Am I an idiot? - sharpening vs. touch up

[henkle]

I've poked around the forum and can't seem to find this question addressed. Perhaps it is because the answer is too obvious and my rookie status is showing??? Anyway, I've been watching some sharpening videos (mostly Knifewear and Jon Broida) and reading many posts here about sharpening and that has raised a question for me. Many sources seem to imply that when "touching up" your knives you can use a higher grit stone 1000+. Since I've never taken a knife from completely dull to sharp, I guess I am really only touching up the edges on my knives when using 1000+ stones. So, I'm wondering if what I am doing is really only working on the micro-bevel. If that is true, is it necessary to raise a discernable burr? Or is there always a burr no matter how small and I just can't recognize it.

After this touch-up, the knives do seem to cut better, although I am willing to admit I may be deluding myself. I know there are many variables like stone hardness, grits, angles, etc. so maybe I have not provided enough information for a reasonable answer to my questions, but any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Nemo]

I think of a touch-up as when I can sharpen on a fine stone (typically a Chosera 3k, so around 4k JIS), raising a burr within a dozen or so strokes. If any more strokes are needed to raise a burr, more metal removal is required and I usually drop down to a medium stone and I think of this as "sharpening" rather than a "touch up".

Of course, they are both in fact a type of sharpening.

I also tend to do some maintenance thinning if I drop down to a medium stone.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Don't confuse stone grit with geometry. No matter what grit stone you're using, you want to maintain a consistent bevel angle. When "touching up" you're still on that same angle, you're just not fully rebuilding your edge. When you drop down in grit, it's largely because that very apex is rounded over too much that a higher grit stone just won't bring up that burr quickly.

Higher grit stones, especially on different steels, can make burr detection more difficult but at 1000 you should detect it pretty readily.

I always raise some amount of a burr. It's just my way and how I know my geometry is right.

 

[cotedupy]

Not a stupid q. at all! And yeah - you've hit on where the distinctions might be drawn...

If that is true, is it necessary to raise a discernable burr? Or is there always a burr no matter how small and I just can't recognize it.

What people tend to call 'touching up' is just a brief bit of high grit sharpening, or pasted stropping, without really raising really big, very noticeable burrs.

If you hit the apex of an edge with something abrasive, you will create some kind of burr or wire edge, however minimal or undetectable. But where you draw the line between sharpening and touching up is kinda up to you.

 

[ian]

If that is true, is it necessary to raise a discernable burr? Or is there always a burr no matter how small and I just can't recognize it.

Also, think of the burr as a witness that you’ve hit the edge. Sometimes, when you do a hit job, there are no witnesses. But if a tree falls and noone is around to hear it…

More seriously, the reason we care about raising a consistent burr is that then we’re sure we’ve hit all parts of the apex. If we were gods, we could verify this some other way (using our microscope eyes?) and not waste so much damn metal when sharpening. If on a touchup you just do a few high grit swipes and your knife is sharp, though, that’s fine.

 

[Miguelito's Blade]

Not a stupid q. at all! And yeah - you've hit on where the distinctions might be drawn...




What people tend to call 'touching up' is just a brief bit of high grit sharpening, or pasted stropping, without really raising really big, very noticeable burrs.

If you hit the apex of an edge with something abrasive, you will create some kind of burr or wire edge, however minimal or undetectable. But where you draw the line between sharpening and touching up is kinda up to you.

As far as I had been aware, I didn't raise a burr on 1000 and above, but HHC mentions that he always raises a burr, which you confirm with the explanation of why that is so. So my question would be, should I be removing the burr every time I change stones at 1000 and above.

 

[Luftmensch]

Many sources seem to imply that when "touching up" your knives you can use a higher grit stone 1000+.

Hehe.... your question raises a lot of semantic issues... and fair enough!! We use some terms rather broadly and loosely.


Touching up.... I guess a lot of us have a pretty good idea what this means: quickly restoring a higher level of sharpness without a "full" progression. At the same time, it can mean many processes. It could be a few passes on a high grit stone. Or using a loaded strop. Or using a steel or rod. For these methods to work, the condition of the edge has to be in pretty good shape.

So what happens when you aren't "touching up" an edge? Well... it all happens in degrees!! As @Nemo said: it is all sharpening! If you cant touch up on a 3000 grit stone... perhaps you can sharpen on a 1000 grit stone. If that doesn't work, drop down to a 400....

