How To Get Sharp Knives

[Luke Dupont]

Okay, so I just did a little test to see if I was perhaps forgetting the importance of muscle memory:

I tried sharpening left-handed.

Now, I'm pretty ambidextrious, but I found this to be really hard indeed. As we know, muscle memory in one hand is not transferred automatically to the other.

I can confirm: sharpening free hand before you have gained the muscle memory you need (in the hand you're using) is difficult. My right hand knows intimately the angle at which my tools are sharpened and cut at, and can hold that angle, or a steeper or shallower version of it, consistently and with surprising precision, whereas I'm having a difficult time even holding a consistent angle with each stroke in my left hand, especially as I roll to address curvature in a blade.

This is a bit humbling. It's amazing how quickly we can forget the difficulties a beginner faces once we have a particular skill ingrained to the point that it's automatic. We tend to think it was always that easy...

So in short, the answer is just lots of practice.

 

[Papilio]

Buy new ones.

Ha ha. Well, a new one doesn't mean it is sharp

Take a breather for a few days. Fall back & regroup. Eat well and sleep well. Let it all percolate in your mind while doing so. But don't stress over it. The pieces will begin to fall into place if you allow yourself the time & the rest to let it happen. I'm pretty sure everyone goes through this learning curve in a similarly frustrating fashion. I know I did. It'll start to click, in time.

When I was learning, I spent a fair portion of the 'off-time' just stropping a blade on a paddle strop with green compound, while relaxing in an easy chair in front of the TV and sipping from a glass of wine after a good dinner. Just that simple routine of sort of casually, almost absent-mindedly stropping that blade managed to get my hands conditioned to the feel of the bevels in flush contact. Didn't realize how valuable that would be at the time. But I discovered later that my hands had 'learned' much of the touch for sharpening by doing this, even if my conscious mind still felt like I didn't know how to progress. It just happened, and that surprised me.

That is excellent advice. Watching TV, listening music, listening to the rustling wind in the foliage, watching birds...some kind of distraction while you sharpen a knife can be very helpful. Preventing you from thinking too much. But don't be too absent, or you will cut your fingers (to speak from my own experience, many times )

Sometimes I love to sharpen a knife and it is super relaxing.
And sometimes I do stress myself. It doesn't work well than.
Maybe you put all that stuff away and wait until you are in the right mood. When you are keen on sharpening a knife.
Time will tell.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Ha ha. Well, a new one doesn't mean it is sharp



That is excellent advice. Watching TV, listening music, listening to the rustling wind in the foliage, watching birds...some kind of distraction while you sharpen a knife can be very helpful. Preventing you from thinking too much. But don't be too absent, or you will cut your fingers (to speak from my own experience, many times )

Sometimes I love to sharpen a knife and it is super relaxing.
And sometimes I do stress myself. It doesn't work well than.
Maybe you put all that stuff away and wait until you are in the right mood. When you are keen on sharpening a knife.
Time will tell.

Being 'in the right mood' for sharpening is BIG, for me. I don't do it as well if I try to force it, according to a deliberate plan or agenda.

There are times when I feel a certain restlessness, when I just pick up a blade and a stone and get to it. It always seems to be driven by some non-specific, anxious energy - and I feel a sudden compulsion to go for it. My hands just do what they're trained to do in those moments, and I don't have to force it. Kind of like a switch gets flipped and the sharpening machine is ON, all of a sudden. Results are always better when I just allow those moments to come to me and I heed them when they do.

I've noticed I work the same way with other tasks, as well. Things just rattle around in my brain for awhile, sometimes for days or weeks. Then something CLICKS and it's time to get busy.

 

[3D Anvil]

Okay, so I just did a little test to see if I was perhaps forgetting the importance of muscle memory:

I tried sharpening left-handed.

Yeah, I think it's about 99% muscle memory and the ability to maintain a consistent angle. If your angle varies by a couple degrees every stroke you're just fighting against yourself. It's something I've really struggled with and it's why I ended up going with a KME system, but I intend to keep plugging away at the bench stones and hopefully get proficient with them one day.

 

[David Mary]

I sharpened this knife a few months ago, and it's working great on this evening's dinner prep.

This knife needs to come and see me for some Micarta ASAP.

 

[rm41400]

Just want to say sharpening can be humbling for most of us (maybe just some of us?).

