Honing & Sharpening.
Your knife arrives razor sharp, and it’s especially important to keep it this way. They key part of this is ‘keeping’ your knife sharp, and not letting it go blunt before sharpening it. Regularly give your knife a little bit of love and it will reward you every time you use it.
Let’s start with the don’ts!
There are a few different tools and methods which you can use to sharpen your knife. First, let’s start with the tools I recommend you don’t use.
Sharpening steels, pull through sharpeners and electric sharpeners are OK for mass-produced knives and will get them reasonably sharp. However I really don’t recommend using them on my knives. My blades are ground much thinner and harder than mass-produced knives, and are typically sharpened to a shallower angle.
Sharpening Steels are far too aggressive and will remove too much material, as well as possibly damaging the edge. Cheap ‘pull through’ sharpeners are not only too aggressive, but also use a fixed angle that is often too steep, and will adversely change the geometry of the blade.
I’m not saying you absolutely should not use these tools to sharpen a knife from me, I’m simply saying the won’t help you maintain the feel and performance that my knives are capable of, and could possibly damage them. (And any other high performance knife for that matter)
Honing or Sharpening?
First of all, let’s talk about honing and sharpening. They have one fundamental and basic thing in common, they are both ways to keep your knives sharp. But they are not the same thing. To understand the difference, it’s good to understand why a knife get’s dull in the first place.
A knife could be dull for one of two reasons. If it is truly blunt, then the sharp edge has been worn down over a long period of being used without any maintenance. The other, more regularly occurring reason, is that the blade's edge is no longer aligned properly. On a microscopic (well, not unite, but almost) level, the very edge of the blade has rolled over and deformed - it’s still sharp, but that sharp edge is pointing sideways, instead of straight down at the food you are trying to cut.
In other words, a knife that needs to be sharpened is one that no longer has an edge. A knife that needs to be honed has an edge that is misaligned or bent, which can happen as frequently as each use.
So what's the difference between honing and sharpening?
Honing is simply maintaining an edge that is already sharp, pushing the edge of the blade back into alignment. This can be achieved by ‘stropping’ the blade on a leather board, otherwise know as a strop, using a ceramic honing rod, or a combination of both. It’s ideal to you hone your knife frequently, some choose to hone their knives after every use. I hone mine every week or so, keeping them razor sharp all the time.
Sharpening on the other hand means actually removing material from the blade's edge, usually by grinding it against a sharpening stone. If you're regularly honing your knife, you shouldn't need to sharpen it more than twice a year, depending on how often you use it.
So, to sum up - sharpening removes material from the blade to produce a new, sharp edge, while honing keeps the blade sharp by pushing the edge of the knife back to the centre.
And what do I recommend to keep your knife keen and sharp? Well, read on to find out…
Leather Strop - $
As just described, stropping your blade helps to realign the edge (the ‘burr’) of your blade, whilst also removing any tiny imperfections, leaving you with a refreshed and razor-sharp without losing any material.
A leather strop is the most simple tool there is in your sharpening arsenal - it’s literally a firm leather, glued to a flat board. You place the edge of your blade on the leather at the correct angle, and pull the knife down and across the leather, trailing the edge. A few passes, alternating each side as you go will bring your the edge of your knife back into alignment and make it screaming sharp.
In addition to the leather, it’s often good to use a fine diamond paste or polishing compound when stropping your knives. You’ll apply this directly to the leather. Not only does this paste make stropping easier, it also ensures that your knives will become sharper much faster. Diamond pastes and compounds have a very fine grain which doesn’t remove material, just helps the leather do its job.
A great video on using strops for your kitchen knives can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZMcXphsXA. As for strops I’d recommend using a wider strop like this https://www.knivesandtools.co.uk/en/pt/-naniwa-leather-strop-iu-1100.htm which will be easier to use with kitchen knives, and a simple green compound to load up the leather with www.knivesandtools.co.uk/en/pt/-skerper-stropping-compound-green-medium.htm
Ceramic Honing Rod - $
Along with a good quality strop, these are in my opinion a ‘must have’ in your knife maintenance toolbox and complement all the other options I list below, whichever you choose to go with. They look like a sharpening rod/steel, however the are much finer and are in fact used as a ‘honing’ tool. They won’t actually remove any material (well, a tiny tiny bit), but instead are used to realign the edge of the blade on a microscopic level, helping to keep the apex of the edge perfectly aligned. This is known as ‘honing’ the edge.
Simply place the blade on the rod, at a shallow angle of around 15degrees, and draw the blade down and across the honing rod with just the weight of the blade pushing into the rod (you don’t need to apply any extra pressure). Do 4-5 passes, alternating each side, every week or so, and it will keep your edge razor sharp and keen.
