Things I wish I knew when I started sharpening - UPDATED

Greetings friends:

    I am going to list some things that I wish I had of known when I first got REALLY serious about knife sharpening, when I decided to open my business.  Having said this, I am not sure I would change anything if I could because of the learning experiences I have enjoyed.

    However, as with all things in life, if we knew now what we didn't know then, well who knows what impact that would have on our present day situation.

     The purpose of this post is just an attempt to help you out and to share my experiences, you can perhaps learn from my mistakes, you could learn a lot :)



I forget to add one of the most important things I have learned, it is at the bottom.

No. 1  Japanese Water Stones.

     Without any hesitation I can recommend water stones over any other method including oil stones, this is my preference. The mistake I made was not that I chose other methods, it was my choice of water stones.  Thinking at that time many years ago that Higher Grits meant Sharper Knives I built my collection of stones from the top down, from the 16K stones down. This is a mistake and I will explain:

     Of course all these water stones are beautiful and I would not trade them now that I have them but when starting out you should concentrate on three water stones in the COARSE, MEDIUM and FINE range and by fine I mean up to 5,000 grit.  The priority is the coarse and medium stones, 400-600 and the 1,000 grit stone is just about in that category too.  Then the 2,000 and 5,000 grits. 

     All of the sharpening I do now centres around these three stones, especially the coarse stones because I have a business and sharpen a lot. So for those who just sharpen their own knives the critical grit is a 1, 000.  I can't imagine my life without a 400, or 500 grit stone but I could manage with a 1,000 grit.  

    I rarely use my 16k, 10k and 8k Stones, I use but those are the ones that I could have got later on.  

Lesson Learned: Concentrate on the Coarse, Medium, Fine grit stones and don't worry about anything higher than 5k. In fact you really don't need to worry about anything higher than 3k but the  5k is a nice stone to own.  Sharpness begins with lower grits, trust me. 

No 2. The BURR

     The Burr is such an important element of knife sharpening yet I only knew a little bit about it when I got started. Heck when I first started sharpening 35 years ago or so, I don't even think the burr had been created yet :)

    What about the burr then:

My mistake was thinking that I needed to create a burr on both sides of my knife with every water stone I used in the progression and that the larger the burr the better.  If you think about what a burr is, you will understand what I didn't understand right away. 

     The burr is the metal that the abrasive powers of the water stone has worn away,  it should be just the fatigued metal that you want to remove and no more. Of course, it is very easy to take off a little more metal than necessary, especially with a coarse stone. So feel for the burr often and learn to feel it when it is quite subtle and stop when you have achieved this on both sides of the knife. So if you do this on Stone #1 there is no need to do it again on Stone #2. Your goal changes to feeling for a burr so that you can concentrate on burr removal. You want a nice even burr to start and you want a perfectly CLEAN edge to finish, so not a hint of a burr.

Lesson Learned: 

    Burr formation is indeed critical but just as important is burr removal. There is no need to keep grinding on  the water stone if the burr is there from heel to tip. You will find that the burr forms in certain areas of blade first, it works that way for me. So as I continue to form the burr, I ease up on the pressure when I reach the area of the knife that does have a burr.

NOW it is possible to sharpen a knife without creating an actual burr, however, this means grinding on one side of the knife and stopping just at the instant when the burr is about to form. You need to keep checking with magnification for this to work. This process, when successfully completed means you have not taken any more metal away then necessary. However, don't sweat it, create a burr and concentrate on creating a small burr and learning when to stop and adjust focus from burr formation to burr removal.

    I can remember a time when I would grind away until I had formed a burr five times, that is a waste. Yes, one could say that without forming a burr you don't know if  you have hit the edge of the edge. That is not true, you can check with a loupe to see if you have done that. You will get the hang of it. 

I think this picture is from the very awesome book An Edge In the Kitchen by Chad Ward.

No. 3. Managing Expectations

     I would watch a video of sharpening and see the miracles formed by the sharpener with the newly sharpened blade, slicing a tomato without holding it for example. I would then become frustrated when I couldn't achieve that.  

    When you are a novice, just worry about improving the edge, worry about forming a burr and removing it, get the technique down and concentrate on practicing this technique and building muscle memory. Forget about mirror finishes and and other smoke and mirror tricks. 

 Maybe that guy cutting the tomato took 10 tries before he could do that. You are not competing with anyone, nobody should judge you for your edges.  If you are learning to sharpen a knife, that in itself is a very nice goal to set for yourself.

Lesson Learned:

     Stop watching so many videos, find one or two sharpeners that motivate you and don't spend the time trying to sell you something or impress  you with what they can cut.  I know now that the learning curve is different for everyone. I also know that in a very short time I was able to make the knife a little sharper, that was all I needed to keep me going.  If you decide you need to lose 30 pounds for example, your goal should be to lose 1 pound a week not 30 pounds on day One. 

