I've never sharpened a knife before but want to learn how. Suggestions on what to buy?

Retired45 said:
When I was learning to sharpen I bought a Norton combo stone and a Sharpe. A $4 knife at Wal-Mart was just the ticket. YouTube videos and a lot of practice and now I can sharpen pretty well but still learning. Rewarding to be able to do it yourself.
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Yes,this!
Learning to sharpen,cheap knives and a sharpe are a must have. Watching some videos and a little practice,I was doing a good job in just a week or so.Soon,muscle memory takes over and you are well on your way.I have the Norton Combo stone along with Arkansas but I have gotten away from the oil and put all my efforts into using water stones,either splash and go's,soakers or even Japanese Natural stones.I like the feel and feedback you get from such stones.These offer the most rewarding and pleasing results.Only one problem though.I tend to buy more knives because I need something to sharpen.;)
 
Retired45 said:
When I was learning to sharpen I bought a Norton combo stone and a Sharpe. A $4 knife at Wal-Mart was just the ticket. YouTube videos and a lot of practice and now I can sharpen pretty well but still learning. Rewarding to be able to do it yourself.
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Yes, if you want to learn how to sharpen this is a good route.
Coarse/medium stone and cheap knife, mark the bevels with sharpie and Match the angle, the grind until you raise a burr change side grind until you raise a burr, lighten the pressure alternating sides until you cannot see the burr. At this point you should be slicing printer paper.
Finish with some compound on a strop.
From there you can start exploring if you want to do so.
 
It is best to learn on bench stones. As mentioned, I would suggest you get the Norton India stone (8" I believe) which has coarse and fairly fine sides. Use some WD-40 as the lubricant. Pay attention to your angles which sharpening. If you don't, it can get frustrating. Cost <$20.

For really hard steels, I like the DMT DuoSharp approach with coarse and fine sides. Don't press down with the blade thinking it will sharpen faster; it only leads to knocking out the diamonds. These are fairly expensive, but worth it. Eventually get another with fine and very fine sides. You're pretty well set.

If you want "extreme sharpness" the easiest way to get that is with a strop. As mentioned, use it after you are fairly satisfied with the edge you have gotten with the bench stone.
 
The only oil my oil stones see is Mineral Oil since often times my knives have to go through food products. You can get the food safe Mineral oil at the local drug store. For diamond plates,I use a mixture of water and Dawn dish soap.
As strops go,I again have many different kinds,bulsa wood,Nanocloth,horse butt,cow,and Kangaroo.Kangaroo being the very best and these can be loaded with either diamond sprays,emulsions or pastes. Through trial and error,I find a good quality cow leather and the black,green and white compounds to be very useful for my outdoor knives. I like the compounds by Bark River the best.Get a two sided strop and load one side with the black and the other side with the green and this will do you good.Much cheaper then the diamond sprays and emulsions too.
 
Since you are a beginner I would suggest no diamond stones unless your only knives are 10v or Maxamet. Diamonds are way too aggressive and fast to learn easily on.

A Sharpmaker is excellent if you want the system route.
If you want freehand I would go with a Norton Crystolon combo stone and a King 1K/6K combo.

With those 2 combination stones you can tackle most blades.
 
By hand as far as I'm concerned diamods are the only way to go. I wouldnt waste my time on anything slower. I learned by hand cuz thats all there was readily available 40 yrs ago.
But get the angle off a little half way thru and youll be taking extra strokes to make up for it.
I like the dmt aligner as it helps remove the human error and i am human.
These days i use power tools saves a whole lot of time.
 
325 DMT. Once you get that down then you need to learn to strop. Or you can get a paper wheel setup.(there's a sticky in this forum worth reading if interested) Whatever you decide don't use your best knives. You may screw a few up before you figure it out.
 