Which brings us to your next question:

is it necessary to raise a discernable burr? Or is there always a burr no matter how small and I just can't recognize it.

The generally accepted wisdom is that you will form a burr at any grit if you are properly abrading the very edge. As people progress through the grits, they are also likely to reduce their sharpening pressure. Combined, it is generally observed that burrs get smaller as you progress through the grit ladder.

How to manage burrs depends on who you are asking, what they are sharpening and what their objectives are! There are burr sharpening methods and there are no-burr sharpening methods. Some steels produce large burrs... others dont. There are people who are very concerned about them... and there are people who aren't. Some people will only take steps to remove a big burr at the lowest grit. Others might take steps to minimise burrs at every grit. So there is no universal answer!


For me personally? I have reasonably low standards for sharpness. As a point of reference, I will be happy with an edge that can cleanly slice paper and roughly shave hair. Neither of these are particularly high bars. So do I achieve this by raising burrs? Yes and mostly no....

And therein lies another semantic trap: define discernible ?! To put us in the same frame of reference... I will define a "discernible burr" as one that you can see with your naked eye. The kind that you might see break in the stone swarf. I seldom aim to produce these. I reserve these for edge resets which may occur one out of every five or ten sharpening sessions? It really depends on how I am feeling and what my objectives are.

At this point you might ask what happens in the other 10 or so sharpening sessions. You might also ask... can you discern a "non-discernible burr"??? Strictly speaking if you can detect something it is discernible . I deliberately used a low bar to define "discernible burr". This is because I don't worry about "non-discernible burrs". When sharpening at higher grits, *I* cannot see a burr with my naked eye... but I can still sense them. For example shaving hair might be smoother on one side of the edge (or not possible on the other). Similarly you might find the edge will grip/bite your finger nail more if you till the blade to one side or the other. A tiny burr is still there and I can discern it! I do try to minimise them (e.g. light pressure, higher angle stroping)... but I am not overly concerned about them. At this point the knife is sharp enough for my kitchen needs (majority vegetables). I wont spend a lot of time obsessing about removing them - stropping on a kitchen towel, the carpet or my pants might be sufficient.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

As far as I had been aware, I didn't raise a burr on 1000 and above, but HHC mentions that he always raises a burr, which you confirm with the explanation of why that is so. So my question would be, should I be removing the burr every time I change stones at 1000 and above.

Different people have different views but I remove the burr on each stone. Or at least I mostly do. First, although I strive to raise a burr, I want to keep them as small as possible and still be effective. I like to deburr on each stone so I know how I'm doing on the next stone, it's not just a carry over burr from the last one.

As others have said, I start lightening pressure and reducing strokes as I move up so the burr becomes smaller and smaller but I can still feel it.

Now, on the last stone, then I will get quite conscious about trying to remove all the burr I can. On a lower stone I might just do a couple stropping passes to knock it down before moving on, but whatever that last stone is, be it 300 or 4000, the end of the session is all about burr removal.

 

[esoo]

To me, touching up equals sharpening. It when you can run the knife over the last stone you used to refresh the edge to bring the edge back to "fresh"

Sharpening is what you have to do when a touch up doesn't make the knife sharp anymore.

And burrs are overrated - 99% of the time I sharpen without them.

 

[Pie]

Touching up is sharpening in my books, just less metal removed.

I don’t always raise a burr anymore, touch ups are the norm these days vs full sharpening - dropping down to 1k is a rarity. Burrs are helpful no doubt as they mean you’ve hit the very edge and give you data about your edge, but being honest, I have a hard time feeling for them at the (pre)finisher step

 

[Bico Doce]

And burrs are overrated - 99% of the time I sharpen without them.

Is this hyperbole or do you really only raise a burr 1 out of 100 times? If so, when you decide to raise a burr, assuming this is happening deliberately?

 

[Ruso]

For me, refreshing the edge on something 3K+ is touching up.
Anything 1K and lower is sharpening.

But In general, I think that touching up is when you refresh the edge on a similar grit to your last stone in the progression.

Sharpening is when you go signifincantlly lower to the last grit in your progression.

And yes, both are technically sharpening.

 

[Desert Rat]

If I was to teach someone to sharpen I would have them raise a burr at every step and feel for it. It's such a sound approach, but it's not what I normally do or how I learned. Clearly a case of do what I say and not what I do. Which is why I don't usually weigh in on the subject.

