What is the best way to sharpen a carving knife in order to get a long and effective life out of it?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “how to sharpen carving knife“
About Jasm97
Written by: Jasm97
Published on:
What is the best way to sharpen a carving knife in order to get a long and effective life out of it?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “how to sharpen carving knife“
About Jasm97
The first step is to start out with a high-quality knife made of good steel. It will hold its edge longer and need to be sharpened less frequently.
Second, learn to maintain your edge without sharpening, per se.
Sharpening is the process of removing steel at the edge to create a new and sharper cutting edge. But constant sharpening will wear away the edge, so less-aggressive methods are best for routine maintenance of the cutting edge.
Ever watch an old-time butcher touch-up the edge of a knife with a round steel? He’s not sharpening the knife, he’s realigning the edge. Kitchen knives get some seriously hard use, and the edges are finer than those of pocket knives or hunting knives. After a while, the edge rolls over microscopically and it no longer cuts well. By steeling the knife, the edge is realigned and the cutting action is vastly improved without additional wear on the blade.
Another less-destructive means of maintaining the edge is stropping. In traditional stropping, the edge is drawn back and forth across a treated leather strap, wearing a microscopic wire edge. Jeweler’s rouge is sometimes used on the strop to polish the edge to a mirror finish.
I have …
Wanbasion Black Stainless Steel Knife Set, Sharp Kitchen Knife
It depends which type of carving knife you mean.
You didn’t edit the topics to include kitchen knife or camp knife so I will answer both.
Camp carving knives are by far more efficient when they have flat scandi grinds, convex scandis or double flat ground knives just won’t cut wood straight. So the trick to these is a fast cutting stone at a suitable grit to not require any more than one stone before it can be used. something like an 800–1000 or so grit will cut wood well but if it’s finished on a ceramic stone it will cut better for slightly longer if the steel is good. It also depends what you are carving, if it’s pine, a softer steel will handle it, birch is a little harder so polishing up more so there are lower potentials for chipping is better. you can jump to a 3000 grit japanese slip stone to polsih too, slip stones are much cheaper than ceramic but dish out more quickly than ceramic stones.
If you are talking about kitchen meat carving knives, again assumming it’s a good steel, a really fine convex is much better, and easy to sharpen up with a normal steel and a polished steel. It needs to be fine enough to cut well but hold that edge too, if you can carve seasoned soft woods away with it for five minutes (pine, birch, beach) without limiting it’s paper cutting abilities thats a good angle for the meat cutting. VG-10 is a typical but good steel for kitchen knives and is popular too. it can easily hold a 17 degree edge through a whole hog. Depending on the tempering it could hold well at 13–15 degrees. Sharpen it up on sand paper and mouse pads first to set the edge then maintain it with steels, the polishing steel will realign it, the normal steel will abrade and sharpen once the steel becomes ineffective.
Here is my spyderco stretch in zdp-189 with a convexed edge as applied with a modified KME clone, using clone stones 400, 800, 1000, 3000, then 1200, 1500, 2000, 7000 grit papers, polishing on 1 micron powder and .3 micron ( I think) kangaroo strops. This edge successfully cut approximately 3 miles of heavy paper before losing it’s paper cutting ability. I think the final edge angle was about 20 degrees, so 40 inclusive. Getting a hair splitting edge at this angle is pretty impressive.
I could easily take this edge much thinner given it’s HRC of 63/64 but for utility there is no need.
Authentic XYJ Since 1986,Outstanding Ancient Forging,6.7 Inch Full Tang
Sharpen it normally, and maintain the edge with a steel. Any knife getting regular use will need attention. Use of quality cutting boards, cleaning and properly storing a knife will add life to the edge.
Amazon Basics 14-Piece Kitchen Knife Block Set, High-Carbon
Some good answers, particularly Tom Kehoe’s answer to What is the best way to sharpen a carving knife in order to get a long and effective life out of it?
I’m answering only to add my personal mnemonic:
sharpening is grinding
honing is straightening
stropping is polishing
Sharpening a blade with an actual stone is grinding metal away from the edge. If you avoid actually damaging the blade, and maintain it properly, you should almost never need to actually sharpen it.
Honing, sometimes called steeling because the tool used is called a honing steel ( Honing steel – Wikipedia ) is straightening out the very thinnest part of the edge, which tends to fold over with use.
Stropping is similar to honing in effect; it’s polishing the thinnest part of the edge.
Avoid damaging the blade by storing and handling it properly.
Maintain the blade by honing it with every use — whether before you use it each time, or after doesn’t seem to make much difference, but make a habit of doing it every time. This is pretty quick and easy to do, you can find plenty of good youtube videos and web pages on how to do it. The big key is keeping a consistent angle.
Here’s an experiment to try; get a decent cooking knife, a sharpening stone and a steel, and some tomatoes and some meat to cut (a pork butt or a chuck roast, etc). If you can, get a friend who’s good at sharpening to get the blade nice and sharp for you to start.
Slice one or two of the tomatoes. Note how nicely the knife slices them.
Now cube the meat.
Now clean the blade (and if you only have one cutting board, the board as well) with hot water and soap, dry it, and slice another tomato. Note how the knife isn’t quite as good at slicing the tomatoes.
Now hone the knife with the steel.
Now slice another tomato or two. The knife is back to slicing quite nicely.
Hone every time you use the knife, or if you’re doing a big cooking job, hone it as necessary while using it. You’ll be amazed at how much better it works!
Chicago Cutlery Belden 15 Piece Premium Kitchen Knife
if by “effective life” you mean the duration the edge holds between sharpening/maintenance sessions, it would depend on your usage methods. For the most part, with butcher/carving knives, you would employ a lot of draw cutting or slicing, in this case, for average low alloy steels, a coarse finish would suffice.
if by “effective life” you mean the overall lifespan of the knife, then the knife should be sharpened and touched up often, but by removing as little material as possible. the whole idea of sharpening is to remove material so that the fine edge is revealed, if you remove too much material, then it is very possible for you to end up with a toothpick within a couple years of use. Stick to hand sharpening, use finer grit stones if the edge isn’t in a detrimental condition.
Spring Assisted Knife – Pocket Folding Knife – Military Style