A good guide to explain and demonstrate the importance of honing in the maintenance of your knife can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsfbStV7pqE
My recommendation for a honing rod is the Wustoff 3000 grit ceramic honing rod. It’s a good price, has a defined grit level (3000) and is well built. Find it here www.knivesandtools.com/en/pt/-wusthof-ceramic-sharpener.htm
Japanese Water Stones - $$
If you want to really get into your sharpening, form a connection with your knife, and keep at working at it’s highest potential, then Japanese Water Stones (or Whetstones) are the way to go. I hand sharpen every customer knife on stones before I send them out to their owners, and I maintain all my personal knives on stones too.
For me, the process of taking the time to work quietly on my knives in this way, is important - it’s almost sedative when you really get into it. It takes some practice (which I would advise doing on cheaper, let’s precious knives until you are confident in your abilities), but the rewards are worthwhile.
It’s a huge subject with many different approaches and techniques, and with stones come in both synthetic and natural varieties. Because of this there is a wealth of information online regarding the stones themselves, and sharpening technique. A great overview guide to the theory behind stone sharpening and related tips can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahaaHxhbsA&t=244s. A more in long-form tutorial taking a knife from blunt to sharp can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiuuyDE1pdY. They are well worth a watch, along with their other videos all about sharpening.
My recommendation for stones would be Naniwa 400/1000/3000 combo set, which can be found here. https://www.knivesandtools.com/en/pt/-package-deal-naniwa-professional-stones-400-1000-3000.htm. These stones will last you a lifetime and give you everything you need to fix and tune up damaged blades (400 grit), create a solid ‘workhorse edge’ on all your knives (1000) and get a highly refined edge for meat and fish work (3000).
As a sidetone, don’t be tempted by cheap stones off Amazon - you can find 1000/6000 grit combination stones for as little as twenty bucks. They are low quality, feel horrible to use, and are very unlikely to be anywhere near the grit they advertise. Spend the money on good stones - they will last you literally a lifetime and are well worth the relatively small investment.
HORL - $$
The HORL system is designed and built in Germany, and is a brilliant way to sharpen your knife if you’re not into the idea of learning to manually sharpen on water stones. The HORL is a rolling sharpener - the knife is held at a set angle, and you roll a stone along the cutting edge of the knife.
The benefit is ease of use, as the edge is set at an angle. The negative of this is obviously the angle can’t be changed and might be slightly different to the angle your knife is set at by me when I send it to you. However, it will only be 1 or 2 degrees off (I set my angle at approximately 15 degrees, but I do it by hand so it could be a degree off), and the edge will quickly take to the 15 degrees that the HORL is set to.
The system comes standard with a 400 grit stone, and stainless steel honing disc, however I’d also add the 3000 grit stone to give you polish and refinement of the edge. You could use this as a substitute for the ceramic honing rod mentioned earlier, if you wish.
Here’s a quick video from HORL demonstrating how to use it www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlFl57KfMv0
Links to more info and to buy the HORL can be found here www.knivesandtools.com/en/pt/-horl-knife-sharpener-walnut-wood-rsn-set.htm, and the additional 3000 grit stone here www.knivesandtools.com/en/pt/-horl-fine-ceramic-sharpening-stone-3000-grit-es3000.htm
Wicked Edge - $$$
The final alternative to water stones is the Wicked Edge system. This sharpening system uses two ‘paddles’ set at an angle to your knife, which you pass alternately across the edge. This system is more commonly popular for sharpening outdoors knives, but they work really well on kitchen knives too. Working each side of the edge alternately helps to get a perfectly aligned and razor sharp edge.
More info on the Wicked Edge and they’re products can be found here www.knivesandtools.com/en/ct/wicked-edge-sharpening-systems.htm
Summing it all up
As you can see, there are many different approaches to keeping your knife sharp, and which you choose to go with is really down to you. For me, it’s hand sharpening on stones that takes the win - not only does it give the best results, but it’s a process that connects you to your knife in a way the other approaches don’t. It takes practice, but the results are worthwhile.
For regular stropping, personally I like to use a ceramic rod every few days, with a couple of passes on the leather strop just to ‘finish' the edge. I like a bit of ‘bite’ on my edge, and I find just using the leather strop almost gives me too fine an edge and I loose a bit of ‘feel’ - using both together get’s a nice balance.
So, combine stones with a high quality ceramic honing rod and/or leather strop, and your knife with stay razor sharp every time you use it. If you don’t want to go the stone route, then I think the HORL system is a brilliant solution and well worth the investment - it’s fast, easy to use, plus it’s really nicely designed so it’ll look great in your kitchen!