself an inexpensive honing rod and use it regularly.
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What can be used has already been mentioned. A large piece of gravel can work. You can’t beat good whetstones with oil. I instead of 30 weight, but use it if that’s what you have, mineral oil seems to work best. Do you have a palm sander or belt sander. Great sharpening tools and you can use progressive wet and dry sandpaper. Start with a 60–80 grit, then maybe 220 and finish with 400 grit. I also glued an old leather belt to an 18″ piece of 1″ x 2″ for the final stropping. To do it right there are no gadgets that really work for a finished sharpening.
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Buy a good rat, a strip and two really good whetstones
ruin about 20 knives learning to use it
learn about grinds so you know the right angle to hold.
use a clean mineral oil or just water
then say forget this and have a professional sharpen your knives
I do keep all the edges in my house sharp… but if you don’t have a stone just wait till you can get to one.
This is a skill best learned by hands on instruction.
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Learn how to drag the blade over the wett stone on the angle of the edge rake on a slicing movement in both directions. Stone till the edge will not slide across your thumbnail — CAREFULLY !!
An edge is considered sharpe when it digs into your thumbnail with light pressure. Upon that achievment I always like to make very light drags across a ceramic hone to remove the miniscule burr the stone will leave.
I have sharpened many knives using 600–800 grit sandpaper held against a flat support surface.
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While not recommended so long as the knife is a straightforward edge, not scalloped or serrated, anything harder and/or more abrasive than the edge.
For the most part a sharpened blade only needs a touch on a steel (a six inch specimen from a yacht chandler works as well as the huge statement kind, if one learns the technique) but in practical terms – such as a holiday let – that’s usually a basic carbon steel blade that’s as blunt as a ruler.
In a suburban domestic environment, such as a kitchen, turning over an old saucer and placing it on a damp tea-towel to anchor it safely, carefully drawing the blade (blunt side towards you) so a decent cutting edge is formed across the length of the blade,, using the unglazed raised ‘firing rim’ has always worked well for me.
While I get the way some people are scared of sharp knives, it has been my experience that blunt ones are vastly more dangerous.
Yet a person who nearly lost a significant body part trying to chop through a bone with a blade blunt as a ruler was horrified when I recommended investing in a pair of Kevlar gloves and a generic commercial grade bone saw.
(The same one still stashed in my pan drawer, in fact.)
I discovered this method some forty years before reading a sinister passage in a Hannibal Lector novel (I can’t recall which one) where a gun-show tradesman gives the good doctor the saucer tip.
(The aforementioned friend – who I lost touch with shortly after their thankfully bungled attempt to commit seppuku , apparently either fled the area or went veggie, as we haven’t been in contact for a couple decades…)
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I never use a knife sharpener. I use an oil stone, synthetic, two grit. I got it from Sears many years ago. Start on the coarse side of the stone. Give the stone a little oil, 3-in-1 or 30 weight motor oil. Hold the knife at a 15 degree angle and run it back and forth until you can see bright metal all along the cutting edge. Do both edges. Then turn the stone over and repeat using the fine side. Finally strop the edge. A piece of leather strop rubbed down with jeweler’s rouge. Stroke away from the edge. keep at it until the edge is shiny.
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Store-bought knife sharpeners are a waste of money not only that they’ll ruin your knife edge. You need to get a a good Whetstone and some 30 weight oil and learn how to sharpen a knife on that stone and you’re going to enjoy having a knife a lot more than you have in the past. There are any number of Publications available on how to sharpen a knife properly all kinds of times I would try to get one that’s where Google comes in. I used to be a shop teacher years ago currently l am 83. Jack of all trades because of it. Because of my age I’ve become a Hermit all my good friends are dead. The fewer left but they live in another state I’ll probably never see him again because I don’t drive anymore. But I’m busy in my shop every day except when it’s too cold right now it’s only 50 degrees here in Jacksonville the hell of a cold front that moved in
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grinding, honing, stroping
rough removal of material to set up the edge, honing evenly with a finer material, aligning the burr with a soft abrasive.
You can use sandstone if geologically available to make whetstones
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Before commercial sharpeners, which is a long, long time ago, stones were used to sharpen a blade. Any hard stone with a fine grain will do. Hold the stone so that the contact surface is about 10 to 15 degrees from the flat of the blade. Slide the stone along the edge from hilt to tip. Repeat 5 more times. Turn the blade over, adjust the stone to the same contact angle. Repeat the sliding motion as on the first side. Switch back to the first side and use 5 strokes. Second side gets 5 strokes. Then 4 for each side, then 3, then 2. Then each side gets 1 stroke at a time, but the process repeats 6 times. Check the blade. Repeat the whole process until the blade is as sharp as possible. Good luck.
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It was common for the poorer Chinese folk to use the bottom edges of a porcelain bowl to sharpen kitchen knives.
I witnessed this method used when I was a kid, and there was still kampongs.
The bottom of the porcelain is raised and often the edges were rough, and you sharpen against it.
