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What did you hone today? -Knife and tool edition

And some more work today, light touch-up on my own stuff.
I used a vintage coticule to sharpen a Watanabe petty and also to reset the bevel on a cracked Joseph Rogers that I use as a lamé for scoring sourdough bread. Then I used a True Hard Ark to finish the razor.

So a strange thing I realized. I am perfectly comfortable using whetstones freehand on my Japanese knives, but nowhere near as comfortable working with German steel in that manner. I think a key is that I keep my Japanese knives very sharp - generating a burr rarely takes more than a minute or two. But when I am sharpening German steel, it’s usually a relative’s knife that is way overdue for sharpening. Which means that I have to hold the bevel angle stable for a longer period of time.
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And some more work today, light touch-up on my own stuff.
I used a vintage coticule to sharpen a Watanabe petty and also to reset the bevel on a cracked Joseph Rogers that I use as a lamé for scoring sourdough bread. Then I used a True Hard Ark to finish the razor.

So a strange thing I realized. I am perfectly comfortable using whetstones freehand on my Japanese knives, but nowhere near as comfortable working with German steel in that manner. I think a key is that I keep my Japanese knives very sharp - generating a burr rarely takes more than a minute or two. But when I am sharpening German steel, it’s usually a relative’s knife that is way overdue for sharpening. Which means that I have to hold the bevel angle stable for a longer period of time.
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Yeah - this is absolutely the case - posh knives are far easier to sharpen than cheaper stuff. Combination of thinner grinds and better steels.

In my pic just above; if those had all been fancy Japanese knives in decent condition, I probably could’ve done 2 or 3x that number, in the same time, and to a higher level.

(So whenever someone says to me they’re thinking of learning on their cheap knives, and once they’re good enough ‘advancing’ onto the posher ones - I tell them to do it the other way round. You can learn the basics of sharpening quite quickly if you’ve got a good knife. But if you’re trying to do it on a beaten up bit of western stainless then you’re just going to have no idea what’s going on, or what you’re doing wrong.)
 

Legion

Staff member
Yeah - this is absolutely the case - posh knives are far easier to sharpen than cheaper stuff. Combination of thinner grinds and better steels.

In my pic just above; if those had all been fancy Japanese knives in decent condition, I probably could’ve done 2 or 3x that number, in the same time, and to a higher level.

(So whenever someone says to me they’re thinking of learning on their cheap knives, and once they’re good enough ‘advancing’ onto the posher ones - I tell them to do it the other way round. You can learn the basics of sharpening quite quickly if you’ve got a good knife. But if you’re trying to do it on a beaten up bit of western stainless then you’re just going to have no idea what’s going on, or what you’re doing wrong.)
This is very true. I do a lot more sharpening on cheap stainless knives, just because they are the ones that are always getting blunted or damaged in my house. “Dads knives” get looked after, so they don’t need sharpening as often.

On a plus side, when I do sharpen a good knife, it is an absolute breeze to get a good edge, because I’ve had so much practice with the junkers.

It’s a tricky thing. I need a couple of good stainless knives for the wife. I have a couple that are ok, but even expensive stainless knives these days are hard to sharpen, since they seem to all be made with steels designed 100% for edge retention, and 0% ease of sharpening.
 
That does seem to be the trend for modern stainless. My most recent edc knife is a pain to sharpen, unfortunately the edge retention is garbage too but my edc knives get a lot of abuse. It also does not seem to like natural stones, usually it sees a fine india.
 

Legion

Staff member
Today I finally got to sharpening the axe I have been working on for the last week here,


Started with a file to remove the chips, then a SIC stone, then a India, then a Turkey.

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Most of my kitchen knifes are cheap stainless. They are much easier to maintain after my wife and kids are done with them then more brittle higher end knifes.
Some day i might invest in nice Japanese knifes, but fresh edges on stainless can be quite nice.
I have finally started to fine tune effective deburring techniques, which makes sharpening much easier and consistent.

If you have not tried them yet, Vetrified diamond plates, combined with a coticule is a really simple and fast way to sharpen a soft stainless knife. My Shapton glass stones are hardly used anymore. High fracture toughness in soft stainless makes diamonds work really.
 
