Anyone know of a good resource for learning how to use a whetstone correctly? Watched a bunch of YouTube videos and everyone does it differently, half of them are zoomer clickbait shit where they clearly just learned. I picked up a Shapton 1500/mid stone and want to try it on my dull cheap kitchen knives before using it on my globals. Thanks.
Hey man, I have quite a bit of sharpening experience and even sharpened professionally using waterstones for a while. I have use the Lansky system, the Edge Pro, the Wicked Edge, and the K02 before ultimately moving to benchstones and freehand only.
The following are some bits of advice from my experience:
- BASICS: grind one side exclusively until you develop an even burr across the edge, flip it, repeat it on the other side, deburr via some kind of stropping method, and sharpening at the lowest angle that your knife can handle given the work you will be asking of it.
- Your Shapton 1500 and a bare leather strop are enough to produce a hair whittling edge. You already have all of the tools you need to achieve maximum practical sharpness and I can prove that if need be. Don't get caught up in gear acquisition. You're already good to go.
- Practice on a cheapo, just like you have said you intended to,
but cheapshit knives will have imperfections in their profile grinds (called the primary bevel, not the secondary, or edge bevel) which will be undetectable to the naked eye. These imperfections will reveal themselves when you sharpen the edge at a consistent angle, especially a low angle, as for kitchen cutlery. Your edge bevel will appear wavy even if you have perfect sharpening form, simply due to uneven profile grinding and warping of the blade. Ergo, do not use this as evidence that you are sharpening incorrectly and cannot figure out how. Sometimes, it really isn't your fault. Use a cheapo knife to train your muscle memory and to achieve testable sharpness (i.e. slicing paper, shaving hair, or whittling hair) and do not at all worry about the aesthetics of the knife/edge bevel. To be excruciatingly clear,
only focus on sharpness results because cheap knives cannot be trusted to assess your work via aesthetic results.
- I emphatically suggest learning to sharpen ambidextrously. It is the most awkward until you get it down, then you will have the most control over stone-surface wear and you will produce the highest quality edge because you are mirroring the exact same stroke on either side. This will also allow you to use a much wider range of stones without risk of surface gouging as you will have the most consistent stroke, and the stroke you will ultimately use is the least likely to tip-gouge softer stones, as is common when sharpening "the other side" when sharpening only with your strong hand. An ambidextrous approach will also make achieving maximum sharpness via burr-minimization (repeated, single stroke side-swapping) and thus hair-whittling sharpness the quickest and least frustrating. Finally, the symmetry will produce the most aesthetically appealing results which are the most rewarding to achieve albeit not practically necessary.
- Literally just practice a lot. I'd actually recommend that you buy a King 800, 1k, or 1200 to practice on because they legitimately are excellent stones (insofar as the Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla are excellent cars, you understand) and they are dirt cheap and you can practice on it all you want without concern for wearing out your Shapton Pro boi too soon.
- Short scrubbing strokes: better for fast material removal and higher pressure (localized pressure results in less bending of the blade, thereby less overall weirdness in feedback when sharpening)
- Long sweeping strokes: better for smoothing out your edge and lighter pressure. Transition to longer and lighter strokes once you have achieved a burr so that you can make sure to minimize any lateral drift/wobble in the apex of your edge as it moves from heel to tip. This isn't technically necessary but is good form when aiming for the best possible results.
- Pressure per inch of edge length
plummets on flat sections versus curves. When sharpening on a curve, the pressure on the section of edge being abraded--because that section is so small (a tangent point)--the relative pressure rises exponentially compared to the same pressure being used on a flat section of edge. Generally speaking, you will move through your entire sharpening stroke applying the same overall amount of downward pressure with your supporting hand. More pressure means faster abrasion. You need to go heavier with pressure and/or more numerous on overall number of strokes on flat areas of an edge and you need to lighten up on the curves and/or use proportionally fewer strokes so that you abrade the curves and the flats an equivalent amount. This sounds more complicated than it really is: just pay attention to the size of your burr as you go.
- Muscle memory skills require sleep in order to develop. You are literally biologically limited to how much you will be able to progress with this stuff in a single day. Be patient and do some every day. It requires some time.
I will soon be producing some videos on this subject because there is soooo much to consider that it makes it rather overwhelming. I may be able to snap off a quick one for you, if you really wish it. I am pretty busy right now, but the subject of sharpening, and sharpening
properly and
well are rather dear to me.
Anyway, like I said, steps 1-3 are practice, practice, practice, and my
severe recommendation is that you learn an ambidextrous stroke. All other information really just becomes self-evident as you go. Sharpening is, like, a 90-10 skillset. The fundamentals are simple so theoretical knowledge really only takes up about 10% of progressing the skill. The other 90% just comes from doing it a shitload.
www.bladeforums.com
