this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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Sharpening stones.
you need an edge so many times in your life. When you're using scissors, slicing veggies, pruning trees, harvesting mushrooms, posting online, mowing grass, carving wood, cutting roots, trimming nails, scraping stoves/ovens, shaving, digging, trimming, pealing whatever.
There are so many dumb fancy arse awful tools that butcher edges and work in one specific case. No! For millenia people have been grinding edges, it is not difficult to learn it just takes practice.
Modern manufacturing means we can enjoy extremely consistent stones in well characterised grades. Go use some, and enjoy how much less effort life requires when everything that cuts, cuts easily.
On that topic, if you are in a squeeze and don't have a sharpening stone in the kitchen, you can use the bottom rim of a ceramic mug to sharpen a kitchen knife
So what should I look for when buying a sharpening stone? I was planning to buy one to sharpen the knives we have at home, but not sure what I should get and where to get one for a decent price.
you usually work up grits. In general for edges that should end shaving sharp (e.g. kitchen, whirling) below 1k is rough work, profiling work, 1k or so is basic small chip repair etc, 3k is standard sharpen, and higher is polishing wank. You get what you pay for in general: cheap stones need soaking, the wear out fast (needing truing). Shapton makes some great splash and go stones.
However, there is one cheap 2 sided diamond stone that is actually quality. The sharpal one. Be aware diamond cuts extremely fast (good and bad), it doesn't need truing or soaking. I recommend if you're getting one stone get that. Learn proper bur minimisation technique and that'll cover chip repair and get your knives sharp enough to cut seethrough sheets of tomato.
If you feel fancy add 1 micron stropping compound and a sheet of balsa wood to strop on.
Is it possible to sharpen with a higher grit. Like 4k/6k if my knife is quite dull and has some chips? A colleague lend me his stone, but it seems very fine, so either my technique is bad, or it's too fine to sharpen my knife.
There is no magic to it. You can sharpen a knife with a brick if you're careful.
The result and rate are determined by a few things:
It's just like sanding wood or filing your nails. Usually we start course because it would take ages to wear in the approximate shape using finer materials, then we go progressively finer to smooth out the scratches left by the step prior.
Finer media is typically more expensive too, as fine stuff contaminating course stuff isn't a huge issue but the opposite isn't true. So we want to not blow our budget wearing away all nice stones.
Personally I would not try removing chips with anything finer than 1k, and depending on the size and the hardness of the steel might drop to 300 or so. you can, but it will take hours instead of minutes.