Honing rods

Kwon Kwang

Kwon Kwang

Joined
Jul 7, 2013
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I never see honing rods talked about around these parts. Why is that? A small English-produced honing rod came with a sheath I bought for my SwissChamp. With just a minute or so of use, it's gotten knives I've used but haven't sharpened in years taking hair off my arms like nobody's business! I've gotten my dull Bushman and rough-edged 119 silly sharp!

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It's probably still not as good as a strop (never owned one), but certainly it's a valid option for edge maintenance and a solid alternative to removing steel from an edge, no?
 
I will touch more on this tomorrow, but as a Butcher by trade, I have used them plenty. They seem to work well with softer steels, and though not designed to move (that much) material, they can be pressed into doing so in a pinch.

One that size would work nicely in a travel kit for kitchen duty in lieu of relying on the locale having something dedicated to doing the same task, unless you want to use ceramic.

See you in the A.M.
 
I get some high quality touch up work out of a Mundial Diamond oval and Smiths oval ceramic rods. I have a traditional ridged sharpening steel but don't use cheap kitchen knives of soft steel so I wasted my $ on that purchase.
 
I've used my honing rod on S30V, VG-10, SK-5, Aogami Super Blue, 420HC, x 50 CrMo and AUS8A. Had best results with the latter three for sure, though still good results with the harder steels. Super Blue, despite being quite hard by my understanding, actually had absolutely stellar results. My SB Endura is now so sharp I'm scared to do more shave testing with it.
 
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Is that a ridged steel rod or diamond coated? If the latter sure, it will put a grabby, toothy edge on about anything.

Kwon Kwang said:
I've used my honing rod on S30V, VG-10, SK-5, Aogami Super Blue, 420HC, x 50 CrMo and AUS8A. Had best results with the latter three for sure, though still good results with the harder steels. Super Blue, despite being quite hard by my understanding, actually had absolutely stellar results. My SB Endura is now so sharp I'm scared to do more shave testing with it.
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I use a Lansky 8" alumina ceramic rod with a strop for most of my knives to keep them stupidly sharp.
I've found that the thinner ground blades respond well to the ceramic rod. Even harder steels will respond,but it takes much longer and it's not worth my time to use the ceramic only.
What's nice about it,is that I'm not using my KME near as much and I've gone back to free hand sharpening
 
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