Knife Sharpening: Sharpening On A Whetstone: The Western Stroke

Knife Sharpening

 

This week I am back to doing a Knife Sharpening video. For a very long time now I have been getting tons of private messages and emails asking me to do some moreKnife Sharpeningvideos. So this week I am going to sharpen a kitchen knife for you and I am going to be using a stroke that I call the "Western Style" stroke of Knife Sharpening!

I will be sharpening my 8 inch Japanese kitchen knife on a series of DMT diamond plates and finishing the blade on ceramic stones and a black surgical Arkansas whetstone. I have said before that there is no mystery to sharpening and I still say that today! I have in other Knife Sharpening videos said that there are many ways to sharpen a knife but not all of those ways is the best way to perform Knife Sharpening. On the other hand I will also repeat myself here and say that not all sharpening mediums will sharpen all knives and not all knives can be sharpened on just one sharpening medium type. In other words as an example a knife made of a really hard Japanese steel like Aogami Super which Rockwell tests at 70RC will not necessarily get sharpened correctly on traditional Arkansas whetstones. This is why I use diamond sharpening plates because diamonds are the hardest thing on the planet and they will sharpen just about any knife on the market!

I will start sharpening on a DMT 220 grit diamond plate then a DMT 325 diamond plate then a DMT 600 grit diamond plate, a DMT 1200 diamond plate and eventually I will move on to Spyderco ceramic stones at 1800 and 2200 grit respectively to polish the edge of my knife to a keen edge. Then I am going to break out my surgical black Arkansas whetstone and do a final polish on it and voila' we are done! So sit back and watch this Knife Sharpening video and enjoy!