Knives

If you use your knives, obviously you do need to sharpen them. My personal philosophy regarding the subject is that one must do that [sharpen his knives] himself. Even if you are ok with sending back and forth your expensive blades to the makers and factories, including the risk of loss, less likely that you'll keep your kitchen knives sharp using that approach. Besides sending the knife for sharpening may not be an option, depending on the situation.
There are more reasons as to why you should sharpen your knives, especially factory knives.

• Factory knives in 99% cases are not sharpened well, sometimes simply dull;
• Even when they are shaving sharp they are still far from their full potential; E.g one of my all time favorite folders, BM 710, as usual comes with the edge that measures 45-50 degrees included, sometimes even thicker. It still can shave, but what's the point... Now bring the edge down to 30-35 degree and you will see the cutting performance increase 5-7 times, sounds good?

Hence, it is well worth to:

• a) Spend hours learning proper sharpening techniques; Though this is personal, some grasp it quickly, others need more time.
• b) Spend money on the right sharpening equipment; Amounts may vary depending on your needs, knives and their use.
• c) Potentially ruin a blade or two during the process; Well, be careful and pay attention, no rush and hopefully you'll avoid that. Besides, common sense tells us to start
practicing with an expendable piece ;)

   Since I own fairly large collection of various style knives, I use various sharpeners as well. I guess I could've done well with a smaller assortment too. Anyway, currently I use several types of sharpeners:

• Diamond - All of my diamond stones are DMT. Produced by Diamond Machining Technology Inc. Including various grit
benchstones, folding and serration sharpener. I use them mostly for large blades, where I do not really need polished edge. DMTs work very well for any type of steel, and should work for ceramic knives as well. Water does help when using DMT stones, it prevents the stone from clogging with metal particles. Another very important detail to keep in mind is to use minimal pressure during sharpening, otherwise you'll break diamonds crystals out of the base. Here's the full assortment of my diamond stones.
• Edge-Pro - Which is a sharpening system, allows you to achieve fantastic results, and my favorite amongst the various sharpening systems. Here's a link to the website -
Edge-Pro. I use it whenever I need high polish on the edge, also it's very helpful with the recurved blades.
• Ceramic - Couple of the ceramic sharpeners, Spyderco Sharpmaker, ceramic rods, benchstone, etc.
  
Spyderco Sharpmaker 204 gets used mainly for my kitchen knives, and light sharpening, or touchups for other, harder blades. For any serious sharpening job I find them too slow. It does take time to use Sharpmaker properly. The video that comes with it makes sharpening with 204 look very easy, and later a lot of folks simply get frustrated when they don't get the results desired fast and easy. The good news is that Spyderco has already released diamond stones for the Sharpmaker. I've used tem for around 2 years before I've ditched sharpmaker altogether. Not because it didn't work though. Just I got more efficient and skilled in freehand sharpening and sandpaper/mousepad method or benchstones do it for me. Anyway, if you are used to sharpmaker then diamond stones are worth it. Otherwise there is no way you can do any serious reprofiling with standard ceramic stones that come with it. Diamonds greatly reduce time required for metal removal, though produce real rough edge. And as usual with diamond stones, be delicate, no hard pressure, or else you'll loose diamonds ;).
The ceramic rods are very convenient for both, final touch for getting the super sharp edge, and general touchups. Both rods at the bottom of the picture are from the Edge-Pro. The blue one is 800 grit, the white one is finer, 1000 grit.
• Leather - For stropping I use various leather strops, plus the polishing compound CrO or Flitz, etc. You can see them all "knimgtmpl.shtml?/images/knives/sharpening/strops.jpg" target="_blank">on this picture. Large, bench strop is used mainly for larger blades, especially for the convex edged ones. The other two are for light stropping and smaller knives.
• Steel - Smooth steel rod for steeling, can be seen on the same picture above. Very important to keep your blade in shape. Very often people overlook the importance of
steeling, or simply don't know about it. To keep the long story short during any cutting the edge gets deformed, rolls to the sides, all that is rather on microscopic levels, but the effect is there, the edge gets duller. And that happens long before the edge actually looses metal due to wear. Rolled and deformed edge requires more force to make the same cut, hence more chances of deforming. You can significantly enhance the edge lifetime by steeling it. In other words aligning it. It's very simple, smooth steel rod aligns the edge, making is straight again.
I personally only use the smooth rod. Unfortunately the vast majority of the butcher steels sold nova days are not smooth, even when called so. They have grooves alongside the rod, which rather damages the fine edge than helps it. You can buy the smooth steel picture above at Hand American Made.

Last revised - 06/30/08