Sharpening knives

Traceyw

Hi

I wonder can anyone help. I have a Global cooks knife that I love. I did have it on a magnetic knife blade, but change my kitchen and it has been in the drawer ever since. I know that this is destroying the blade,I have tried to sharpen it with water sharpening reccommended to be used on global knifes, but to no avail. Is there anywhere to get knifes sharpened professionally.

Thanks

Mr Magnolia

Talk to your local (experienced) butcher, they may sharpen it for you. Any of your local restaurants or cafés will probably have someone calling regularly to sharpen their knives; you could ask them for a contact number.

Here's some info on knife care.

Victor_M

Traceyw wrote: »

Hi

I wonder can anyone help. I have a Global cooks knife that I love. I did have it on a magnetic knife blade, but change my kitchen and it has been in the drawer ever since. I know that this is destroying the blade,I have tried to sharpen it with water sharpening reccommended to be used on global knifes, but to no avail. Is there anywhere to get knifes sharpened professionally.

Thanks

I have exactly the same problem with one of my global knives too, I brought it into Kitchen Compliments (i think that's what it's called on Chatnam street, around the corner from little ceasers) and they made it worse, they seem to use a fairly crude sharpening wheel that left scuff marks all along the shaft of the knife and it was no sharper after than before- so avoid.

You are supposed to use diamond steels to sharpen the global knives,but a over 100 yoyo's I couldn't justify buying one and got a henklels steel instead, regret not just shelling out for the correct one now.

I've tried the whetstones and the handheld pull through sharpeners too, all useless if you don't know how to use them properly.

Will you let me know if you find somewhere good to get it resharpened?

Minder

I'm no expert, but aren't steels (diamond or otherwise) only used to polish the edge? In other words, you can't sharpen a blunt knife with a steel, you need an oil stone or water stone for that.

OP - what make of waterstone are you using - is it minosharp?

I always found the minosharp to be very good except that, because of the way I use it, it wears away the middle of the blade. So I get a high point near the front and a high point near the hilt and the bit in the middle doesn't make contact with the board.

The other thing with minosharp is that they were marketed in two sizes, spare wheels are available in the online shops, but I can't make out which size wheel they are selling.

mildews

www.nisbets.ie have a dimond steel which is as good as a global steel for just under €16. Don't be fooled by the fact that you bought a very good (although expensive) brand of knife that you need the same brand of steel to keep it sharp.

As for bringing your knives to a butcher, most, if not all butchers these days are using knives on a disposable basis. when its blunt, they just replace them. There are a very select few that have learnt, or retained, the skill to sharpen knives properly

If you want to get a good sharpening stone, go down to your local hardware shop and pick up one that is used for sharpening chisels.

Mr Magnolia, thats a very good and informative link to sharpening.

Sorry if this is sounding pompus but I have worked as a chef in kitchens for the past 25 years and it still amazes me that alot of the "lads" coming into catering these days are spending alot of money on certain "elite" brands of Knives and haven't got a clue on how to keep an edge on them. When I started my training back in the early 80's, the first thing I was taught was how to respect my knives, how to keep them sharp, how they were the tools of your trade and how the only person to wash or handle them was yourself.

Musashi

I'm no expert, but aren't steels (diamond or otherwise) only used to polish the edge? In other words, you can't sharpen a blunt knife with a steel, you need an oil stone or water stone for that.

A steel should really only be used to realign an edge that has deformed slightly through use. Most steels that come with knife sets are way too coarse and chip or abrade the edge too much. Smooth glass, ceramic or polished steel would be miles better for these regular touch ups.

Most butchers knives and a lot of Western knives are hardened to a lower point than Japanese knives. A butcher will steel before cuts, between cuts over and over until the knife is used up and replaced.

Japanese knives being harder are more brittle, which can be offset by cladding or laminating, using high tech powder steels and by carfeul handling. They are honed and then polished to give a very refined edge. Even a fine ceramic would be too coarse to use even to touch up these edges, I would prefer to see a light touch on a strop loaded with chromium oxide or fine diamond paste.

Diamond abrasives, paste, mounted to a steel like the excellent Fjallkniven or on bench stones like DMT and Eze-Lap are good to cut very hard steels. You need diamond if your knife is made of Super gold powder steel, S30V or better, VG10, Cowry X or most of the newer cutlery steels coming out of Japan (and only licensed for use in Japan).

Diamond because of the shape of the particles will not give as highly polished an edge as stropping with Chromium Oxide (about.5 micron grit) or the other metal polishes like Flitz or razor strop abrasives from Dovo.

