Ah. My whetstones came with oil, and i think that’s for they are supposed to be used. I just drop some oil down, and smear out around gently with the side of the blade to be sharpened before i actually start.
Also, my stones are harder than what’s pictured in that video, and while no doubt they’ll wear down eventually, with enough use, they still look really flat after decades of ownership. The stone is much harder than the steel, and bits don’t come off into the liquid. It must be a different style of stone.
yes, i think there are water based and oil based stones …
either way, there are 2 dimenstion to this … one is how hard the abrasive mineral is (and they are all way harder than steel) … and the other is about the matrix (the binder if you will) … there, cheaper stones will have a weaker matrix and the “hard - as - stone” mineral will break out of this matrix and be carried away as sludge, sooner.
so, yes - I have on of those chinese whetstones that melt like butter in the sun …
There are two stypes of steel: ridged and unridged. A ridged steel is also removing a small bit of material from the blade and so is also sharpening. A smooth steel only hones and does not sharpen.
It worked well for my needs…. I also had some “fancy Japanese” honing stone for the final finish work of sharpening. But for non professional home chef knives the tri stones should be fine.
I spent almost twenty years working in a meat packing plant. Knives were sharpened daily on a stone (carborundum I believe, in mineral oil) and honed on a steel frequently while in use. They were good for a few weeks before they wore down to the point it was difficult to maintain them. Everyone had a different technique when it came to sharpening and it was just what worked for you. I prefered to bring mine from base to tip along the stone, alternating sides with each stroke. This worked great if there weren’t any lage gaps or chips in the edge but it did tend to give the knife a sharp stabby point. For ones with more damage to the edge it was best to sharpen each side until the edge curled to take out any gaps.
Nowdays I actually sharpen my kitchen knives about once or twice a year but I keep a steel and a ceramic rod to maintain the edge. I really don’t need them super sharp for what I do with them.
I think I need the whetstone. My chef’s knife is starting to develop what I can best describe as scalloping and I think the pullthrough is making it worse. I’m going to get a few knives from Goodwill to practice with first.
I bought a Japanese waterstone for kitchen knife sharpening and some tool duties. These are designed to wear and continually provide a good abrasive surface. Down side is that they wear unevenly easily. I had a diamond whetstone I use for other tools that levels the surface brilliantly, but this isn’t the best answer economically if you are starting from scratch.
I found that I really needed to practice the art of sharpening knives, and had some very poor results initially. I ended up using a x10 loupe to inspect the edge to understand what I was doing. The big problem is lack of consistency of grinding angle and bad angles in general. Once I was getting a good grind, touched up with a strop charged with fine grinding compound and the final result was fabulous. And a lot of work to get to that point.
A lot of the magic tools on the market for knife sharpening are about maintaining a consistent angle. What is often missed is that there are two angles involved in most knives. A shallow grind and a steeper bevel that defines the actual cutting edge. Only grinding the shallow angle ends in edges that break. But it gets more complex than this, and the overall grind profile of the knife matters. And you tend to get what you pay for in the base knife. Getting the proper symmetric geometry along the length of a knife isn’t trivial.
Drawing an edge longwise along the abrasive surface results in a different profile of the edge that created by a transverse grind. A cutting edge, no matter how fine, is, at the cutting edge, a sawtooth. The microscopic form of this is what cuts, and contributes hugely to the cutting of various foodstuffs. People like Sushi chefs care greatly about this. I have never been convinced by longitudinal draw sharpening tools.
I know someone who bought a Tormek for nothing more than his kitchen knives. He could afford one, so can’t blame him. I would love one, but mostly for my woodworking tools. Then again a single high end Japanese knife will run you more than the base Tormek.
High quality diamond sharpening plates seem to be another good answer. But not cheap. You can find poor quality ones that don’t last for not so much. But they generally appear to be a bad buy.
I bought one 25 years ago when I bought my lathe. Wonderful for gouges and all the other tools. Does a fine job on knives as well as scissors too of course, but I generally use my Wicked Edge for those as it’s more convenient.
The only thing I don’t really like about the WE is the action required. I recently bought a WorkSharp Precision Adjust Pro, but though I like the movements required, it’s not as good as the WE. Of course it’s less than half the price.
