Sharpening Tojiro Senkou chef's Knife

[Ian1]

Hi,

I'm being bought a 21cm Tojiro Senkou 21cm chef's knife as a birthday gift and would like some advice on sharpening before I begin using it.

This is the first high quality knife I will have used/owned so I'm pretty clueless about the best methods and sharpening tools. Previously I've used a 21cm richardson sheffield sabatier and gently run it through a taylor's eye witness chantry shapener every now and again. That seems to have worked well with that knife but I'm aware that people (including tojiro) recommend a whetstone and I didn't want to ruin the blade by using a steel.

How often would I need to sharpen the knife (considering daily, moderate use)? I've seen some people talking about hardly sharpening at all and others talking about having the knives sharpened professionally by someone.

I'm slightly hesitant about using the stone given my inexperience as I wouldn't want to irreversibly blunt the blade or mess it up. I've also read a little about ceramic steels...there's so much info out there on the net I thought it might be best to just post on a thread.

Hope someone can offer some advice. Thanks!

 

[daveb]

Getting into freehand should not be (but often is) intimidating. How in the world are you going to "mess up" a knife? Sure you'll get some scratches, some scuffs and a wonky edge or two but it's part of the learning process as is fixing those scratches, scuffs and edges. If you start getting over your head you can always punt to one of the services here and then start over.

The particular stones or set of stones is very subjective, suggest you find something that appeals to you, develop some proficiency and then fine tune your choices if necc. Dave M at Janpanese Knife Sharpening has a "starter" set that's well received. Jon at Japanese Knife Imports recently bundled some excellent stones as a discounted starter set. The other sponsoring retailers, probably have offerings as well.

If you want to start with a minimal investment there are combo stones available that will give you a med grit and a fine grit on one stone.

Suggest you lose all references to ceramic steels or any other steels for that matter. These were created for softer European knives and work well for them. They will chip the harder steel of the Japanese blades.

Whatever route you take, budget for a flattening stone. You can flatten on the cheap with drywall screen or while driving on a concrete roadway lean out and hold the top side of the stone down. I'm sure other Rube Goldberg methods will also work. I like the flattening stone.

Check out the U-tube videos at Japanese Knife Imports: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEBF55079F53216AB (You may want to bookmark this page - I did)

Give it 6 months and you'll have the sharpest knives in your zip code.

And welcome to KKF.

 

[chinacats]

Dave pretty much laid out what you need to know.

As to how often, that depends on a couple of things...the knife, the types of things you cut, the type of cutting board, and a few other things but mostly your tolerance to dull. As you learn to sharpen you will likely become much less willing to deal with anything less than what many would consider screaming sharp. Grab a stone, watch the videos and go for it...you won't wreck anything and if you get in trouble come back here and post...you'll find all the help you need.

Cheers

 

[Ian1]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm on a pretty tight budget at the minute so I was thinking of something like this combination stone:

http://www.knivesandtools.co.uk/en/pt/-naniwa-combination-stone-cs-510-430.htm

Does this seem like a good start, or is it worth stretching the budget a bit more? I'm in the UK so I think buying from Jon's japanese Imports or somewhere US based would be pricey, although the site does look excellent, so that's a shame.

I'm basing this choice on one of the youtube videos that advises starting on a medium stone to practice before moving to finer finishing stones.

Thanks again

 

[psfred]

That stone plus something to flatten it with should work fine. You will probably eventually want something coarser to thin the blade, but I suspect that will be some time out (years) unless you sharpen constantly.

With a 1000 grit stone you are unlikely to grind a huge bevel at the wrong angle very quickly, so you will not "damage" the knife. Might end up taking a while to get really good at it, but the worst you will do is make more work for yourself.

You may also want something to strop on, but black printed newsprint has enough polishing action to work for at least a while, just lay it on a dry flat surface and pull the knife over it with the edge trailing, holding it at the same bevel angle you sharpened it. Works a treat usually.

You may also eventually want to polish at higher grits, but it's not absolutely necessary. Once you get a reliable sharp edge you can worry about that, as it will require buying more stones and they get pricier as they get finer as a rule. They wear quite a bit less, though, but ya still gotta lay out the cash for them in the first place even if they last decades.

The edge out of the box will be fairly good as a rule on Tojiro knives, but a couple sharpenings later they get VERY sharp -- the factory grind is a bit rough.

You have a very nice knife, enjoy it.

Peter

 

[ThEoRy]

Here's a tutorial I made.

[video=youtube;dW_sAqpVmug]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW_sAqpVmug&list=UUY7LzKnt-Q59iQz01e10rnw[/video]

 

[Ian1]

Thanks for the advice. I've gone for that combination stone and I'll get a flattening stone as well. Guess I'll just have to have a go and see how it goes. Probably practice on my older knives to begin with.

Thanks for the video tutorial too - very detailed and informative!