Hi. First post.
Ten years ago, I got a set of Henckels Professional S. For these ten years, I have gotten by with just the Henckels steel. Now I have a set of oil stones--A Norton IB8 Combo and a Hard Arkansas. Before I used the stones on the Henckels, I practiced on my Dexter-Russel Sani Safe and a hand-me-down Dexter 4898. I had good luck with both knives. The 8 inch Henckels however is challenging me. The bevel (trying for 20 degrees) on both the Dexters is uniform more or less from heel to tip and they are both uniformly sharp. I tried using the same technique on the Henckels and the bevel at the tip (1-2 inches) was two to three times as wide and took many extra strokes to reach the edge as I tried to keep the same angle. I even suspect that as I lost patience, I allowed the bevel at the tip to become less acute. Is the blade behind the edge at the tip thicker than it is in the main part of the blade? Would I hurt anything if I thinned the blade near the tip? And how would I go about that? Or am I imagining things and I actually made the bevel more acute at the tip which made the bevel wider? I was monitoring my progress with a 10x magnifier and there are a couple of splintered spots along the edge. Did I read on this forum that aggressive steeling could have harmed the edge and I should take it back a bit? And if anyone could post a picture of their Henckels bolster/heel after they improved it I would like to see the result before I screw mine up. Thanks in advance. I'm getting a kick out of this and hope that one day I will deserve a nice Japanese knife. JKI is kind of in my neighborhood.
Jeff
Ten years ago, I got a set of Henckels Professional S. For these ten years, I have gotten by with just the Henckels steel. Now I have a set of oil stones--A Norton IB8 Combo and a Hard Arkansas. Before I used the stones on the Henckels, I practiced on my Dexter-Russel Sani Safe and a hand-me-down Dexter 4898. I had good luck with both knives. The 8 inch Henckels however is challenging me. The bevel (trying for 20 degrees) on both the Dexters is uniform more or less from heel to tip and they are both uniformly sharp. I tried using the same technique on the Henckels and the bevel at the tip (1-2 inches) was two to three times as wide and took many extra strokes to reach the edge as I tried to keep the same angle. I even suspect that as I lost patience, I allowed the bevel at the tip to become less acute. Is the blade behind the edge at the tip thicker than it is in the main part of the blade? Would I hurt anything if I thinned the blade near the tip? And how would I go about that? Or am I imagining things and I actually made the bevel more acute at the tip which made the bevel wider? I was monitoring my progress with a 10x magnifier and there are a couple of splintered spots along the edge. Did I read on this forum that aggressive steeling could have harmed the edge and I should take it back a bit? And if anyone could post a picture of their Henckels bolster/heel after they improved it I would like to see the result before I screw mine up. Thanks in advance. I'm getting a kick out of this and hope that one day I will deserve a nice Japanese knife. JKI is kind of in my neighborhood.
Jeff