You need more exercise. Check your results, adjust the angle.
Iâm using a porcelaine mug for honing of my kitchen knifes (bottom ring that was left out when burning in the finish). Takes more time, but the control is better.
A little roundness is actually good and makes the edge last longer. Itâs not a straight razor where precision is mandatory.
Make sure your âgripâ hand on the knife is locked while sharpening!
This locks your desired angle.
Make smooth sharpening moves from beginning to the end of the edge.
I prefer to do the finishing moves on each stone always away from the cutting edge instead of towards.
This way i get a shaving sharp edge from 1000 stone and above.
My last stone is a 3000 and then i finish on a leather paddle strop for a strong ultra sharp cutting edge.
Not an expert by any means, but here are a few of my thoughts from personal experience:
The purpose of sharpening a knife is to make it sharper than when you started, donât get sucked into believing the reddit-style knife sharpening porn is the only acceptable result.
Size and the grit of the stone make a difference. Thereâs a bunch of (in my opinion) unnecessary snobbery when it comes to sharpening stones, but a suitable grit helps, too fine and youâll not make much progress, too coarse and the edge will be âtoothyâ (which can be good if thatâs what you want). Too small a stone can be difficult to hold the blade at the angle you want.
I donât own any particularly valuable/special knives. Iâve a couple which I just cannot get a decent edge on for the life of me, I assume itâs something to do with the steel they use or the heat treatment. These get sharpened to âbetter than when I startedâ then I stop before I get frustrated.
I also find some knives benefit from âfoward strokesâ where the cutting edge leads as if youâre peeling the top off the stone, and some knives get a better edge if from âback strokesâ where the spine of the blade leads. Sometimes a combination of the two, as Yammie describes.
I occasionally âcheatâ and use a fat (1" diameter) ceramic sharpening rod, if the blade only needs a slight touch-up. Traditional sharpening steels donât really sharpen so much as re-align any burr on the edge of the blade, sometimes this is okay for the task you need the knife for.
I prefer edge âmaintenanceâ over sharpening. I do most of mine freehand with a very small (finger sized) old Arkansas stone from my fatherâs tool collection. My pocket knife is M390 steel. Despite the conventional wisdom, that little Arkansas does a great job of keeping my blade razor sharp. Itâs all about angle management for me. Just takes practice and patience.
I was never able to freehand sharpen my blades. Tried a lot of methods over many years. Started carrying a knife 50 years ago when I was 10.
About 28 years ago I bought the Lansky system. This is a clamp with raised wings that have slots at 4 angles, and a set of stones attached to holders that you place a rod into and lock with a set screw via a thumb screw. The rod is guided by the slots, guaranteeing uniform sharpening angles as you flip the clamp side to side.
Diamond stones handle todays supersteels. Ceramic and Sapphire yield a near mirror finish . Shaving sharp is the result. When you get really good at dedicating patience, the precision level is easily repeatable and wicked sharp is something you come to demand.
I might saw the hone back and forth to speed up a coarse roughed out start, (keep in mind, I make knives from bar stock and start with no edge at all!) but quickly change to push cut single direction strokes for the ultimate edge. It really is about the burr! Work one side until a very slight burr can be felt with a fingernail on the opposite side, flip and repeat, then step up to a finer stone. Once that first burr is reached it goes pretty quickly. Honing on a leather strop is always the last step, but alone can keep a knife shaving sharp without having to go back to the hones.
On very hard supersteels, cutting a fresh bevel to mirror finish, I have spent two hours many times! Once there, maintaining that razor edge is as simple as placing the clamp correctly.
The last knife I made after polishing the 63RC MagnaCut 5 1/2â blade and stropping the edge on the final polishing grit (5000)
The Ken Onion Worksharp is a great machine, due diligence is a must though as an overachiever can easily ruin a blade with it.
Heat is the enemy, be patient and keep that blade cool! Only remove enough material to do the job, a blade with a good edge that just needs a touchup requires very little work on this type of device!
The expert loves the ease these machines represent, the novice need be careful!
Jack, I know you have years of experience and am betting you love that machine, been looking at it quite hard myself!
My caution was for the novice, just getting started.
Iâve actually held off because of the Old Lumens principle, I like the time set aside to accomplish something I can be proud of. Every time I use my EDC it invokes that feeling of accomplishment, and entices me to take care knowing the effort it took. Different strokes, and all thatâŚ
Itâs true , you should start out using the workshop on knives that you arenât real fond of .
I first sharpened all of my wifeâs utility knives and paring knives .
She used to cut up cucumbers by cutting against her thumb âŚ
I wonder how much of a factor is my free-hand sharpening inability to maintain the same angle of lean? In which I think leads me to large inconsistencies in my sharpening woesâŚ
The Lansky system allows me to sometimes succeed. Mostly I just touch up with one of those V shaped sharpeners with course and fine V shaped sharpening guides. I like a sharp blade and would like to be better at achieving it as well. For EDC, I gave up and am thrilled to always EDC a sharp blade.