I’ve been sharpening shears professionally(side job/hobby $25-30 each) for barbers, groomers & beauticians since Covid started. I have the perfect setup and can give a better than factory edge on very high end scissors/shears ($300-1500). Not my opinion but those that pay me.

I have a good understanding of what it takes to give a superb edge on a chisel back or convexed/ chiseled flat back edge. However…. Freehand , double edged (traditional knife) sharpening on water-stones can be elusive and less scientific.

I can get “standing paper chop” sharp on super high end kitchen knifes but fight with nice pocket knives. Haven’t solved my personal riddle yet but it’s good therapy now.

I’ve noticed that the house needs to be super quiet and I need to be in-tune to feedback for freehand knife sharpening to work out properly.

Realistically, sharpening knives reliably freehand is more of a challenge than necessity.

I can get a sharp knife on my Tormek 8 or Wicked edge but I’m chasing the personal skill like you.

So far it’s been quite satisfying. Keep up your curiosity and effort and you will be pleased with the results

 

[Luke Dupont]

Just want to say sharpening can be humbling for most of us (maybe just some of us?).

I’ve been sharpening shears professionally(side job/hobby $25-30 each) for barbers, groomers & beauticians since Covid started. I have the perfect setup and can give a better than factory edge on very high end scissors/shears ($300-1500). Not my opinion but those that pay me.

I have a good understanding of what it takes to give a superb edge on a chisel back or convexed/ chiseled flat back edge. However…. Freehand , double edged (traditional knife) sharpening on water-stones can be elusive and less scientific.

I can get “standing paper chop” sharp on super high end kitchen knifes but fight with nice pocket knives. Haven’t solved my personal riddle yet but it’s good therapy now.

I’ve noticed that the house needs to be super quiet and I need to be in-tune to feedback for freehand knife sharpening to work out properly.

Realistically, sharpening knives reliably freehand is more of a challenge than necessity.

I can get a sharp knife on my Tormek 8 or Wicked edge but I’m chasing the personal skill like you.

So far it’s been quite satisfying. Keep up your curiosity and effort and you will be pleased with the results

I also started with tools first, then knives, and like you, I had quite a bit of trouble with pocket knives at first. I don't know why, they're just awkward at times.
These days I'm very confident in my ability to sharpen anything from tools to pocket knives to razors, but I think that's a direct result of all the troubles I've had in the process. I've learned through experience the kind of problems I might encounter and how to address them, and it's different for each tool, though the concepts are all the same. That, and muscle memory and little things you pick up along the way.

It's hard for me to even say what I do differently these days, and it really depends on the particular knife, or steel, etc. How it's profiled, the particular type of steel and angle of the cutting edge, and the shape and flexibility of the blade can all make things challenging at times, and these things seem to be much more pronounced in pocket knives.

One caveat, also, is that some modern steels popular in pocket knives just won't take a super keen edge, and will take a fine edge only with a lot of hassle -- that much I will say.

I don't know about saying that free hand knife sharpening is more challenging than necessary though. It takes practice, like anything, but I find it totally necessary for myself: I don't want to, and don't have room or money for some bulky mechanized system, and I also need to be able to sharpen knives in the field when I'm camping / bushcrafting / backpacking. Learning to freehand frees me up to just use the same simple stones that I use for everything else, and takes the chore out of sharpening when I can just touch up a blade in a few passes on a stone. It also allows me to conveniently touch up or repair a blade in the field, even using, at times, stones or other natural materials you can find. That sort of skill is extremely handy and well worth the effort.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Yeah, I think it's about 99% muscle memory and the ability to maintain a consistent angle. If your angle varies by a couple degrees every stroke you're just fighting against yourself. It's something I've really struggled with and it's why I ended up going with a KME system, but I intend to keep plugging away at the bench stones and hopefully get proficient with them one day.

There's sort of a trick to it, in the sense that you CAN allow for a couple degrees' of movement in the angle, so long as the variation in angle happens only behind the edge.

The key to freehand sharpening is in feeling the difference between contact behind the edge vs. contact at the edge itself. The feel changes from something kind of 'slippery' when the bevels behind the edge are in contact, to a much more aggressive grinding feel when the apex just begins to 'bite' into the stone. If your hearing is good*, you can hear the difference too. If one can train the fingertips (and/or the ears) to detect when that's happening, at the threshold between 'slippery' and 'aggressive', an immediate, split-second correction can be made to avoid raising the angle too high and turning the apex into the stone and rounding it off or otherwise blunting it.

