Chefknivestogo Forums

I would not recommend using a steel honing rod with your new knife. Traditionally, a steel honing rod a re-aligns an edge. This is supposed to be used as a quick-fix between actual knife sharpening maintenance because the edge, itself, does degrade over time. Sharpening a knife reshapes it (through ...

Am I correct that the stones in the Shapton Pro stones in the Edge Pro Essentials set can also be used free hand? So if we, as newbs, want to just get the knives sharp, we can somewhat easily use the Edge Pro, but can also use the same stones to start learning freehand? Yes. It is possible. I would...

Do you mean effectively shortening the length of the blade versus changing the profile of the blade curve? Not sure why that didn't occur to me, but I like it. In other words, take the meat off the spine to meet the edge versus the other way around. Most of the kitchen knives that I sharpen look as...

I also have a book that I haven’t started reading in detail but will use with the stone(s) you recommend, I think it is The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening. That's John Juranitch's book. It's very well known. The professionals I know all have it. Excellent pragmatic information. I should probably fol...

Could you please recommend a stone to get started with, and what I might have to build up to? I'll side with Mark on this. You can start with something like the Shapton Pro 1K or an equivalently mainstream Japanese 1K waterstone. When you are starting out in freehand sharpening, equipment is far le...

About a year ago, I received a Nano Hone stone to try. I think it was the 1K stone. Anyway, I was very excited to try this. As a long-time Shapton Glass user I wanted to see if the hype was true. Unfortunately, for me, it was not. I was pretty unimpressed with the stone. I don't doubt that the "...

We have a local guy who sharpens knives and is affordable but I think he also takes off more blade than I would like, and I would be very surprised if he has experience with Japanese knives. If your local guy is a high-volume sharpener, then he will do all knives on a belt sander, or Tormek, or som...

This is a great thread! I'm a newbie sharpener too. I have a problem that I suspect others do as well--I tend to put scuff marks on the knife as I sharpen. Yes, this is a matter of not maintaining the right angle and I need to get better. The question I'd like some advice on, however, is what are o...

This is great advice. To that end, would the 280/1500 combo actually be a better bet if it's his only stone? I suggest that you pick the "one stone" solution based upon the way in which your friend uses an EDC, and the amount of time this person wants to dedicate to freehand sharpening. I...

One of the takeaways from the topic for me was that when loading a leather strop with compound the type of leather become less important due to the compound being more aggressive than whatever the natural abrasiveness of the leather would have been. There's a tiny bit of abrasiveness in leather but...

Thanks for this. I've been curious for steels like Hap40 or R2. Do you think them worth it, for those? Diamond stones are definitely not worth the trouble for HAP40, SG2/R2, VG-10, ZDP-189, or any other higher-tech steel that is typically used in kitchen cutlery. By that, I mean that you don't need...

Have people tried diamond stones, like Venev? I have a set of Venev stones. You have to flatten them with silicon carbide but they don't need that very often at all. I dress them with one of those nagura stones that come with Choseras. This does nothing for the abrasive but gets rid of buildup in t...

I'm not up-to-date on the CKTG inventory so can't really comment on differences between the offerings. However, each material will have more or less "give" to it; affecting the degree of micro-convexing that a strop imparts. I have strops in cow hide (bovine), horse hide, balsa, denim, nan...

For stones that you don't have to soak, I'd suggest the Shapton Glass or Naniwa Pro. For now, the stones you have should work just fine for HAP40. You may find that you need to spend a little more time on each stone but that is just the nature of adapting to the different properties of each steel.

What I use is my Edgepro ceramic stick here <https://www.chefknivestogo.com/edproceshrod.html>. Probably not worth buying one at USD23, but mine came with my original EP. Huh. I've never sharpened a peeler, nor has one been brought to me for sharpening. OTOH, I was asked to sharpen a Freddy Krueger...

This comment is slightly off-topic, but for those of you who wish to understand what stropping does to a deburred edge from a physics and materials science perspective, a study of Science of Sharp's articles on loaded and unloaded strops is worthwhile. None of this information is necessary if you ar...

Short answer is no. +1 If your deburring skills are up to snuff, then you don't need to use a strop. I went for about 2 years of sharpening (knives) without stropping. And I never really was dependent on stropping to deburr, or for the final result. Today I use loaded strops for extra levels of abr...

I'm pretty confident that between the EP and free handing that I can get them much more useable than they are now. Worse comes to worse he can always send them back to the company, best outcome he get sharp knives and I get some repair experience. Yes. I'm giving you credit for your 2 years of Edge...

If you have only been sharpening larger knives freehand, the paring knife may feel awkward, at first, when you sharpen it. That's because the cues you use for "feel" on larger knives are different with a smaller geometry. Same principles apply, though. You can use your 220 to remove small ...

My question is does that seem like a reasonable way to find the angle that the blade is sharpened at? The next question is on finger placement for applying pressure to the blade while sharpening. How close to the edge should I be? Should I be using the pressure from my fingers to help keep the blad...