29.4.

2020 How to Get Your Knives Razor Sharp | Knife Informer

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How to Get Your Knives Razor Sharp

Knives are a common xture in our everyday lives, be it in the
kitchen, workplace or the great outdoors.  What is fairly
uncommon however, is someone who knows how to keep their
knife sharp and how to discern what “sharp” really is. Hopefully
this article will help to divulge a few secrets to the mystery that is
making and keeping a knife sharp.

While there are extreme lengths one can go to in chasing the

ultimate sharp edge on their EDC, this tutorial will teach you how
to keep a good working edge on most any cutlery.

There are a few steps to this system, but with some practice, care and attention being paid; anybody
should be able to e ectively sharpen their knives using this method with very little invested for the
results achieved.  The system is comprised of the following steps.

>>Here’s the best low cost sharpening tool you’ll ever need<<

Assess the damage

Discerning what damage has occurred to the edge is a revealing rst step.  Looking at the knife edge
from both the side, and head on will show what kinds of damage has happened.

When looked at from the side you can see

small breaks in the line that makes up the
very edge of the knife, these are either rolls,
or chips… both of which you will be
removing. The depth of the chips taken out
of the blade will indicate how much metal
along the entire edge you will have to remove to keep the same general shape of your knife.

Also looking at how thick behind the edge itself your knife is would be a good idea at this time, if your
blade has been binding a lot in material after a few sharpenings and isn’t cutting as e ortlessly as it
once used to then chances are it needs a bit of thinning out behind the edge.

De-stressing the metal

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The very rst step is called de-stressing the edge.  The steel at the edge of your dull knife is weak and
essentially ruined from the abuse it’s received over time.  It’s important to get rid of this damaged
steel in order to reveal the fresher, stronger steel that lies beneath.

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To do this you must take the knife and draw it through your sharpening stone which will blunt the
edge, as well as expose good steel. Hold the edge perpendicular to the stone when doing this and use
very, very light pressure.

Determine your sharpening angle

This next step involves nding what angles to sharpen at if you don’t have any speci c tools for doing
so. You can test how thick or thin your knife needs to be based on your own use and how it ends up
after you initially sharpen it, but for now let’s start at 15 degrees per side.

How do you measure 15 degrees?  Take a

piece of paper, each corner is a 90 degree
angle, if you fold that angle at the corner in
to thirds you will have a wedge that is a total
of 30 degrees. Half of that is 15 degrees. This
will be the angle you want to hold your knife
against the stone while thinning out behind
the edge and creating a bevel.

Use the sharpening stone

To start begin abrading the full length of the edge along a coarse stone (about 220-350 grit is
probably ne) which is relatively at. I recommend doing an even amount of strokes on each side if
the bevels are already equal, otherwise you will have to use your better judgment as to how much
steel must be removed to make the bevels equal.

Start out by making sweeping strokes using as much surface area of the stone as possible and
working in sections as necessary, making sure to maintain the same angles even at the tip, and
making sure not to let the tip of the knife slide o of the stone, this can cause rounding or even
chipping of the tip of the blade.  Relatively light pressure is all you should need, with the stone doing
much of the work.

Eventually you’ll know when to stop at this stage on both

sides before creating a “burr”, but for now just abrade
material until on the other side of the blade there is a tiny
burr developed.

A burr is a thin strip of abraded metal which accumulates

on the side of the blade opposite the one you’ve been grinding on. You can generally slide your
ngernail o the edge and the burr will scratch your nail. Once the burr is created on one side, drag
the knife through a piece of wood a few times to knock the burr o or reduce it, and then ensure the
same is accomplished on the other side (developing and removing a burr).
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Generally a burr is inevitable but as you improve your skills

you should be able to get to the point where you’re creating
only a super ne burr which you can’t really see or feel.  In
creating a sizable burr and removing it, the metal on the
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very edge of the knife may be pretty sharp, but also
extremely weak. This metal has been stressed by being
bent back and forth as well as having the burr ripped o .
The steel on the edge has fallen victim to the same
properties that occur when you bend a spoon back and forth many times, the metal weakens until it
just breaks.   At that point you’d have to de-stress the edge yet again to get rid of this weaker steel
and you’re basically back to where you started.

Now you should have a primary edge bevel with which to work. You can raise the grit of stones and
do higher polishes if you wish from here.

Applying the micro bevel

Once the primary edge bevel has been created, you will
have to apply a micro bevel. This is the part of the “edge”
that is doing the actual cutting. The bevel portion is just
there to be thin and look pretty.  The micro bevel will also
serve to remove any ne burr still left over from the
previous step.

