Whilst cutting up some veggies for a meal today, I noticed that my knife was a bit dull. Having started cooking more fresh foods lately, rather than frozen or boxed stuff, I’ve been paying attention more to my knives. Now, I don’t have any high end expensive knives, a (what I think of as crap) cutco chef’s knife, a better (for my style) cheapo but solid and decently built chef’s knife, bread knife, paring knife and a couple steak knives. Before, I never really gave much thought to sharpening, I just gave them to my brother who works at a knife factory to sharpen for me, now and then. But now I find myself needing them sharpened more often, since I’m using them more, so I bought a knife sharpener with 2 coarse and 2 fine stones set at an angle and a set up for sharpening shears. Plus a honing steel. Thinking about it, how many strokes per set of stones, how many strokes on the honing steel? Is there a recommended number? I typically do 10, 10, and 10. Not because of any knowledge about sharpening, but because it’s easy and it seems to work.
I think you are not supposed to use the steel immediately after sharpening or honing. If you think about it, steeling is supposed to re-align or straighten a curled edge, so nothing good will come of trying to steel a fresh razor edge. However, steeling 5–10 strokes before use will mean you will not need to hone the knife that frequently.
The recommended number of strokes on a stone required to hone a dull blade may depend on how hard the alloy is, at least according to one instruction sheet I saw, but your 10 strokes at each grit level sounds reasonable, especially since you can look at the edge and you say it gets nice and sharp that way.
Most people tend to be too gentle when using a steel. A few firm strokes, followed by a few light strokes will give the best results. Full-on sharpening (re-edging) doesn’t need to be done each time.
Yeah, I try to give any knife a honing on the steel before I use it to help keep the edge, but lately GFVader and I have been making and eating many meals together and having such a good time that I’ve been rather neglectful about it.