If you want to get a good sharpening stone, go down to your local hardware shop and pick up one that is used for sharpening chisels.

I've had limited luck finding a fine stone in average hardwares. A good oilstone or japanese style waterstone can be bought from Axminster tools in UK or Dick.biz in Germany. Spyderco do a fine ceramic, as do Fjallkniven.

Oil and waterstones dish over time and must be lapped flat. Oilstones can be used with water, but only from new. If oil has been used you must continue to do so, Kerosene, Paraffin or WD40 all work, Diesel probably would too in a pinch.

I have an interest in sharpening from my hunting and fishing hobbies, though the sharpening is almost as much of a passtime at this point! I have some pics of my gear to give ye an idea what to look for.

I'll try to go coarsest to finest with the pics, but I use convex and vee edges (which are probably convex also due to hand control not being Apex Pro like in accuracy) and silicon carbide paper is available in many grit sizes.

Grits are not standard over different systems either, so a 2000 grit sheet of wet and dry isn't the same as a 2000 grit Japanese waterstone. There's a handy chart showing comparisons here.

http://blogs.popularwoodworking.com/editorsblog/True+Grit+Understanding+Sharpening+Grits.aspx

Scroll to the bottom of the page for the grit comparison charts.

Ok, if I need to hog off metal to repair dings or set a new bevel angle I use some cheap diamond plates. I'd like a DMT XX Coarse, but these are basically disposable if you were to wear them out on a tough steel (S90V or INFI maybe?) and they are holding up ok so far. Use them dry though as the glue holding them to the backing doesn't hold up to wet.



Once I have a nice even bevel established and I've got an even scratch pattern from the last (finest) of the diamonds, I take it to the combination waterstones. You can see my coarsest waterstone needs lapping (flattening) but I've not sorted it yet.





So I go from a coarse diamond to 400 grit waterstone, 1000 grit, 6000 grit. Apparently you should double up in each step on waterstones e.g. 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 8000. It just takes a little longer to polish out the scratchs from the last stone using the grits I have available. I think the 6000 grit is considered to verge on a polishing stone, and my next one is definitely a polisher. I know because it cuts so Slowly!



Chinese 12000 grit watersone, slow going but it works well and was a lot cheaper than any other option in a stone of this grit.

At this stage you can just leave the thing be, or being a bit OCD we get the sharpening box o'doom out!





Stropping time! Any metal polish will work, Flitz, Autosol, block buffing compounds like the crayons I have here, try them and see. Leather strops aren't required either! Newspaper, balsa wood, an old belt or leather jacket stretched over some flat surface will do. Anything that will hold some compound and let you apply the blade to it will work. These long skinny strops are veg tanned leather on a heavy cardboard backing, the larger one is a piece of leather that can be left on a surface like float glass or curved around shapes to do stuff like gouges. I like to hold a paddle strop (Ooh Matron!) and work on my edges while watching tv so I made some strops with an old belt and some flooring timber. The magnifying glass is 9x and lets me see the scratch pattern at this level to make sure I'm hitting the bevel and have wiped away all the previous grit scratches.





The last one has some heavy rubber on the back of it. This allows me to spray glue or tack some Silicon Carbide abrasive paper to it and convex sharpen as well, using the same movement as I will use stropping. I do use a mouse mat also, but being softer you can press too hard on the mat and actually dull your edge.

For stropping compounds I like the blue crayon that came with the Starkie Sharp strop, the green chromium, the white block which is finer, I use red and black Dove pastes for straight razors, and diamond pastes on strops as well. I must make a four sided strop and put my diamonds pastes on, a grit per side. I have 3 micron (roughly equal to 8000grit), 1 micron, .5 micron and .25 micron (considered too sharp on straight razors as they will catch and cut rather than glide). Diamonds cut well but don't polish as well as chrome and the razor pastes. Apparently diamond has a shrper profile where chromium oxide is more rounded, diamond leaves microscopic valleys where the chrome fits in and polishes those surfaces as well for a mirror shine.






I have some other bits and pieces that I use, but this would be the full progression I would use on a knife I wanted to make a part of my EDC. Maintaining this edge is easy using strops every so often or the Sharpmaker from Spyderco if needed. It's also a mighty bit of gear for doing quick jobs on other peoples knives and kitchen knives (I strop mine but it's overkill).



I also have a nagura stone for building up a slurry on the finer waterstones (smaller gold stone) and a lapping/flattening stone (red with slots in).



