I did a lot of testing with the borosilicate rod on Japanese knives and found that if it's smooth it did do something to bring back the edge (kind of) but where it really worked well is when the rod is roughened by putting scratches in the surface as this then scratched the knife edge making the edge coarser.
For softer German knives the smooth boro rod works very good but IMO a boro rod needs to be roughened with sandpaper to do anything significant to a hard Japanese edge.
What a roughened boro rod is doing to a Japanese knife is very similar to what a grooved steel does for a German knife - it tears at the edge to make it toothier.
I did a lot of testing with the borosilicate rod on Japanese knives and found that if it's smooth it did do something to bring back the edge (kind of) but where it really worked well is when the rod is roughened by putting scratches in the surface as this then scratched the knife edge making the edge coarser.
For softer German knives the smooth boro rod works very good but IMO a boro rod needs to be roughened with sandpaper to do anything significant to a hard Japanese edge.
What a roughened boro rod is doing to a Japanese knife is very similar to what a grooved steel does for a German knife - it tears at the edge to make it toothier.
Dave,
That's a great explanation of what the boro rod does at the actual edge. How is it that following a few swipes on the boro with a few swipes on on a loaded strop improves the edge so much? What is the strop doing at the edge. I've been toying with the idea of getting a good microscope to actually see it but you probably already know.
Dean
I haven't used any of my honing rods in a long time...
I would rather suggest a 3k or 5k. A strop with Cr2O3 gets you in the 15k range I believe, but I'm not so sure that is really useful or very lasting with kitchen knives. Give the 15k stone a try and tell about the results.why not just strop your blade on 8000 15000 or some other high grit stone?
You don't work in a pro kitchen though.... That being said, I've strayed from honing rods as well.
You don't work in a pro kitchen though.... That being said, I've strayed from honing rods as well.
Do you strop instead? What kind of strop do you like? I never used to hone. I have a leather strop with Chromium ox, but I don't really like it. I made it myself so maybe I made it poorly.
Re Mac Ceramic: Coworker recently brought in a black mac and I liked the results. Thinking about getting one...still on the fence. A "feature" of this is that half is smooth and half is grooved. I haven't used the grooved part and don't think I would....thats probably only needed if your edge is REALLLY bad right?
FWIW I sharpen up to an arashiyama 6K right now.
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