Cooking For Engineers

[mactuan12]

I have lots of knives for every purpose and love knives since I was a child.

Just wanted to give my techniques to sharpen knives.

I see the recurring problem of not being able to hold a consisitent angle. By not holding a consistent angle, you risk going over work you already did on the edge dull or taking off too much material in the wo\rong

So, using large whetstones, I came up with this method.

You must have and assortment of stones in varying grits. I have them from course to fine. From eBay.
220, 320, 800, and 2000.

Knives have a primary bevel or cutting bevel and a the secondary or back bevel.

I use a sharpie to blacken the blade edge to see where the material is actually being taken off.

Once done, you can use pennies on the whetstone and stack them under the flat of the blade as it rests on the stone to maintain a consistent angle.

Then take a few strokes at this angle to see where it takes off metal. The sharpie will wear off. I stroke the knife length-wise to follow the long lengthe of the stone. Use much water.

Take note of where the knife had material removed by seeing the rubbed off Sharpie. You can use a journal to note that knife X required x amount of pennies to hone the back bevel and X amount of pennies to hone the cutting/primary bevel. This way in the future, you just open the journal and set up as noted for this knife and get to it.

Once you find out how many pennies it takes to maintain an angle and to hone the back bevel, note it in the journal for that particualr knife so you don't have to repeat the procedure.

Hone the back bevel and repeat the sharpie and penny procedure for the primary or cutting bevel.

Once you have the number of pennies down for that particular knife, refer to the notes for future sharpening.

Hone the back bevel then the cutting bevel. Strop at the end. 40-50 stokes. I usually get razor sharp edge.

I use DMT stones, about 3 inches wide and 8 inches long. Or high quality Japanese Whetstones.