Under the Nagura is a surgical black stone which needs lapping. I do use oilstones as well, from a big old hardware store one for rough work on axes to my Buck Tri-Hone that was one of the first stones I learnt on.

For the kitchen, do Not use a grooved steel, please. It's way too coarse and can chip and tear your edge!

I do have a diamond and a ceramic steel from Fjallkniven, but since I worked them up on the waterstones I generally just strop them with 3 micron diamond on a paddle hone now. Ceramic hones like the one from Edge Pro are about 1200 grit, so a step back if you've taken your kitchen knife to 6000 grit or better!



I also have a small combo stone from them which is diamond and ceramic in a leather slip case, handy when out and about or I use it at work sometimes to touch up the lad's knives.

The honing blocks I use are roughly :-

Dovo Red 3-5 micron

Dovo Black 1-2 micron

Green Chrome .5 micron

White compound ?

Diamonds 3-.25 micron. Something to look for with Diamond is the concration of diamond in it. I got the more concentrated ones in the .5 and .25 micron grades.

Hand American and Japanese Knife Sharpening do stuff like scrubbed bull and horse leather strops, diamond spray, very good man made and natural waterstones, add scary sharp for float glass and pressure sensitive adhesive backed micron grit papers and you've a whole set of fun toys!

For people on a budget and maybe living in Europe, I bought my chinese stone and diamond/Dovo pastes from a polish shaving site on E-Bay!

http://stores.shop.ebay.ie/classic-razor_Diamond-paste_W0QQ_fsubZ17211579QQ_sidZ343506431QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322

http://stores.shop.ebay.ie/classic-razor_razors-hones-strops_W0QQ_fsubZ153297011QQ_sidZ343506431QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322


I'm waiting on a motor for my 1" x 42" belt grinder, then I can use belts down to 9micron and the surgi-sharp leather belts for power convexing and stropping my edges!






It's the same one as can be seen here http://www.chippingaway.com/VideoDemos/Default.aspx?V=Power_Sharpener-In_Use

Have a look at Jerry Hossom's "Sharpening My Way" on Knife forums for a whole 'nother way of doing the same stuff! http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/776367/tp/5/


He recommends these compounds for stropping http://popsupply.bizhosting.com/matchless_buffing_compounds.html the 525 and HF1 specifically.

I bought my Viel grinder from Lee Valley http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=44884&cat=1,43072 and the belts from there also http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=48040&cat=1,43072

They also do the micron PSA backed adhesives http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=33004&cat=1,43072


I hope this has been of some use and answered some questions about the gear available for sharpening and polishing. I've never used a buffer, mop wheels or paper wheels so I've more to learn.

I'd like an Edge Pro Apex Pro at some point also, but I'd switch out the coarser stones for DMT Diamonds as they never need lapping and don't wear out so you aren't trying to compensate for differing thicknesses of stones.

I've been trying to get pics of some of the polished edges but my cameras macro combined with my lack of tripod and lightbox has so far thwarted my attempts to get a decent picture!

Well, that's it for now lads, any questions feel free to shout!

Eric

Musashi

And if Tracey wants to get her knife to me and I'll give it a lot of attention for free please PM me!

I have a few knives myself so I like a sharp edge!

Drop me a line and we can discuss your requirements and get a nice knife back to work! I am not a pro sharpener only that I don't charge so far. I do know sharp, I've seen it and can make it happen. I would be happy to do stuff to your knife and return it to better than new, but it's up to you if you choose to leave her off to my care?

Please at least PM me and I will tell you how to do for yourself what I would do. If you would prefer me to do for you I can do that too? I can at least guarantee that I will improve your edge and not make a feck of your very personal kitchen knife.

Message me and we can get edge back!

the beer revolu

Is anyone else a little afraid now?

Snowie

I dissagree giving some one your knife to sharpen is :eek: no way if some one went near my knives Id shoot them its like murder to me knives are personal things. each person edge is different..

start on the rough side of a wet stone then to the smoother side then on to a steel just to clean the blade up, my knifes are pretty sharp with a very good edge, watch videos on you tube to get an idea and take it from there

CJhaughey

I also like sharp knives and while I don't go the extent of Musasahi I do have many of the same sharpening tools.
What I can say is that for an amateur that wants a sharp implement, be it knife/chisel/axe that the spyderco sharpmaker is probably the most user friendly of all the tools.
It comes with a brown and white set of sharpening rods and if you want to go finer there is an extra fine set available.
It is pretty easy to use and is very versatile.
Using those roller stones is a joke on a good knife and will lead to the knife becoming very hard to sharpen in the future.