Sharpening a knife with a steel

spida

Growing up my dad used always make a big show off sharpening the carving knife before Christmas dinner and the like. I learned to do it from him (not that it's difficult or there's much to it!) Then I bought my own knives and steel and to my horror the box that the steel came in shows that the knife must be used as though you are cutting the steel or giving it a shave.

Bring on YouTube to sort this out. Of course, life is never that simple. Here's Gordon Ramsay doing it my Dad's way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syvvxx3eGpI

And here's some American sounding dude (Richard Blaine) doing it the way it's done on the box:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Teh0Cw84QGQ

So I thought I'd open it up to the good folks at Boards for a vote/discussion/etc

Alun

I've tried both, and in my case at least, I'd do it Gordon's / your dad's way.

hardCopy

I do it Gordon's Way, purely because his video was the first one I found on youtube when I got a steel.

Deise Musashi

If I do steel I use a 12 inch smooth ceramic steel, but I prefer to use a leather strop between sharpenings.
I use an edge trailing stroke for maintenance of an edge.
I use edge leading to remove a wire burr after sharpening and before further polishing the edge.

Your standard coarse steel found in most knife sets are little better than files and aren't really good for your edges, sand them smoother with wet and dry paper to remove the coarse striations. A smooth steel or ceramic rod (like the Ikea one) is better for maintenance, a diamond or fine cut steel can be used to sharpen if the edge is not too far gone.

All steels and indeed all abrasives no matter how fine remove steel from your edge to a greater or lesser degree. More than two strokes per side may degrade your edge more than restoring it.

(The steeling thing was tested by John D. Verhoeven, Emeritus Professor,
Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
His paper is a good read, if a little dry.)

The effect of decreasing the number of back-and-forth passes from 15 to 2 is shown by comparing Figs. 15 and 16. Using 15 b&f passes was clearly too severe. In all of the steeled samples the action of the steeling process produced a series of linear scratches running parallel to the edge. With 15 b&f passes these scratch indentations extend back from the edge further than with 5 or 2 b&f passes. Also, with 15 b&f passes it was very common to observe breaking off of ledges of material along the edge as is shown most clearly on the Up face view at the center of Fig. 15. Study on the Edge view at the left of Fig. 15 reveals a region along the edge at the top right where one of these

ledges of material has broken out of the edge. Reducing the number of b&f passes to 2 dramatically reduced both the density of such ledge break-out regions along the edge as well as the size of the ledge regions. In both of the face views presented in Fig. 16 there is no ledge breakout, and the edge straightness is very good, however, no better than in the original control blade, compare to Fig. 12. The Edge view of Fig. 16 shows a region at the lower right where breakout has occurred. In regions where no breakout occurs, such as the upper left of Fig. 16, the edge width runs around 1.5 microns, which is at the high end of that observed on the control blades prior to steeling. The blades examined after 5 b&f passes presented results intermediate to those of the 15 and 2 b&f passes, but closer to those of the 2 b&f passes. In summary, the effect of the number of passes was fairly clear, the lowest number of passes studied, 2 b&f passes, produced the best edges

I bolded the relevant part.

dudara

I don't do it either way as both of them are bringing the knife blade towards their hands. I learned to sharpen from someone who worked in a meat processing factory. His technique involved pushing the blade away from you along the steel.

I use a soapstone for sharpening knives when a steel just doesn't work anymore.

Deise Musashi

This is how I maintain (strop) an edge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWYrqFsonSE

spida

dudara wrote: »

...as both of them are bringing the knife blade towards their hands...

Hi Dudara, I'm not sure I get you, in both these methods you put the knife onto the steel and then push away from the hand that is holding the steel. The only difference is the angle at which the knife touches the steel. Have a look at the two videos again and let me know if we're just not understanding each other!

Also, any chance you posting a video of your technique??? Or maybe photo of your soapstone?