Stropped edge maintenance

H

Haikonen

Joined
Nov 10, 2019
Messages
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Hello all and thank you about great discussion forum for knife sharpening. I have been sharpening knives few years now (just few knives/year) with my King 800/4000 whetstone. I can shave after 800 grit and even easier after 4000 stone. The reason why I have been interested to this sharpening is that I want to see how easy the fish filleting can be with _really_ sharp knife. Mainly I am interested to sharpen the fillet knife of course. Fishing is just my hobby though. So I am not any pro in filleting and definitely not in sharpening.

I have been very satisfied ceramic honing rod for maintaining the sharpness. You can see the rod I use if you put search field on Ebay"10 inch Ceramic Sharpening Steel, Honing Rod with Hanging Loop". (Somehow I can not link the address without adding over 1000 marks from internet address.)

Despite the fact that I have been satisfied of the sharpness of knife I decided to try stropping as well. I bought Luxor paste 0.5µ particle side from here:https://verkkokauppa.rasmussen.fi/Product/ItemDetail/442B-LUXOR-YELLOW

It would be nice to know if you have any experiences about this product and do you know are the particle sizes homogenious in this product?

I tried this once just by putting this wax to cardboard and stropping the blade dozen time for both sides. I have to say that I have never had so sharp knife what I got after this stropping try even though I did it without decent leather strop.

My question now is that how I am going to maintain the stropped blade? The Luxor wax grit must be over 10000 grit and if I maintain the edge with my current ceramic rod which grit I do not know do I actually loose the sharpness I managed to get after stropping? Does anyone know what the ceramic rod grit actually is and what is the correct way to maintain stropped edge sharpness without loosing it sharpness? This ceramic rod takes a bit material away but the biggest benefit in that is capability to realign the edge.

I wish my questions make sense to you.
 
Indeed you just strop it more to maintain it. The grit of the ceramic rod is probably somewhere around 1200-2400. If you let your stropped edge get too dull to refresh it by stropping, the ceramic rod (with very very light pressure) is a reasonable next step.
 
Thanks for replies. Only bad thing is that stropping is a bit more difficult to do while filleting fishes than using the ceramic rod. I am not saying stropping is impossible either but honing rod is very convenient. Not sure though how long the stropping edge will last after filleting fish bones. Ihave not tried that yet with my stropped knife.

I read somewhere that someone is using also smooth steel without any curves on it. Can that be used to realigning or can I smooth up my current ceramic rod so that it will just fix my edge straight without removing material?
 
You might be right that I am over thinking this issue but as I mentioned I have managed to fillet fishes OK with current set (800/4000grit/ceramic rod) but I want to try if even more polished edge makes filleting easier. Mainly I fillet perch fishes which are usually 200-400g size.

I just look Risto Kosonen's videos about filleting and at least he mention that he uses polishing machine for his fillet knives. If you look first two videos here (videos 2 and 3 for perch and pikes):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYwGO-lOt814LnqdrnesxgKts8Kqfmn1B

you can easily see that his knife is really "push cutting" sharp. This man passed away few years ago but won several times national fish cleaning competitions. He managed to make this to look so damn easy and it is not just because of razor sharp knife.
 
Haikonen said:
You might be right that I am over thinking this issue but as I mentioned I have managed to fillet fishes OK with current set (800/4000grit/ceramic rod) but I want to try if even more polished edge makes filleting easier. Mainly I fillet perch fishes which are usually 200-400g size.

I just look Risto Kosonen's videos about filleting and at least he mention that he uses polishing machine for his fillet knives. If you look first two videos here (videos 2 and 3 for perch and pikes):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYwGO-lOt814LnqdrnesxgKts8Kqfmn1B

you can easily see that his knife is really "push cutting" sharp. This man passed away few years ago but won several times national fish cleaning competitions. He managed to make this to look so damn easy and it is not just because of razor sharp knife.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing those vids, that gentleman is good at what he does.
 
Rasmus80 said:
The whole hair-popping/screaming sharp edge thing, is usually overrated in day to day tasks.
Click to expand...

A frequent technique for a paring knife is to use one’s thumb as a stop when cutting through small foods in hand. A razor sharp edge will certainly cut into a finger. Unless very calloused anyway.
 
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