While there are extreme lengths one can go to in chasing the ultimate sharp edge on their EDC, this tutorial will teach you how to keep a good working edge on most any cutlery.
There are a few steps to this system, but with some practice, care and attention being paid; anybody should be able to effectively sharpen their knives using this method with very little invested for the results achieved. The system is comprised of the following steps.
Assess the damage
Discerning what damage has occurred to the edge is a revealing first step. Looking at the knife edge from both the side, and head on will show what kinds of damage has happened.
Also looking at how thick behind the edge itself your knife is would be a good idea at this time, if your blade has been binding a lot in material after a few sharpenings and isn’t cutting as effortlessly as it once used to then chances are it needs a bit of thinning out behind the edge.
De-stressing the metal
The very first step is called de-stressing the edge. The steel at the edge of your dull knife is weak and essentially ruined from the abuse it’s received over time. It’s important to get rid of this damaged steel in order to reveal the fresher, stronger steel that lies beneath.
To do this you must take the knife and draw it through your sharpening stone which will blunt the edge, as well as expose good steel. Hold the edge perpendicular to the stone when doing this and use very, very light pressure.
Determine your sharpening angle
This next step involves finding what angles to sharpen at if you don’t have any specific tools for doing so. You can test how thick or thin your knife needs to be based on your own use and how it ends up after you initially sharpen it, but for now let’s start at 15 degrees per side.
Use the sharpening stone
To start begin abrading the full length of the edge along a coarse stone (about 220-350 grit is probably fine) which is relatively flat. I recommend doing an even amount of strokes on each side if the bevels are already equal, otherwise you will have to use your better judgment as to how much steel must be removed to make the bevels equal.
Eventually you’ll know when to stop at this stage on both sides before creating a “burr”, but for now just abrade material until on the other side of the blade there is a tiny burr developed.
Generally a burr is inevitable but as you improve your skills you should be able to get to the point where you’re creating only a super fine burr which you can’t really see or feel. In creating a sizable burr and removing it, the metal on the very edge of the knife may be pretty sharp, but also extremely weak. This metal has been stressed by being bent back and forth as well as having the burr ripped off. The steel on the edge has fallen victim to the same properties that occur when you bend a spoon back and forth many times, the metal weakens until it just breaks. At that point you’d have to de-stress the edge yet again to get rid of this weaker steel and you’re basically back to where you started.
Now you should have a primary edge bevel with which to work. You can raise the grit of stones and do higher polishes if you wish from here.
Applying the micro bevel
To apply the micro bevel to the primary edge you’ve already created, take one of the more coarse stones you’d used when making the edge bevel, and begin with that.
Using strokes across the whole if not most of the blade, make edge leading strokes at a slightly higher angle than the one you’d used to create your edge bevel. This marginally wider edge makes for a stronger cutting edge, thus increasing overall edge retention.
For most people 20 degrees is ideal, but just raising the spine of the blade a hair above that angle guide made in earlier step works just fine.
After a good amount of alternating strokes you should feel an edge developed, keep checking and making lighter and lighter strokes, and increasing the fineness of the stones you’re using if possible. After this step you should have a pretty nice working edge, but you can take it a bit finer if you’d like.
Stropping
Stropping an edge is generally the final step, it will hone (and sometimes sharpen if you use abrasives on your strop) an edge and align the teeth created by the scratches from the stone this can be done with a piece of flat cardboard, newspaper, blue jeans, or commonly a leather belt (though using a proper strop is recommended if available).
If you’d like to take it a step further, you can apply any number of abrasives to your “strop” and they will refine the edge even further, while it’s generally not necessary for most every day cutting tasks, it can be fun to see just how far you can take your edge sharpness. Experiment with varying abrasives on your strop and see what works best for you and the knives you have.
With technique and patience you’ll be able to produce insanely sharp blades.
Maintaining your edge
After a while your knife will go dull once again. I don’t care if you have the best premium steels out there, it’s just going to happen eventually. Depending on how far you let it go, it will either need a light touch up, or totally re-doing the whole process again.
In general I recommend most average users maintain the 15 degree per side edge bevel, but if you’re finding your edges aren’t going dull at all, you can actually just keep the 15 degrees per side bevel and strop that next time, just keeping it thinned out instead of making a micro bevel. This will improve performance by a huge degree, but will leave an edge which may not last as long.
Conversely, if you find your edge is going dull faster than you’d like, raising the angle a bit more when putting on a micro bevel should help remedy this situation. Either way, unless your blade is really beat up, you should be able to maintain your knives without thinning them out again for a reasonable amount of time, and just putting on a micro bevel and stropping the blade. Once the knife isn’t cutting very well, just repeat all the steps over again and you’ll be back in business.
From www.pknife.com