Another way of sharpening knives is to use a smaller metal to sharpen your knife. The traditional kukri is often accompanied with a small knife like sharpener.
However, whetstone are still the way to go as there are different grit for different hardness and grain of steel.
Better quenched steels benefit from finer grit stones.
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Sharpening followed by honing which can be done using a sharpening stone that has two sides one coarse & one fine to achieve a good edge, a sharpening steel is another way that you may have seen butchers use, there are knife sharpeners you can buy online or from any department store including electric ones with angled grinding wheels. In the absence of any of these, you could try my father’s favourite of using the stone step at the entrance to his pub or any perfectly flat stone of the right texture. Please take care when trying any of these methods.
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The only “store bought” sharpener I’ve used is a set of Spyderco triangles. They work for quick & dirty but don’t do much for points.
I use/prefer diamond stones and for a really fine finish use a leather block with green emulsion; I came to this system via the traditional coarse/medium/fine stone route. Diamond stones don’t require flattening and if you sharpen planes and chisels like I used to do, regular stones will.
Moreover, I don’t sharpen to a shaving-plus edge for knives, particularly kitchen knives. Shaving edges are for chisels and planes, that don’t come into contact with bones, or get beaten against cutting boards.
If you wish to do it old-timey, use the raw edge of a plate bottom or the top of a stone crock.
The steps are simple:
Establish [restore] the edge angle
Smooth on a medium grit
Smooth again on a fine grit
Strop if necessary
I won’t get into the “natural” vs Japanese vs diamond, et al debate. Use what works for you. I’ll note that as far as woodworkers go, Sheraton didn’t have todays fancy stuff and his furniture surfaces were perfect.
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Sorry it looks like you got the short end of the stick with regards to my answers; I am extremely tired so I’ll make this brief. The steps depend on what type of sharpener you use but most of it is in regards to prepping the sharpener/stone not the knife. There’s probably going to be people disliking my answer. Sometimes it depends on the material of the blade but in my opinion it’s not as important as people think, most people either use that cheap store-bought handheld sharpeners, when you’re a little more advanced you can use different stones(store bought; a common one is a whetstone). That will give you the best edge but anything works, I’ve seen people sharpen knives on rocks/boulders just in nature but I’ve also seen people in Africa sharpen the knife on a hard piece of wood(basically a work-hardened top of a root that was poking above the surface).
PS I am realizing while writing this it has given me just a tiny bit of energy so the answer was a little longer than I expected but keep in mind even though it goes into some detail it is a very limited and simple explanation.
Edit: Also no matter what type of tool you use to sharpen it always remember to get the burr off(stropping)
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This sharpener is good for the typical home chef, It would not be good enough for a professional sushi chef:
It is possible to sharpen a knife with a porcelain plate by turning it upside down and using the rough surface on the bottom, however this requires skill and patience:
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If you find yourself with a dull knife but without a knife sharpener , you can use the unglazed bottom of a ceramic mug to sharpen small knives . Applying moderate pressure, hold the knife at a 15-degree angle and carefully draw the entire length of the blade across the rough surface
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All you may need is a sharpening stone having a coarse surface on one side and a fine surface on the other..
You can also use an emery cloth to sharpen knives… Either the emery cloth or the carburandom stone can be used to sharpen a knife..
The method of sharpening is similar to like finishing a piece of wood using a sandpaper.. The blade of the knife has to be laying flat on the cloth and applying more pressure on the sharp edge as the blade sharp edge …
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First you need to learn the way to sharpen a knife the angle is very important it should be a 12–15 degree angle that you ether use a wedge to keep you on the angle or you train yourself to keep the angle. Then you want to sharpen each side equally to create a fine point or edge. When you slide the knife down the stone you want to make sure you are applying pressure on every part of the blade that you are sliding down the stone focus on what part of the blade you are grinding away and the angle. This will take practice and you will get better over time . Then I recommend using diamond stones instead of oil or wet stones not because they are better they are just simpler to work with. You will need a 400 grit and a 1000 grit in diamond stones. Buy something solid ridget and not flexible. You will also need a hone this can be a ceramic rod as I prefer or it can be a leather strap or even a steel from a kitchen knife set to smooth out any imperfections in the edge you have sharpen. This is your basics of sharpening a knife the longer the knife the bigger the stone should be so you don’t cut yourself easily. As far as sharpening out in the wild you need a hard stone that is on the flat side to at as a sharpening stone. I have used sand paper before that works nicely. The edge of a hard metal could also be used to give some more life to your edge or ruin it if you rub wrong. I’m not the expert on ruffing it when it comes to sharpening a knife but I will find something to use because I know the basics.
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Depends on how dull it is. May be necessary to first use a metal file to get it to an edge. If no file, you can use river rocks of various coarseness to bring up an edge.
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You could use progressive sandpaper until the bur on edge is unstable enough to remove on a wooden spoon handle then restrop with finest grit sandpaper. Stat at 80 grit to 500 should be decent for edge
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