Chef Knife Sharpening Tools – Part I
There are several tools used to sharpen a chef knife.
They are all used in a sequence that when the whole sharpening
process is complete, and if done correctly, the blade of your knife
is as
sharp as a razor blade.
The tools include Whetstones of different grits, a steel rod
sharpener
and optionally a leather strap.
Let's start with the
Whetstone.
Each Whetstone has a certain Grit value. The Grit value tell
us how
course or how fine the stone is.
If you use a Whetstone with a very low grit value, you will break
the edge of your blade.
If you use a whetstone with a grit value higher than necessary,
the
knife will not get sharpened.
The correct way to sharpen your knife, is to use several stone with
different grit values. Start from the lowest, and move up gradually,
until
you get to the highest value.
A good grit value for the first whetstone to use is between 200 –
300 grit.
Then move up to 1000 grit.
For a normal sharpening process, this should be enough. If you want
to
continue, you can use a 3000 grit whetstone and up to 5000 grit
value as well.
Every time you move up a scale, the blade edge is sharpened to a
thinner
layer, thus making it sharper.
The next part is about using a Whetstone correctly.
Follow these links to the other parts of
the article:
The Tools for sharpening your chef knife
The Whetstone
The Steel Rod Sharpener
The Leather Strap and Sharpening Tips