What this all means is, it's OK to have some of that natural freehand variation in angle and the edge can still be made incredibly sharp in doing so. It just means the so-called 'bevels' behind the apex won't be perfectly flat, but instead convexed a bit. That's the natural result of freehand sharpening anyway, to greater or lesser degree (pun not intended, but it works). Knowing how to detect contact with the very 'cheeks' of the apex is what makes the difference, and it allows the sharpener to protect the keenness of the edge in the process. That's what freehand is really about, and not really about maintaining an absolutely perfect & steady angle (which is essentially impossible if done freehand, although some can get pretty close, at least in the near-flat appearance of the bevels).

* - I emphasize both feeling and/or hearing for the difference in contact, simply because I can't rely on my ears anymore for that. Too much hearing loss for me, in recent years - so I rely heavily on the feel instead, anymore. Developing the feel in the fingertips also means one doesn't have to rely as much on the eyes either, to see when the apex is in contact. My eyes aren't that good anymore, either. That's aging for ya. Sigh...

 

[Luke Dupont]

There's sort of a trick to it, in the sense that you CAN allow for a couple degrees' of movement in the angle, so long as the variation in angle happens only behind the edge.

The key to freehand sharpening is in feeling the difference between contact behind the edge vs. contact at the edge itself. The feel changes from something kind of 'slippery' when the bevels behind the edge are in contact, to a much more aggressive grinding feel when the apex just begins to 'bite' into the stone. If your hearing is good*, you can hear the difference too. If one can train the fingertips (and/or the ears) to detect when that's happening, at the threshold between 'slippery' and 'aggressive', an immediate, split-second correction can be made to avoid raising the angle too high and turning the apex into the stone and rounding it off or otherwise blunting it.

What this all means is, it's OK to have some of that natural freehand variation in angle and the edge can still be made incredibly sharp in doing so. It just means the so-called 'bevels' behind the apex won't be perfectly flat, but instead convexed a bit. That's the natural result of freehand sharpening anyway, to greater or lesser degree (pun not intended, but it works). Knowing how to detect contact with the very 'cheeks' of the apex is what makes the difference, and it allows the sharpener to protect the keenness of the edge in the process. That's what freehand is really about, and not really about maintaining an absolutely perfect & steady angle (which is essentially impossible if done freehand, although some can get pretty close, at least in the near-flat appearance of the bevels).

* - I emphasize both feeling and/or hearing for the difference in contact, simply because I can't rely on my ears anymore for that. Too much hearing loss for me, in recent years - so I rely heavily on the feel instead, anymore. Developing the feel in the fingertips also means one doesn't have to rely as much on the eyes either, to see when the apex is in contact. My eyes aren't that good anymore, either. That's aging for ya. Sigh...

This is spot on. I should have made this point as well, because it's the exact realization that helped me the most in regards to angle when learning to sharpen.

Someone taught me how to sharpen a chisel with a convex grind, which means the angle changes! And, that experience helped me tremendously in my thinking process, as I realized what matters is the maximum angle, or the angle at which the tool would cut. By focusing on getting close to, but NOT exceeding that angle even for a moment, I was able to start getting good results.

The same applied for knives. Chose an angle. You can go under that angle as much as you want -- no danger there, you just get a nice convex bevel (which I quite like on many tools, personally!). The danger comes in exceeding your target angle. So chose some angle for your knife to cut at, and be very careful not to lift above that. The tendency is to keep lifting and lifting to get to the edge, and then realize you lifted too much and go back down, at which point you've totally screwed up and need to start all over again. Don't do that -- just be super careful not to exceed your target angle (which you can just feel for, or cut out a wedge and put it next to your stone for reference/a reminder) and you will do just fine.

And I think you're right about feeling as well. At first, it's difficult to do, and with some tools and some stones you can't always feel it very well, but with experience you'll be able to "tune in" to the feeling of the stone where the bevel is making contact with it. As you said, there's a sort of slippery feeling when skating on the bevel, and a more sticking, cutting feeling when at the apex. It can be quite subtle depending on the stone and the tool, but it's there, and something that I pay close attention to.

With time it will become automatic, but this is how to you should be thinking about it in the beginning.