Sharpen your knives

You will get years of enjoyment out of that stone.

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yep. just did the same. a king 1000/6000 combo stone and a king 800 grit stone. :wink: let the sharpening begin!

I wouldnā€™t say I know a lot about knives, or steel, but am familiar with the general underlying principals of material properties.

I have a couple King stones. They work good.

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i have 3 other stones that have worked ok so far but they are small and difficult to use. hopefully these are better.

King stones seem to get good reviews.
I have never used one.

I am wondering though. Why the 800 grit?
It is really close to the 1000. No real point in using the 800 grit if you already have the 1000. Or vise versa. If you have a 1000 grit. And want somthing coarser. Id go 400 grit or lower.

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several you tube videos i watched said to use the 800 to get it rough sharpened then go to 1000 then 6000 to hone. i thought it weird too.

if you can still return the 800 grit, that might be wise to do.

I still stand by my advise. Just get 1 quality 1000 grit. (like the cerax 1000)
It is also larger than a lot of ā€œcombinationā€ stones. And a larger stone sharpens easier and faster.

if after sharpening for a while, you discover you like sharpening. you can buy another quality stone (like 5k or a coarser 120-400 , depening on if you want ultra sharpnes. or the ability to restore damaged knives faster (chips etc)))
and until you practised a bit. you proably wonā€™t get much use out of the 6000 side anyway.

If you buy a smaller combination stone. And want to upgrade to more quality. youā€™d have to raplce both your 1000 and 6000.

although i did read the king 1000/6000 to be considered the best ā€œbudgetā€ stone. So it probably did not cost that much :slight_smile:

https://www.amazon.com/Suehiro-CERAX-soaking-whetstone-sharpening/dp/B01E5AKQ04/

i had to learn this the hard way.
And i have 2-3 budget combination stones that i never use anymore.
The differece between them and the quality stones is quite large. And for the price of the 3 budget stones i could have bought 2 quality stones.

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I canā€™t answer for reasons to use an 800 stone. I can talk about the steps I use to prepare a blade and then bring it to razor sharpness. IME, 240 grit sandpaper is good to shape a blade. This is only for the steps involved in removing gaps in the blade, thinning the blade if appropriate, and setting the cutting edge geometry. It is very important to handle the knife carefully while doing this as 240 will scratch polished surfaces beyond what can be cleaned up with simple polishing.

Once the blade has been shaped properly, diligent use of a 1000 grit stone will polish out the grooves left by the 240 grit paper and bring the first polish to the edge. I usually push the edge into the stone during this stage. Once the edge has been roughed in on the 1000, I move up to an 8000 grit stone to polish the edge and bring the knife to razor sharp. In this stage, I combine pushing into the stone and pulling back across the stone gradually moving entirely to pulling back. With time and effort, the blade reaches a mirror polish and develops a razor edge. Cheap knives do not respond properly to this sharpening technique. I have used this method successfully with Chicago Cutlery (the old knives that were actually made in Chicago), with Mac stainless knives (the minimum knives for a kitchen), with numerous other high quality knives such as Wusthof, and with a few high end R62+ steel knives. It takes more time with the steel knives but the edge retention is much better than with any stainless Iā€™ve tried. Iā€™m pretty sure that the really hard steel knives would benefit from having an in-between grit in the 4000 range. I donā€™t have one so get by with what I have.

While we discussed types of steel and characteristics for blades, modern metallurgy had made custom steel that outperforms almost all commonly available blade steel. This can be roughly defined as a tradeoff between flexibility and durability. The more flexible a blade, the less hard and durable and vice versa. The art is in making a blade that is appropriately flexible and appropriately hard and durable. Masters of the art of making high quality steel blades can produce blades that double the performance of most ordinary steel.

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i have a 3 stone in 1 set on a triangle shape that sits into a v shaped base. it sharpens well but takes a long time and its too small. so im already a fairly accomplished sharpener. these new stones should take it to the next level.

