The Micro Bevel and Sharpening

[chefboy2160]

Just a quick question and thought for all of you sharpening gurus.Im a chef and almost all cutting in the kitchen is slicing so I am starting to think in a different direction as far as sharpening the knife.What do you think about a 15 degree back bevel polished with mousepad and fine sandpaper up to 2000 grit and stropped with compound on a leather strop for starters.Then take the blade on a medium ceramic stone and with just the weight of the blade apply a 20 degree micro bevel with maybe 5 or ten blade weight strokes and then finish with a fine steel? My thoughts are the micro bevel with the bigger teeth will grab better and the polished back bevel will slide through the product better . What are your thoughts on this? Thanks,Doug..

 

[smegs]

I think that would work good for a boning knife. For a chefs knife, I would think the opposite would work better. Other than tomatoes, most of my work with a chefs knife are push cuts. A higher polish is better for push cuts. Interesting idea. My boning knives usually get honed at 12 degrees with a 120 hone on the apex. The edge will get steeled till it's time to get honed again. The chefs knives get a 15 degree finish hone at 320. That seems to be the limit to me for polish while still being aggressive.

 

[Cougar Allen]

Moving ...

 

[me2]

For a purely slicing cut, you may just want to leave it with the courser sandpaper, like 220 or 320. I can get my knives sharp enough to shave hair off my arm in a slicing motion with 220 grit paper. They dont push cut very well, as you might imagine, but they are very aggressive.

 

[HoB]

I would make stropping my last step for a polished edge and not strop an unpolished edge. Personally, I am a big fan of highly polished edges for both push and pull cuts. If the knife is sharp enough it will perform both tasks very well, but the polished edge will make a cleaner cut and will last longer, especially if stropped occasionally in between uses.

 

[Blop]

I think that´s to much work for an effort, hard to notice.

In your shoes i would stay with a ordinary two bevel blade and just keep an eye to take away the burr.

 

[chefboy2160]

Well I ran a test this week on identical knives 10" chefs with one having a polished micro and one being finished on a medium grit and I could tell a difference pretty quickly.The polished edge worked better at everything and lasted longer between steelings. Maybe that more toothy blade would be better for cutting rope but not from what I experienced this week.
Well,at least I know how I am going to maintain my blades from now on.Thanks all,Doug..........................

 

[Jeff Clark]

If there was any advantage to be observed using your medium grit finish you probably smoothed it away when you did your steeling. Your microbevel may not have really got up to the edge like you would expect. With your stropping and sharpening on a mouse pad your final polished edge is probably slightly rounded to over 20 degrees.

To make the test representative I think you need to do a few more strokes on your medium grit hone and don't steel it after you are done. You might do just a couple light stropping strokes on plain leather instead. This will give you a toothy finish. Make sure your hone is clean and has sharp grit. Diamond is best for this. A freshly scrubbed aluminum oxide hone should work. I assume that you are primarily doing those light honing strokes edge-forwards.