To apply the micro bevel to the primary edge you’ve already

created, take one of the more coarse stones you’d used
when making the edge bevel, and begin with that.

Using strokes across the whole if not most of the blade,

make edge leading strokes at a slightly higher angle than
the one you’d used to create your edge bevel.  This marginally wider edge makes for a stronger
cutting edge, thus increasing overall edge retention.

For most people 20 degrees is ideal, but just raising the spine of the blade a hair above that angle
guide made in earlier step works just ne.

Making alternating strokes keep the edge of

the blade as perpendicular to the movement
you make across the stone, so the scratch
pattern goes perpendicular to the
orientation of the edge itself, if not turned
towards the handle a bit, this will leave an
edge which will cut better in tasks where the
knife is slicing in a pull cut, which is most
common.  Super light strokes here folks!

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After a good amount of alternating strokes you should feel an edge developed, keep checking and
making lighter and lighter strokes, and increasing the neness of the stones you’re using if
possible. After this step you should have a pretty nice working edge, but you can take it a bit ner if
you’d like.
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Stropping
Stropping an edge is generally the nal step, it will hone (and sometimes sharpen if you use abrasives
on your strop) an edge and align the teeth created by the scratches from the stone this can be done
with a piece of at cardboard, newspaper, blue jeans, or commonly a leather belt (though using a
proper strop is recommended if available).

Instead of using edge leading strokes as though you’re

trying to shave o a piece of whatever you’re doing them
to (the sharpening stones) instead you will drag the edge
backwards over the strop, alternating sides with each
stroke and using a light touch, this will leave the edge
performing just a little better than it did before, with a
higher level of keenness.

If you’d like to take it a step further, you can apply any number of abrasives to your “strop” and they
will re ne the edge even further, while it’s generally not necessary for most every day cutting tasks, it
can be fun to see just how far you can take your edge sharpness. Experiment with varying abrasives
on your strop and see what works best for you and the knives you have.

With technique and patience you’ll be able to produce insanely sharp blades.

Maintaining your edge

After a while your knife will go dull once again.  I don’t care if you have the best premium steels out
there, it’s just going to happen eventually.  Depending on how far you let it go, it will either need a
light touch up, or totally re-doing the whole process again.

In general I recommend most average users maintain the 15 degree per side edge bevel, but if
you’re  nding your edges aren’t going dull at all, you can actually just keep the 15 degrees per side
bevel and strop that next time, just keeping it thinned out instead of making a micro bevel. This will
improve performance by a huge degree, but will leave an edge which may not last as long.

Conversely, if you nd your edge is going dull faster than you’d like, raising the angle a bit more when
putting on a micro bevel should help remedy this situation. Either way, unless your blade is really beat
up, you should be able to maintain your knives without thinning them out again for a reasonable
amount of time, and just putting on a micro bevel and stropping the blade. Once the knife isn’t cutting
very well, just repeat all the steps over again and you’ll be back in business.

Recommended equipment
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So what equipment do I recommend?  Well, rst thing to point out is that success with sharpening is
probably about 80% technique and only 20% tools.  With that said, here’s my advice.

In terms of the abrasives, I recommend DMT Sharpeners which

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simply work the best on every type of steel in the general sense.  They
are the hardest material and will even cut the carbides of a steel,
allowing for the new super steels to hold an even sharper edge than
previously thought when sharpening them on natural stones.

Natural stones like Arkansas stones are nice and work well on more basic steels, but on super
steels with high carbides they simply stress the metal surrounding the carbides more than they
should and cause them to fall out of the steel matrix.

Japanese water stones are nice for making edge bevels, but for the edge itself the slurry they can
build will leave a rounded and blunt edge when using an edge leading stroke.  This is why I
recommend making the edge bevel with exclusively edge trailing strokes on this type of stone.

The Spyderco Sharpmaker (Amazon) is really nice for keeping up on maintenance of a knife’s
micro bevel, but for heavy work such as thinning out a blade consider the DMT sharpener.  With the
optional diamond rods the Sharpmaker system becomes much more versatile, especially when lots
of material needs removal.

Well, that’s it folks.   Stay Sharp!!

You May Also Be Interested In:

1. How to Sharpen a Pocket Knife
2. Work Sharp Manual Sharpeners
3. Work Sharp Angle Set
4. Lansky C-Sharp

Last updated on Apr 15th, 2020 by Matt Davidson

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