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Ah, one of the good olā€™ Arkansas stone sets. I use Arkansas stones to sharpen and agree that they are slow. However, I do like the ā€œfeel.ā€ I also have a bit of a sentimental link, as theyā€™re quarried in the mountains where I did my masters research.

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now you mention it they have the marbleing like the arkansas stones though it doesnt say that on the box.

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donā€™t forget the artist(s). :woman_artist:

As ribs1 states, stropping does not form a burr or ā€œbring microscopic particles of the blade up to the edge,ā€ but rather helps finish the edge by smoothing it and making it and generally making it micro-convex (on compressible and fibrous strop materials). Here are some good resources to visualize the sharpening and stropping processes.
Edge-leading and edge-trailing honing:

What is a burr?:

Role of the strop material:

It is rather well known that any burr remaining on a shaving razor/blade causes skin irritation.
Commercial razor blades are quite smooth at the blade edge
Here is some nice SEM work showing different blades: Scanning Electron Microscope Blade Edge Images | Badger & Blade

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If you had read on down you would have seen that I corrected myself :wink:

Poncho, no disrespect, but I believe you said in your follow-on that stropping realigns bent portions of the edge. This description does not appear to be supported by microscopic studies of stropping like the one I linkedā€“stropping appears further polishes the edge, removing material and reprofiling the edge. I have heard others describe stropping and steeling of knives as edge realignment, but I donā€™t think that description is supported by evidence, not that Iā€™ve seen, anyway. Do you know of another study that has shown that stropping ā€œre-alignsā€ a bent or burred edge?

It has been years and I could be mistaken. The study was also done on the microscopic level. It was showing that the stropping process was moving the tiny particle of the edge back to the end, thus refining the edge without removing any material. As I said, it was 10 plus years ago when I read it and I may be mistaken by now.

My use of the word burr was a mistake on my part and I probably should have edited it out instead of correcting it later but I didnā€™t. That was my bad :man_facepalming:

I do remember other saying that the study I mentioned above was also contrary to what they had also heard as well.

if you look at my post from 24 march

you will find the following link

It is from the same website you linked.
It states
"
What does stropping do?

  1. REALIGNING THE EDGE
  2. BURNISHING
    Burnishing refers to the movement of metal, distinct from abrasion and the removal of metal.
    "

So it both realigns bent portions of the edge and it
ā€œbring microscopic particles of the blade up to the edge,ā€ by burnishing.

You are however right that stropping usualy does not ā€œformā€ a burr. In most practical cases stropping removes or bends a burr or the leftovers of the burr.

For a more practical point.

Stropping on somthing as cheap as cardboard has a noticabel effect. During bench grafting i somtimes do a few quick strokes on a water stone. And then my knife cuts slivers of paper again.

But after a few strokes stropping on cardboard, it goes trought the paper smoother. The sound is better.

I assume this is mainly due to burr removal. Since with a quick touchup im usualy not super dilligent about carfully switching sides and ā€œstroppingā€ on the stone. to slowly get rid of the ā€œmicroā€ burr.

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If I might chime in a bit. There are many interesting suggestions in the post series and you can spend a lot trying to get the best edge. As a professional sharpener I can tell you that equipment is a part of having a good edge but not the most important. Proper training and practice in the form of developed muscle memory is key to success. I have seem many high quality knives severely damaged on good equipment because the operator lacked the muscle memory to develop a good edge. If you have a passion for maintaining your own edge spend the money on some good equipment (mechanical or manual) and get proper training ( not necessarily youtube) and practice, practice, practice. If however you simply want good sharp knives: Invest in good quality knives, Find a good and dependable professional sharpener, and hone your blade before each use on a good steel. Professional sharpening service is relatively inexpensive (generally around $1/inch of blade, and a good quality, well maintained knife, in the home kitchen, should only need sharpening a few times a year.

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@1nolaguy
Quote=ā€œ1nolaguy, post:79, topic:35820ā€]
As a professional sharpener
[/quote]

Please tell us about your equipment and techniques

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