Keeping it sharp

D

DMIKEM

Joined
Sep 15, 2016
Messages
32
I have a Chinese/Japanese cleaver that I use daily for food prep and every day to prep meat for my dogs food, mostly chicken. In the past I always used a steel to tune the blade before getting to the meat but after reading Jay Fisher's pages I used his recommended techniques to sharpen this blade and it is much sharper than it has ever been, But he also says that using steels is a bad thing as it leaves metal in your food if you don't rinse after and it just breaks down the edge. I used to cover my board with a paper bag before cutting the meat up for easy clean up but found it dulled the knife very quickly, so now I just cut to the board and the blade seems to hold it's edge longer.

How do you keep them sharp if they are used daily?

Here is the knife.
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To maintain the kitchen knife daily, yes...a steel is a great option. The butcher's steel will realign the edge that has been rolled over...and is often only recommended for softer steels, like the German stuff, Chicago Cutlery, etc. However, as you repeatedly steel the edge, the edge retention will degrade. Think of a paper clip. Bend that paper clip back and forth a few times and it breaks. That's sorta the idea with steeling an edge. It helps to realign the apex, but doing this over and over will eventually necessitate a sharpening on stones.

However, harder knives, like Japanese kitchen knives for example, the steel will actually chip the edge (tiny chips). So we often recommend to NOT use a traditional butcher's steel on those hard, thin edges. Rather....a CERAMIC butcher's rod will handle this task exceptionally well.

Besides using a regular steel on softer steels, and a ceramic rod on harder steels, many simply have a leather strop handy, often loaded with some sort of abrasive/polish like chromium oxide. The strop is used by a lot of folks for daily maintenance.

Or a fine grit stone!
 
I have a soft and hard strop in the kitchen, white on one side and green on the other. Maybe I'll just do that and see how it goes. I never thought of owning a ceramic rod might be something to look into. I have a couple ceramic pull through crock sharpeners but I think those are just gimmicks.
 
I've almost never used a steel on my knives, they might work in a pinch, but will damage hard steel knives.
I keep a stone nearby at all times haha.
 
Not really dull like you are thinking. Just not as keen, when I cut chicken bones a fresh hone just pushes through like semi-frozen meat. After cutting on paper bags for a few days you can feel the blade drag and when I cut the plastic bag open it just is not as effortless as after a fresh hone.

scott.livesey said:
not sure what kind of steel would go dull from cutting a brown paper bag. I make my kitchen blades hard, Rc62 at least. i like the JewelStik 12" fine diamond bench hone(http://jewelstik.com/hardware-store/diamond-hones), 2 or 3 passes per side and you are good.
scott
Click to expand...
 
Interesting, I use a chinese cleaver fairly often. They are typically softer steel, a wide bevel, so rarely chip. They do need frequent sharpening however. I use a soft whetstone once every few weeks, and strop after ever use and it stays sharp. But, I have never cut paper bags with it. I wonder what it is about them that dulled the knife?
 
I have been running it over some 1500 grit wet dry paper before or after each use now and it is working well. I tested the edge against some different papers and the brown paper bag will take the edge down after just a few cuts. Newspaper or copy paper no problem.
 
DMIKEM said:
I have been running it over some 1500 grit wet dry paper before or after each use now and it is working well. I tested the edge against some different papers and the brown paper bag will take the edge down after just a few cuts. Newspaper or copy paper no problem.
Click to expand...

Don't cut paper bags with that knife. I keep a 10V Jeremy Garrison made that is used for all paper, cardboard, plastic ties, etc that I encounter in the kitchen. Works great, hit it on a cbn treated piece of basswood, stays sharp as heck.
Any other problems I can solve for you?..........


Russ
 
One thing to remember is that brown paper bags are usually made from 100% (or near it) recycled paper/stuff. I've found the material to be very abrasive. I think non-recycled paper is 100% cellulose, while recycled brown paper is going to have a lot of foreign particles and fibers in there.
 
So can I use a piece of wood and treat it with white or green metal polish to tune the edge? What types of wood would be best to use?

Also I have used brown bags to put a final polish on edges before so i am fully aware that they are abrasive. I have stopped using them on my cutting board and just take the time to properly clean it after I am done and yes the blades do stay keen much longer.
 
I have read that brown paper contains silica, which will dull a blade fairly quickly.
Tim
 
samuraistuart said:
The butcher's steel will realign the edge that has been rolled over...and is often only recommended for softer steels, like the German stuff, Chicago Cutlery, etc. However, as you repeatedly steel the edge, the edge retention will degrade. Think of a paper clip. Bend that paper clip back and forth a few times and it breaks. That's sorta the idea with steeling an edge. ....a CERAMIC butcher's rod will handle this task exceptionally well.
Click to expand...

This is also my experience: use a butcher's steel on a really hard blade and the result is often a burr on one side, the edge is just bent over. Keep using the butcher's steel on a knife like that and after a while there will be tiny chips along the edge, the result of the paper clip analogy samuraistuart mentions above. With softer knife steels, those used in a vast majority of kitchens in Europe and America, a butcher's steel, used gingerly and at a more pronounced angle than the honing angle, will actually create a microbevel along the very apex of the edge. We've discussed this here often in the past and it still applies, which I can attest to daily in my kitchen. I sharpen my knives on stones at an angle around 15-17°. After using that edge for a while, its keenness decreases and I reach for the butcher's steel. That I use at an angle more like 25°, maybe even 30°, very softly and with many alternating strokes. The results are amazing. My knives are touched up with a butcher's steel very often, even every ten minutes when I'm doing a lot of slicing, and they stay very sharp for months before having to return to a stone. Under a microscope or strong magnifying glass you can clearly see the microbevel that has been created by the butcher's steel. Way back in 1977, John Juranitch published photographs of knife edges that had been run across a butcher's steel and commented that they appeared to have been melted and resembled the frosting on a cake. I think the butcher's steel, when applied to such a narrow section of the edge, simply removes steel the same way a stone does. Softer steel is being scraped along harder steel, and something is going to give way there. In the process, heat is also being created, so maybe there is some melting going on. Is there a metallurgist out there that can offer us more advice?

In the "Microbevel" thread found here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/634739-Microbevels/page7
and in HeavyHanded's thread on steeling http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-steeling?highlight=quick+close+look+steeling you can read more on this.

To improve results, I recommend a flat or oval butcher's steel. These apply the least amount of pressure to the blade and help to avoid a burr. Again, this applies to softer stainless steels. With harder steels I do the very same thing, but use a fine ceramic rod (at 25-30°) to touch them up instead of a butcher's steel.
 
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