Just to be clear I think we are probably raising a burr at some level every time we take a stroke on a stone.

I came from this sharpening tradition back in the olden days. Except I flipped the knife each time taking alternating edge leading strokes. I don't do it like that anymore but I always finish up on a stone with alternating edge leading strokes.




I think the burr method really became popular with the Japanese water stones. A softer stone that switched the focus to an edge trailing stroke. I don't know when they first came in but I don't recall seeing them in the 70's.

 

[Delat]

Touchup for me these days means a few (4-8) light edge-leading stropping strokes on an SG4000. I’m not trying to raise a burr, just doing a bit of cleanup/refreshing on the edge. But using light edge-leading strokes reduces the chances of a burr anyway, vs edge-trailing. After that I stop on leather (I also strop between touchups until stropping becomes less helpful). This gets me back to an edge that cleanly slices paper and does decent but not fantastic on a paper towel.

If I go all the way and purposely raise a burr I do get a sharper edge (around HHT2), but it’s not so much sharper that it’s noticeable on food and the difference would fade pretty quickly anyway.

When the touchup stops working, then I’ll go ahead and raise a burr with a standard sharpening motion (forward and back in sections vs just edge-leading full length). But I have enough knives in rotation and don’t cook all that much so I’ve only been doing touchups with my SG4000 for the past 12 months.

Basically I’m following my personal Hippocratic Knife Oath: minimize harm to the height of your blade. Which is really driven by the fact that I don’t want to bother with thinning, if I’m being honest.

 

[esoo]

Is this hyperbole or do you really only raise a burr 1 out of 100 times? If so, when you decide to raise a burr, assuming this is happening deliberately?

I sharpen without a burr. When I do get a burr, it happens by coincidence.

Ultimately, there is probably some microscopic burr I can't see or feel, but I change sides often enough it never develops to something noticeable.

 

[Matt Jacobs]

I fully agree with Delat. When my edge has lost all toothiness or I see some very slight shiny spots but I dont need to repair a roll or chips, I just do edge leading passes on my 2k stone then strop. It works well for me and I only sharpen when that stops working or I have a couple knives that need actual sharpening, then I may sharpen more knives since my setup is out.

 

[Barmoley]

I saw a chef in Lyon using a butcher, fillet type knife the other day, cutting thin slices of smoked trout fillet attached to the skin. He would "touch up" the knife on a butcher steel every 4-5 cuts. Felt like a different knife or sharpening the same knife would be better. I watched him for a while, it was fascinating. He didn't cut the skin of the fish, just the soft lox consistency smoked trout. Clearly there must be a burr, wire edge he kept on bending into place as I can't imagine even a soft steel knife loosing sharpness after cutting 5 pieces of lox.

 

[stringer]

For me a "touch up" means that I grab a medium to fine natural out of the drawer and I sharpen the knife with stone in hand. If this doesn't immediately get the knife sharp enough to whistle through paper towel then I "sharpen." Which involves setting up a sharpening station with a stone holder and a progression of stones. Although usually my progression would just be a medium coarse stone and then a medium fine stone. If this didn't get the knife sharp in less than thirty seconds or the tip feels slow zipping onions then it's time to "thin." Thinning is the same as sharpening except I go a little lower and coarser to start.

I would say 99.99% of the time I only touch up. I touch up a knife every couple times I use it. It's basically like using a steel except you use a little whetstone instead. I sharpen a knife every couple of thousand pounds of stuff chopped. I thin a knife once or twice in it's lifetime assuming that there isn't a lot of damage to fix for some reason. Any time you fix damage you have to thin.

I have all the knives I need. And they are all tuned how I like them now. About the only time I sharpen or thin anything is when I get a new eBay or flea market find.

 

[esoo]

I saw a chef in Lyon using a butcher, fillet type knife the other day, cutting thin slices of smoked trout fillet attached to the skin. He would "touch up" the knife on a butcher steel every 4-5 cuts. Felt like a different knife or sharpening the same knife would be better. I watched him for a while, it was fascinating. He didn't cut the skin of the fish, just the soft lox consistency smoked trout. Clearly there must be a burr, wire edge he kept on bending into place as I can't imagine even a soft steel knife loosing sharpness after cutting 5 pieces of lox.