I guess I wouldnt mind trying to freehand it. I have always thought it was a cool skill to learn. I do have several beater knives I can use to learn on too. What combo stone would you recommend? I wont need several stones will I? I had no idea it was such an involved subject, lol. I am honestly thinking about saving my money up for an Edge Pro or Apex or whatever now. Thanks a lot for all the help.
 
whatshouldiget said:
I guess I wouldnt mind trying to freehand it. I have always thought it was a cool skill to learn. I do have several beater knives I can use to learn on too. What combo stone would you recommend? I wont need several stones will I? I had no idea it was such an involved subject, lol. I am honestly thinking about saving my money up for an Edge Pro or Apex or whatever now. Thanks a lot for all the help.
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Here an Edge Pro for sale.
https://www.chefknivestogo.com/edgeproapex3.html
While you are on the site,look around at the different stones they offer.You can upgrade the Edge Pro to more stones of a different kind also.Lots of ways you can go.And yes,sharpening can get quite involved but it needs not to be.
Here is a great combo stone and it gets great reviews by many.
https://www.chefknivestogo.com/ceraxcombo1k3k.html

.This will handle all your needs well and really,3000 grit is all you will ever need to go to.Really no need to go beyond that unless you just enjoy seeing what a scary sharp edge is or have straight razors to sharpen but then you are talking many more expensive stones.
Again you will sooner then later need a diamond plate for flattening the stones . CKTG handles those too but I hear the one they sell for about $25 or so bucks does a fine job and everybody seems to be happy.I use the Atoma 140 but they are expensive.
Here's the plate but I was thinking it was a finer grit then 80 grit.
https://www.chefknivestogo.com/ck80grdipl.html
 
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I'll start by saying the universal truth of all activities like this: Skills are way more important than gear. The best golf clubs won't make you a scratch golfer. Decent golf clubs won't get in your way though, while pieces of junk will inhibit your learning process.

You might read a sticky or two here. You might seek out Steve Bottorf's Sharpening Made Easy book, which he has freely available on his web site. Or Chad Ward's EGullet article on how to sharpen knives. Both of those helped me when I was starting out. My Seven Secrets of Sharpening article is a sticky here, but I didn't write it for absolute beginners; I'm not sure I would recommend it yet.

You've been given a ton of recommendations, but I thought I'd break it down into some categories for you to think about and eventually choose from:

1. Bench Stones of various types.
2. Guided systems and clamp systems.
3. Power tools.

Bench stones are great as they give you options and teach you skills that you can transfer to many other sharpening systems and situations. The learning curve is a little steep because it's a seemingly simple process with a bunch of details that make it tricky.

Guided and clamp systems are much more fool proof. But NOT totally fool proof. You WILL have to learn skills to use the guided systems. This includes Edge Pro, KME, Lansky, Wicked Edge, etc. The cool thing is that some of the skills you learn with the guided systems transfer over to freehand. Guided systems will probably be easier overall for you. But they have other tradeoffs like setup and teardown time, limited range of angles, difficulty with clamping bigger or oddly shaped blades, etc.

Power tools will be the fastest option by a huge long shot. Knives that are butter dull will be sharpenable in minutes instead of hours. Of course you can also screw up more easily and do damage much more quickly. There's also setup time to consider with these unless you plan on a dedicated bench space. Which is a consideration of it's own. I own a Work Sharp Ken Onion and I like it. But I don't use it as often as other stuff because of the setup time. It's also not as precise as a hand powered system.

Your first choice might be which one of these three you want to use. Before (or concurrent with) that, you should probably go do some reading, or at LEAST watch some good instructional videos.

Brian.
 
whatshouldiget said:
I guess I wouldnt mind trying to freehand it. I have always thought it was a cool skill to learn. I do have several beater knives I can use to learn on too. What combo stone would you recommend? I wont need several stones will I? I had no idea it was such an involved subject, lol. I am honestly thinking about saving my money up for an Edge Pro or Apex or whatever now. Thanks a lot for all the help.
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It is only as involved as you make it. A course diamond stone like a blue dmt and a steel are more than sufficient to shave the hair on your arm, and if you can do that it should be ample sharp for near all your needs. Just depends on your goals, desires, and how anal you are about things.
I have a cheap steel that came with the Chicago cutlery cheap kitchen knife set and a nice more expensive one I purchased that a butcher recommended, and I like the cheap rod better. Those cheap ceramic rods work well also.
 
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