No 4 Take a Lesson

    I never had the opportunity to take a lesson from a pro until I was well into the game. Now that I teach sharpening I can see that I would have picked up so many helpful hints. I would gladly have paid $85.00 to have a lesson. It would have been so cool to meet someone who was obsessed with sharpening and could answer my questions and show me a technique that works. 

   There is a place in Toronto called Tosho Knife Arts that just exudes class and motivation. That spot is on my bucket list of places to go and I know that the extremely talented sharpener provides lessons at a very good price.  Listen, if I was in Toronto I would go see him, even today after thousands of knives, who knows what I could learn. Imagine what you could learn.

    Now,  I did get lucky and meet a master sharpener from Japan in New York and I did learn some things that changed by sharpening life but it wasn't a real lesson. 

Lesson Learned.  Find a professional sharpener and take a lesson.

Tosho Knife Arts

No. 5 GET STARTED

     Even though sharpening knives was in my blood for some reason, a reason I will be eternally grateful for, it took sometime, years before I got truly invested into it. It was not until that time that I really started to learn what sharpening is and the more I did it, the more I wanted to do it. 

     I promise you, once you achieve your first sharp knife, you will be hooked. That first sharp knife may pale in comparison to what you will be able to do years down the road but it is enough. That's the beauty of knife sharpening, you don't have to go out on day one and get a hole in one to enjoy golf, you don't need to have the knife sharper than a razor blade to enjoy sharpening. 

Start with the basics including a good stone holder and go from there. Find a good sharpener if you can on Youtube, I have some videos that are linked from my site and have been posted on Knifeplanet and Lifehacker. If you don't like those you can watch Jon Broida sharpen on YouTube.  I really enjoy his videos, I think they are top notch. 

Or....don't watch any videos, just give it a shot and see how you do. 

ONE MORE LESSON:

     You will hear folks talk about a toothy edge and a polished edge and people will say that if the edge is too polished it won't slice a tomato for example.  Also,  people will say that a toothy edge, a 1k edge will last longer.

    I am not convinced of any of these things, I don't get the physics behind it to be honest. To me, a polished edge is going to be sharper, the two sides of the knife can come together perfectly at the Apex of the knife if there are no teeth, micro teeth present. However, that is me and I don't like to say things just because I heard other people say them.  

Now if someone was able to tell my why a toothy edge will last longer on certain knives than a  slightly more polished edge that would be cool.  On the contrary, Chad Ward has explained the physics behind a polished edge, so there is support to back that up and I like that.

This is getting into the weeds though, it is more important to just get at it and sharpen some knives and concentrate on your technique. The other things like mirror finishes and toothy edges can come later on. Once you get addicted to sharpening you will find  yourself looking those things up anyway.

 Just do your best and enjoy the learning process, don't think you need a 16,000 grit stone to be a good sharpener.  A good sharpener can have one water stone, or something else that he/she uses.  

One more Last Item

     One of the most important things that I have picked up in the last few years, and for me this is right after the Burr,  it's Pressure.

     Most videos or anything related to sharpening does not mention anything about pressure but  for me it is a key component, something that turns sharp knives into SHARP knives. 

Lesson Learned:

    Anyone who has watched my videos or read my How to Sharpen knives article that I had published on Knifeplanet will know that I used four levels of pressure when I sharpen.  The first stone is where I use the most pressure, and I call it P4 pressure. ( On a sharpening pressure scale from 1-5 with 5 being the most pressure you could ever use and 1 being the weight of the blade pressure, so P5-P1 - Pressure 5, Pressure 4 etc.)

    We never use P5 so P4 is just decreased one full turn so lots of pressure but not so that it is hard to maintain, it's just enough to get the job done with very dull knives.  P4 is you and the stone working together to raise a burr.

   P3 pressure the next level and I use this on the same stone so it is a matter of manipulating pressure on each stone to get the most from that stone. It is amazing the difference it made in my edges. 

   To be clear, I only use P4 pressure on the first stone, on a dull knife to raise a burr, after that I start with P3 pressure which is just medium pressure and something you need to get a feel for. I never bear down on the stone as I sharpen as hard as I can, never, but to get the job done you do need to add pressure and just go through the range of pressure so that by the end of the process, one each stone, I am basically using trailing strokes only (like stropping) on the stone.

When I switch from a 400 grit stone to a 1,000 grit stone I start with P3 pressure.

Here is the Guide I wrote. If you ever need a further explanation of the pressure system that I use just let me know in the comments.

http://www.knifeplanet.net/how-to-sharpen-knife-on-japanese-water-stone/

I hope this was useful.

Peter