Anyone else ever heard this about carbon vs stainless sharpening?

[Lavan]

I have just heard from a knifemaker that carbon steel should be sharpened differently from stainless.

He says carbon should be sharpened AWAY from the stone like ...stropping.

He says stainless should be used like the sharpening manuals say, "slicing off a part of the stone...sorta."

He says the carbon is more likely to micro chip when cutting into the stone. Sposed ta go ......away.....from it, raise a burr and then strop off the burr with the leather.

???????????

 

[Jeff Clark]

The explanation doesn't make much sense to me. Carbon steel is more ductile than stainless and probably less likely to micro chip. If you use a stropping stroke on carbon steel you will get a vicious edge, but probably this is due to creating something close to an edge burr. Carbon steel seems to respond better to stropping than stainless does, but I don't think that microchipping has anything to do with it. I think that you will get a cleaner/stronger edge on carbon steel by doing your latter honing steps and deburring all edge-forwards before you do your stropping.

 

[allenC]

I've never heard of such a thing.

 

[Blop]

Me too, never heard of it and makes no sense, as long as you can sharpen on a stone without biting into it )).

Razorblades are sharpened this way (away from the stone) to get a very fine edge. Maybe you risk to damage it when you go slicing.

I´ve heard of a diffence in the direction, the edge moves across the stone, meaning, a diredtion stone against edge leaves the edge more coarse, then moving the edge without going against the stone.

I do this and it works fine, can´t say if better than moving against.

 

[backwoodsman]

I have been sharping but the old cutting part of the stone way all my life on stainless and carbon and tried the other way a fue times in my youth but it never worked out, alwas got a wire edge that rolled when skinning but the old way works evertime.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Carbon steel is more ductile than stainless and probably less likely to micro chip.

This could just be a comparison between a very soft low allow carbon and something like ATS-34. The carbon would respond very well to honing on even old razor strops but the ATS-34 would like ignore that and want a stone. Plus then you have a likely large difference in edge angle as well. But yeah, in general that's a pretty false idea.

-Cliff