Best edge finish for a slicer?

FoxholeAtheist

FoxholeAtheist

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Apr 7, 2003
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I'm in the process of ordering an EdgePro Apex, and I was wondering what the best grit would be for a kitchen knife that does primarily slicing duty? I understand that leaving the edge a bit "toothy" can do that, but which of the EP stones would leave that kind of edge? Also, is there any value in taking the knife to (say) 220 or so, then jumping up to a few passes on the 800 to polish the toothy bits left by the 220, without grinding them down?

Thanks much!
 
I sharpen commercially for restaurants and hotels using an Edgepro pro model. I find that I use the 220 to sharpen,then use the 800 to knock off the burr and smooth. Then finish with the 1200 ceramic steel.This seems to work well for me , the new 800 stone is GREAT!!!.
 
Thanks, Martin.

I think what I might do is to find two identical cheapie knives and sharpen them to different grits to do a side-by-side comparison.

Of course, my wife might think I'm nuts, but that's a risk I'll take. :D I can buy some tomatos and just make salsa with the remnants of my experiment.
 
FoxholeAtheist said:
I think what I might do is to find two identical cheapie knives and sharpen them to different grits to do a side-by-side comparison.
Click to expand...

You might want to get two Opinels for that experiment, they're cheap *and* very good knives, both the ones in carbon steel and the ones in stainless. The trouble is that these knives with their thin edge geometry are such great slicers that you may not like your other knives all that much after the test ... :D

Hans
 
I thinned my Opinels out quite a bit with my Edgepro before I was satisfied with them. I like a highly polished edge for durability, and if you go up to the 3000 tapes, it will slice very well. A coarser edge might slice better, but I always tend to go back to the higher polish.
 
You gotta ask yourself if this knife is truly a slicer. There are carving knives, long ham slicers, and boning knives that are primarily used as slicers, but a lot of kitchen knives really see more duty as push cutters. This includes a lot of the short paring knives and almost anything that gets used on a cutting board. The next question is what do you slice? Meat has one set of characteristics while fruits and vegetables have others.

I would generally not go really coarse on anything other than a bread knife. For bread with a crisp crust and soft insides you need a true microsaw. For that I would go as coarse as a 220 grit finish. For most other things I would go as coarse as 600 grit (diamond) finish. I don't want to go coarser than that since my wife is likely to insist on doing a lot of push cutting with my slicing knife.

The big exception is if I have a badly designed or badly profiled kitchen knife. I mostly reprofile my kitchen knives down to 8 degrees per side or so. When they are that thin you don't need much edge roughness to slice well. If I am doing a quick sharpening job on my mother-in-law's knives (and I am having to do it with a stack of Wet-or-Dry paper I picked up at Kmart) I can't do that fine a job of reprofiling. Since I am working at 15 degrees per side or there abouts it helps to leave a coarser finish. In that case I work my way up to 1000 grit paper, then go back and finish with 400 or 320 grit.
 
I was trying to figure that out, actually. I think that for a lot of the cutting these knives see, it's mostly push cutting, but I wasn't sure. A couple of the people I work with are interested in getting a knife or two sharpened also, so I'd rather experiment with my own stuff than theirs. I suppose with push cutting you pretty much take the grit as high as you want, right?
 
I tend to talk out of both sides of my mouth. On one side I say "most kitchen knife work is push cutting" while out the other side I say "almost no cutting is absolutely straight push cutting". Even when I am pushing almost straight down on a cutting board I am not a machine and I slide a little bit longitudinally as I push. I also sometimes use my chefs knife to slice tomatoes or meat with an intentional slicing action. The net result is that I rarely go for an absolutely smooth edge. Usually I finish my kitchen knives with a fine ceramic rod as a compromise between smooth and having a little bit of tooth.

I keep one or two bragging knives that I finish with .5 micron diamond dust, but that is just for show.
 
I might try to "fetish out" one of my Shun Classics to take to that knife safety presentation I give at work (thread in Blade Discussion), but most of them I'll keep a more sane edge on. My wife already thinks I'm a little nuts. :)
 
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