Beautiful knives guys! I'll have to get my little 4 knife set up here next time I hit them with the rust eraser and a giant hunk of nakayama.
 
How long did it take to do that lot?

Also, is every ebay, flee market, junk shop vintage hone you buy now a tax deductible business expense? The occasional "business" trip to Whales? Got to keep up with all the latest innovations in slate hone mining.


That David is a very good point indeed, I hadn't thought about that. Previously I've always had PAYE tax-done-for-you-by-the-taxman type tax. I've just bought some stuff from JNS which avoided being stopped for duty and VAT at customs, I wonder if HMRC departments talk to each other enough to notice...

That lot took about 7 hours, which was quite good actually because most of them required chip removal / reprofiling / correcting finger guards.
 
Found my century old skinning knife that i made a decade ago. The steel if from an old hand saw from around the turn of the century. Cherry handle. It is a Scandinavian grind that had become convex over time. Started with an old norton course sic fine india combo. Reset the bevel on the sic, then started refining on the fine india. Next was pyrenees then bbw. Still have a little more work to do but this old simple steel takes and amazing edge. Pretty sure the my skill is going to be the limiting factor on how fine i can get this edge.
 

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Found my century old skinning knife that i made a decade ago. The steel if from an old hand saw from around the turn of the century. Cherry handle. It is a Scandinavian grind that had become convex over time. Started with an old norton course sic fine india combo. Reset the bevel on the sic, then started refining on the fine india. Next was pyrenees then bbw. Still have a little more work to do but this old simple steel takes and amazing edge. Pretty sure the my skill is going to be the limiting factor on how fine i can get this edge.
Beautiful nessmuk design. My modern outdoor knife is a near identical shape.

It's a superb looking and incredibly practical design for all sorts of outdoor tasks.
 

Legion

Staff member
Found my century old skinning knife that i made a decade ago. The steel if from an old hand saw from around the turn of the century. Cherry handle. It is a Scandinavian grind that had become convex over time. Started with an old norton course sic fine india combo. Reset the bevel on the sic, then started refining on the fine india. Next was pyrenees then bbw. Still have a little more work to do but this old simple steel takes and amazing edge. Pretty sure the my skill is going to be the limiting factor on how fine i can get this edge.

Beautiful nessmuk design. My modern outdoor knife is a near identical shape.

It's a superb looking and incredibly practical design for all sorts of outdoor tasks.
I have a Nessmuk style that I modified out of a skinning knife. I've never used it for skinning or hunting (I don't really get the opportunity to hunt these days), but one day I'd like to try it out for that to see how it performs. It seems like the shape would work well for that.
 

Tirvine

ancient grey sweatophile
I like the aesthetics 🤷‍♂️ and the ergos aren’t too bad really albeit obviously nowhere near the best (although in my work as a cook I’ve been surprised by how little ergos on handles matter to me). I think of those old 5 and 6 pin handles on the 19th century type knives as the Western equivalent of the Japanese Ho Wood knife handles, pure utility.
Another cook here, agreeing that ergonomics are generally not a big deal. I will say, however, that Global handles take some acclimation.
 

Tirvine

ancient grey sweatophile
According to the guys on the kitchen knife forum, they are not a walk in the park to hone either.
I have read that they are not beveled. They supposedly are some form of convex edge. Since their blades are already extremely thin this is moving out of kitchen edge and into the outer fringes od razor edge territory.
 
I have a Nessmuk style that I modified out of a skinning knife. I've never used it for skinning or hunting (I don't really get the opportunity to hunt these days), but one day I'd like to try it out for that to see how it performs. It seems like the shape would work well for that.
Never hunted or skinned with that one either but it is very useful for other things. That curve is a little bit of a pita to sharpen.
 
Finished touching up these 3 today, the small Henckels Pro pairing knife is the only knife I allow my Wife to use, all my other kitchen knives are 100% totally off-limits to her, the larger knife the Sakia Takayuki Super Blue petty 135mm is, without doubt, my all-time favourite blade the steel and edge are amazing, if I could only ever use and own one knife this would be the one.

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