CableReady
Member
Hello!
My wife and I are avid homecooks who have been taking our Cangshan (X50CrMoV15) knives to be machine sharpened for a few years. We've lost a lot of metal by now, and the full bolster is starting to get annoying. Even though our local sharpener has been shaving it down, it's not quite as happily flush with the edge of the blade as it once was. So we decided to invest in some new knives and learn how sharpen and maintain our knives ourselves using a whetstone (or, down the line, whetstones).
We ended up purchasing:
- Victorinox Swiss Modern 8" Chef's Knife
- Victorinox Swiss Modern Paring Knife
- Kiwi #22
- Shiro Kamo Aogami Super Tall Nakiri
The Shiro Kamo is our only foray into non-German style knives. At some point down the line we might add a 240mm Gyuto, but the direction we go here will depend on how we find (1) the carbon steel relative to the stainless steel knives we are used to (2) the hardness/fragility relative to the softer German-style knives we are used to. (My wife is vegan and we eat vegan at home, so bones won't be an issue, and we don't really cut any frozen food that I can think of. The most difficult tasks our knives typically face are: squash, melons, and smashing garlic, ginger, and cucumber, and occasionally rock chopping nuts.)
We also got a Shapton Pro 1000 whetstone and I made a couple of denim strops, neither of which I quite know what to do with yet. One of them is a narrow wood paddle that I directly glued a strip of denim to using a fabric glue. The other one is a wooden block (probably 12"x3"x1") with the denim adhering via 3m strips (so with a bit more cushion) on one side, and rubber shelving liner on the other side. I also have some green compound that I don't know what to do with.
Right now we've been practicing using the whetstone on all of our knives except for the Shiro Kamo. We don't want to put that on the stone until we get the hang of sharpening. I practiced some on our Cangshan knives, but the full bolsters are pretty annoying for sharpening. I find that I've figured out how to reliably raise a burr on both sides, but I feel pretty lost about the later stages (including deburring and stropping).
I'm looking forward to learning more about sharpening and maintaining these knives at home!
My wife and I are avid homecooks who have been taking our Cangshan (X50CrMoV15) knives to be machine sharpened for a few years. We've lost a lot of metal by now, and the full bolster is starting to get annoying. Even though our local sharpener has been shaving it down, it's not quite as happily flush with the edge of the blade as it once was. So we decided to invest in some new knives and learn how sharpen and maintain our knives ourselves using a whetstone (or, down the line, whetstones).
We ended up purchasing:
- Victorinox Swiss Modern 8" Chef's Knife
- Victorinox Swiss Modern Paring Knife
- Kiwi #22
- Shiro Kamo Aogami Super Tall Nakiri
The Shiro Kamo is our only foray into non-German style knives. At some point down the line we might add a 240mm Gyuto, but the direction we go here will depend on how we find (1) the carbon steel relative to the stainless steel knives we are used to (2) the hardness/fragility relative to the softer German-style knives we are used to. (My wife is vegan and we eat vegan at home, so bones won't be an issue, and we don't really cut any frozen food that I can think of. The most difficult tasks our knives typically face are: squash, melons, and smashing garlic, ginger, and cucumber, and occasionally rock chopping nuts.)
We also got a Shapton Pro 1000 whetstone and I made a couple of denim strops, neither of which I quite know what to do with yet. One of them is a narrow wood paddle that I directly glued a strip of denim to using a fabric glue. The other one is a wooden block (probably 12"x3"x1") with the denim adhering via 3m strips (so with a bit more cushion) on one side, and rubber shelving liner on the other side. I also have some green compound that I don't know what to do with.
Right now we've been practicing using the whetstone on all of our knives except for the Shiro Kamo. We don't want to put that on the stone until we get the hang of sharpening. I practiced some on our Cangshan knives, but the full bolsters are pretty annoying for sharpening. I find that I've figured out how to reliably raise a burr on both sides, but I feel pretty lost about the later stages (including deburring and stropping).
I'm looking forward to learning more about sharpening and maintaining these knives at home!