I would think this would be akin to using a VG-10 knife for something where you wanted the ultimate sharpness. By touching up frequently, you keep the fresh of the edge feel, without every hitting that drop-off.

Is there different steels/techniques that would be more effective? yes, but there are many ways to approach getting sharp clean cuts.

 

[Barmoley]

I would think this would be akin to using a VG-10 knife for something where you wanted the ultimate sharpness. By touching up frequently, you keep the fresh of the edge feel, without every hitting that drop-off.

Is there different steels/techniques that would be more effective? yes, but there are many ways to approach getting sharp clean cuts.

Sure the intent is clear, but when it takes this much effort to keep clean cuts, something is wrong. The trout was excellent, but steeling every few cuts seems excessive, through the day it is a lot of steeling.

 

[sansho]

for me, touching up is when i can get away with not sharpening.

so that would be some edge trailing strokes on a diamond-loaded leather strop.

and when that's not good enough, maybe some edge leading strokes (with just the weight of the blade) on a high grit finishing stone first and then back to the strop.

i try to get by with those as long as possible. when those aren't enough, then i gotta go back to "sharpening"

 

[ModRQC]

Purist: touch up means no burr. Which is not saying there isn't one, but that they don't work towards feeling a tangible consistent one.

Realist: touch up means whatever is in your means to prolong the sustainability of sharpness.

In both case I'd say, one doesn't one to have to adress the geometry.

Sharpening thus usually means more work (like more than one stone) and more metal removal (like the need to go to a lower grit) than a touch up, whatever your case may be; it also means geometry should be adressed.

 

[esoo]

Sure the intent is clear, but when it takes this much effort to keep clean cuts, something is wrong. The trout was excellent, but steeling every few cuts seems excessive, through the day it is a lot of steeling.

I agree, but then again when I was a teenager I worked in a German owned deli/butcher shop. Every time the butcher picked up a knife it was steeled.

What you likely have is some non-knife person, trained by some other non-knife person, who was told to keep the knife sharp. That translated into steel the knife every 5 cuts. People who don't care, trained by people who don't know.

 

[Jason183]

It depends on the type of knife I’m using. I normally uses 2 different knives at work.

I mostly only “touch up” my main line knife because it only does delicate cutting tasks, I don’t need to reset secondary bevel every “sharpening” time, but it will still develop burrs after days of light cutting so the purpose for “touch up” is really just to remove the burrs build up during cutting. If refreshing micro bevel don’t work no more, then I’ll start doing few passes to refresh the secondary bevel, when refreshing secondary bevel doesn’t work anymore, then it’s time for back and forth strokes to reset the secondary bevel.

My other “beater” knife cuts bones and half frozen products often so everytime when comes to sharpen it, I really meant “sharpening” it, because those heavy work from abusive tasks really requires me to reset the secondary bevel every time when comes to “sharpening”.

IMO touching up=few light passes on stone
Sharpening= back and forth strokes with more amount of pressure applied

 

[MowgFace]

I think all of the technical bases are covered.

I just view it simply by grit. If I can stay ~3000+ it’s touching up. If I have to drop to a medium grit stone it’s sharpening.

 

[McMan]

So, I'm wondering if what I am doing is really only working on the micro-bevel.

Not all knives have a microbevel. And not all microbevels are the same.
Some people add them on as part of the sharpening process as a way to make the edge more stable (and especially less prone to chipping). There are different degrees of adding them too--they can be very minor (only a few degrees difference) or more major. Depends on the goals, knife properties, and edge on there now. In terms of a microbevel, you, as the sharpener, decide whether the knife has one or not, and you also decide what it looks like.

Here's a useful thread, and also discusses thoughts about "sharpening" vs. "touch up:"
https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/microbevel-and-maintenance.57286/

 

[M1k3]

I view "touch up" as when the edge hesitates cutting, say, tomatoes, but still cuts. Then running the blade across the stone a few times, leaving the edge sharp enough to not hesitate.

Sharpening is when this doesn't work and I need to work on the edge more.

Both are technically sharpening and removing metal.

 

[tostadas]

 

[M1k3]

Would that be a regular or "mega" touch-up?

 

[captaincaed]

I view "touch up" as when the edge hesitates cutting say tomatoes but still cuts. Then running the blade across the stone a few times, leaving the edge sharp enough to not hesitate.

Sharpening is when this doesn't work and I need to work on the edge more.

Both are technically sharpening and removing metal.

Cannot say it better.