Knife Sharpening Starting From The Beginning

Knife Sharpening

 

As of late I have been bombarded with emails and private messages from readers and Youtube subs asking me to do more sharpening videos as they really like what I am teaching about the subject. I have been promising to do some more videos now for the last 3 or 4 months and finally this last week I decided to put off on cooking a nice dish and give the people what they want!

So as with the new year being new this is a new run of videos dedicated to the subject of how to sharpen your much valued kitchen knives. We are all people who love food and love being in the kitchen and therefore our most important tools in the kitchen are our knives. I get really tired of all of the bad information about knife sharpening that there is out there on the internet and in places like Youtube. Knife sharpening is a skill and that skill takes time to aquire as with any skill.

There is no mystery to knife sharpening. It is just knife sharpening. So many people out treat the subject of knives sharpening like some mystic art. The riddle of steel! The riddle of knife sharpening. I don't get it! There is no mystery to knife sharpening. Don't listen to people who tell you that "this is the only way to do knife sharpening" because that is not the case. Don't pay large sums of money for a video course on knife sharpening. Don't pay to take a 1, 2 or 3 day course in knife sharpening that costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Now there are a couple of people out there that make practice of doing this. I don't agree with the bulk of them and what they charge. If you are a person with some number of years doing knife sharpening and you want to further your career as a professional knife sharpener or knife maker then yes there are people out there that are quite reputable as teachers and worth the money they charge to teach the art of knife sharpening but, believe me these people are few and far between.

So it is with this blog post I am starting to do a series of posts and videos covering the subject of knife sharpening from the beginning. Starting at the bottom of the subject of knife sharpening and working my way up to give you the most complete and informative coverage of the subject of knife sharpening as I have learned it over the past 30yrs.


In these two videos covering part one of my knife sharpening series I am going to  cover what an edge is and how to make a proper edge when performing the knife sharpening task. The edge itself is one of the most misunderstood aspects of knife sharpening because most people are taught that there is only one edge to be sharpened on a knife and the fact of the matter is that there are two edges to be sharpened on each side for a total of for if you look at knife sharpening as a matter of planes which it is.


So here I am going to discuss knife sharpening from the angle of what is and edge? A plane? And what happens as a plane is ground during knife sharpening to create your edge. In other words how to create the "burr" that creates your edge. When performing knife sharpening you need to understand that there are many types of edges that can be created on a knife so there are some things to take into consideration when knife sharpening.

1. What kind of knife are you sharpening?

2. What is the intended chore for the knife you are sharpening?

3. What are you using the knife for that you are sharpening?

Once you have answered these questions then you will know how to proceed with your knife sharpening task. As an aside about knife sharpening let me tell you that there are a ton of rigs and jigs and guided sharpening systems out there that all work fairly well if you want to work within the guidelines of that piece of gear. Yes! you will get a workable edge and a decent cutting edge from these rigs, jigs and guided systems but, what you will lose using these types of gizmos is the shear breadth and width of knife sharpening creativity! If you really want to "feel the force" when it comes to knife sharpening then the absolute best way to learn how to do knife sharpening is freehand on stones of various types. Learning how to sharpen on a stone is an art you will never forget. I mean you can't take a sharpening rig into the woods to sharpen your knives and even if you could I don't and you shouldn't!

There is something very important to cover here when it come to knife sharpening and that is that you may have some stones or a sharpening system that work great with the knives that you have now. Then all of a sudden you get some new knives and they get dull and you find out that the stones or rig that you have is not doing such a good job on the new knives. This is because not all mediums for sharpening  will work well on ALL of your knives because there are so many different kinds of steels and world of different knife sharpening abrasives out there. So you need to know what you have and what you will need in order to  do knife sharpening correctly. So sit back and watch these two videos and enjoy and the next video is coming soon!