A quick guide.

This is some­thing that we have been asked a couple of times, and have been put­ting it off due to other con­cerns, but I finally got round to it pho­to­graph­ing it this week­end so here it is.

I will show you two dif­fer­ent ways to sharpen, and also how to use a hon­ing steel (later on when I get more pho­tos I will also show a very MacGuyver way of using bowls and plates to put an edge on a knife).

Using a shop bought set stone sharpen­ing tool such as this Ikea one

1. First off take the tool and fill the com­part­ment with water, this will help act as a lubricant.
2. Place the tool at the edge of a work sur­face and put the knife in the tool with the blade tip facing away from you.
3. Pull the knife through the tool, mak­ing sure that the blade is in con­tact with the stones at all times.
4. You can check the blade sharp­ness by look­ing at the blade and also by drag­ging your thumb across the blade to hear the sound, not down the blade as this will cut you.
5. Another way to check the sharp­ness of the blade is to take a piece of fruit or veget­able and slowly and lightly drag the blade across it, if it is sharp it should cut the fruit with ease.

Using a whetstone:

1. lay the stone on the sur­face, rough side up and then put some oil on it, this will act as the lubricant.
2. Then, lay the blade on the stone with the blade nearest the handle down on the stone at the right angle. The angle can be determ­ined by put­ting the knife blade down per­pen­dic­u­lar to the stone then angle the knife blade angle towards you halv­ing the angle to 45, then do this again to set the angle at 22.5 degrees.
3. Then run the knife along the stone in a slow sweep­ing motion so that the blade is mov­ing along the stone and along the length of the knife at the same times.
4. Do this about 10 times, then do the same for the other side of the knife blade.
5. Once you feel it is pretty much sharp enough by using either of the meth­ods men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous method then you should take the stone and turn it over to reveal the finer grit and repeat the process.

Using a hon­ing steel

A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion is that a hon­ing steel is another method of sharpen­ing knives, to sharpen a knife is to use some­thing (such as above) that will remove some of the knife steel and reset the blade. A hon­ing steel isn’t hard enough to remove steel. If you ima­gine that the blade is like a saw at a micro­scopic level then over time the teeth get knocked out of shape, a hon­ing steel can be used to realign the teeth mean­ing that the knife can go longer times without the need for a proper sharpen.

1. Place a tea towel on the work sur­face and put the stee, tip down, into the towel. This is for pro­tec­tion of the sur­face. Once you have mastered doing this then by all means start doing this like you would see the chefs on TV doing it by hav­ing it facing away from you in the air, I would rec­comend doing it this way for a while until you feel com­pet­ent though.
2. Put the knife blade at the top of the steel, nearest the hilt with the blade edge touch­ing the steel flat on.
3. If you ima­gine the angle to be 90, then halve the angle to 45 by bring­ing the outer edge of the knife blade up towards you.
4. Do this again so the the angle on the blade is now 22.5 degrees.
5. Then run the blade along the steel in a sweep­ing motion so that the whole of the blade has in one sweep been in con­tact with the steel.
6. Do this about 5 times, then do the same for the other side of the blade.

There you have it, a sharper knife, which is a hap­pier and safer knife. I will throw up the pho­tos of the MacGuyver style when I get round to doing them, the basic gist being that at the bot­tom of bowls, cups, and plates there is a raised area (usu­ally a circle) that is not glazed, if in a bind this can be used to give the knife an edge.

Happy cut­ting folks.