Exactly my experience. I did some horrible things to knives, before I used the Lansky. After a while with the Lansky though, I finally âgot itâ, and now freehand sharpen. I use a file, and/or a Speedy Sharp carbide sharpener for a quick and dirty shaving sharp edge, and a ceramic stone, and a leather strop, with polishing compound, to achieve âStupid Sharpâ. The Lansky, at least for me, was like training wheels, and while a great learning system, and general purpose sharpener, it has limitations. You wouldnât want to sharpen a Katana using the Lansky for example.
The worst case scenario for me, is my 1999 Gen 2 Spyderco ATS-55 super steel #C07S POLICE with itâs fully serrated Spyderedge.
The upside, is that the super hard steel keeps an edge like nothing else. The downside, is that nothing but diamond will work. The Spyderedge, has micro serrations as well as the normal sort. The only tool Iâve found that works on it is the Buck Retractable Diamond Pocket Sharpener. Itâs not perfect, medium grit only, and the ATS-55 wears them out fast.
A little off topic, but never put chef knives in the dishwasher. I could not get my old set of Henkles to keep an edge. The reason, was that they had been dishwashered. The phosphates in the detergent apparently cause intergranular corrosion. The edge, being the thinnest part of the blade being the most susceptible. It travels between the steel crystals, and will penetrate from the edge up. Only after removing a millimetre of the steel, and reshaping a new edge, would they keep an edge again. Hope that saves someone the frustration I went through before I found out about it.
I had to buy a carbide drill bit to get the pin holes drilledâŚ. In the annealed state! It ate cobalt band saw blades and cobalt drill bits. (Literally destroyed a brand new bandsaw blade in less than an inch of cut.)
And yes, at 8.25â the Lansky was challenged, made it, but not easily. My Katana is maintained the old school wayâŚ
Some people are more able to lock their wrists sitting behind a table, some prefer to stand up, it really depends on your own morphology. Did you try with your waterstone on a table approximately at the same level has your belt ?
First try a back and forth motion with your legs only and your upper body locked. Then try with only your arms from shoulders to elbows to see if your can keep your wrists locked.
You can also try different orientation of the waterstone.
Jon from Japanese Knife Imports has many helpful sharpening videos.
I have a full KME set-up. Of my over 600 knives, Iâve put a mirror polish on at least a third of them with the KME. For convex edge knives, I use a combination of Japanese whetstones and Arkansas stones.
WOW, this is a big one for me. I have used numerous different methods over the years. I have spent hundreds of hours reading as much as I could. Became very active in several sharpening threads. It has been a passion.
I had a problem with keeping the perfect angle on both sides of a blade. I could get things sharp. Sharper than what many were used to, but not the hair whittling sharp that I wanted.
Some can, but not me. I have probably a dozen sharpening systems that control the angle. I have used the Lansky system and it works pretty well. But still a bit too much slop for the perfection I wanted.
The best system I have is the
âWicked Edgeâ system. Unfortunately it is very expensive for a casual sharpener. I would guess that, in addition to the $250 to $500 for the basic system I probably have 5K in stones, polishing tapes, diamond liquids and different types of leather strops. I can get hair whittling sharpness and a true mirror edge. I mean read 2 point font reflecting from the edge, perfectly. Not scratches under 100X magnification. But it also takes 2 to 4 hours per knife.
So free hand. As several have said it is practice. You need to find your angle and hold it. You can get to where you know if the edge is getting honed just by the feel. Which means watching and feeling, and even hearing what you are doing carefully. Some have found that initially cutting a piece of cardboard or plastic at the angle you want and using it to check yourself repeatedly until you get the muscle memory needed. something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Wedgek-Angle-Guides-Sharpening-Knife/dp/B01N4QMO7U/ref=sr_1_1?m=A2PSK1KRUL25S4&qid=1677013906&s=merchant-items&sr=1-1
I donât think anyone can get every stroke perfect, but if you get to where 70 to 80% are, you will be fine.
Another trick is to âpaintâ the edge with a sharpy marker. This way you can see where the blade is contacting the stone. They also sell edge guides that attach to the back of the knife. You put the guide and the edges in contact with your stone and hone. Buck used to make one, They called it the HoneMaster. I am not sure if they still do, but I am sure there is something similar available. Works well.
Raise a burr on the full length of the blade first on one side, then the other with a course stone, then take it off with finer ones. Of course this works with or without the guide.
Maybe have 3 stones. Course (60 to 150 grit or so depending on how much material you need to remove and how quickly), Medium, (400 to 600 grit) and fine (1000 grit and up). The finer grits only need a very light touch. Be gentle. Of course, you can get a leather strop for that final polish and maybe a little bit better edge⌠and for maintenance. With only one stone you will either work for ever to get your bevel right, or not get that final shaving edge you may want.
BTW, I mostly use a 42" Kalamazoo, belt sander now. I have 8 different grit belts and felt (with compound) and leather belts. Though I usually only use maybe 3 per knife. I can sharpen 100 knives with it in the time it takes for Doing the one âperfectâ one on the Wicked Edge machine. They arenât as pretty, but with just a little care they are darn near as sharp.
As mentioned, there are lots of good sharpening web sites around. You can get the concepts, but freehand sharpening is all about practice and concentration.
