Pedagogy: How to teach sharpening

[mengwong]

In 2023, what’s the best way to teach – and learn – sharpening?

I’ve signed up to teach a knife sharpening workshop at my local Hackerspace. The audience are smart nerds who share a very particular skill: they are good at figuring out mental models of physical systems.

So I plan to hand out a load of $4 putty knives, first in stainless and then in carbon. Sharpies. And a handful of wifi microscopes.

They say that getting good takes at least a year of practice. It takes time to develop a sense of what movements, at what pressure, with which stone, on which steel, will achieve a desired result. Desired bevel geometry is also something that takes time to discern.

I want to focus that entire year down to a single three hour workshop.

The core skill: participants should develop a gut feel for how much metal will be removed by making N passes at pressure P at angle D on grit G. Participants can then learn to recognize, create, and reduce a burr using both the Kippington method and the more gradual edge-leading “sneaking up” method.

Why learn on putty (scraper) knives? To create a standardized low-stakes training level before they move on to their own knives. I want to provide microscopes and loupes so they can see directly what effect they are having on the steel, as a complement to the other methods involving thumbnail, paper towel, hair shaving etc.

Does that make sense? If you’ve taken a sharpening class, how did the instructor teach those skills? If you’ve taught sharpening classes, how do you pace the class and what are the tests by which you can confirm students have successfully gained elementary sub-skills?

When retired started teaching sharpening at Culinary school at the time using dirty rotating tri stones kept oil in bottom not cleaned enough. Also they were wailing away on groved steels. From 2013- 2019 went one on one with hundreds of students. Also taught most of the Chef instructors at school.

Changed methods very early to make easier to learn.

 

[Jovidah]

I wouldn't bother with putty knives; the ergonomics are all different, and you don't even know how well the steel will sharpen.
For inspiration I'd look up some of the other sharpening tutorials like those from JKI and Murray Carter. If you want to give students something easy to start on, give them some cheap carbon that's at least somewhat thin so they don't spend half their time knocking shoulders off bevels.
Three-finger method also works fairly well for giving an estimate on sharpness.

 

[Benuser]

Starting with thin, simple carbons allows to teach the basics: raising a burr, chasing it and getting rid of it by abrading with a light touch. I would stay away from stainless — other than fine grained ones like 12C27 perhaps — as all will introduce specific issues requiring adapted solutions. Plasticity, difficulties with raising burrs, burrs popping up, clustering carbides and a lot of other horror students are likely to encounter with poor stainless in daily life.
With simple carbons you may easily show the effects of changing geometry: easing shoulders with only a few strokes, straight vs. convex bevels, thinning BTE.

 

[McMan]

At first, I wrote this:
I agree about not using putty knives. There are a few important differences. The motion and hand position for a putty knife would be more akin to a chisel than a knife and the length/shape/handle position is different. So, some of the physical aspects wouldn’t match up too well. And usually the stiff putty knives are more flexy than most knives.

But then, I changed my mind:
I think it’s worth a try. Despite all the differences between a putty knife and a kitchen knife, some of the skills will transfer. I think most of us on the forum would teach knife sharpening using a knife. But this doesn’t mean another method is wrong. It simply means that our expectations are reinforced and based on established conventions. But your question was about teaching and there are multiple ways to learn the same thing…

I think the main benefit is just controlling variables. All the putty knives will be identical. If, say, students brought in their own knives, you’d be dealing with a sh1tstorm of different variables, problems, steels, lengths, geometries, states of disrepair, etc.
With putty knives, you can be sure of two things: that the entire audience is dealing with the exact same object and that you can instruct them to do the exact same thing. This will have benefits. Will these benefits outweigh the downsides? Report back

 

[cotedupy]

Well 10 out of 10 for the use of the word 'pedagogy' in the thread title here! I generally consider myself a fairly erudite and learned person, but confess I did have to look that one up.

Funnily enough I'm also about to start teaching sharpening. And in about 20 mins I'm off to help out on a class taken by someone else, so I can see the format. I shall report back...

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Putty knives will be putty. They aren't hardened like our knives and I think will just lead to confusion and frustration.

Never done a class but I've taught a lot of folks and I normally like starting on mid-length knives around 6" but in this case, maybe some Opinel Carbone's are the right way to go. Smaller knives can be a little more difficult but the carbon responds well and they aren't terribly expensive and they'll have something to keep afterwards.

If I only have a short time with someone, my goals are understand the "why" so the "how" can come and then here's what a burr feels like, and now here's what it feels like when it is gone.

 

[Benuser]

I usually suggest Robert Herder's carbon Bucklers, breakfast knives, because they are crazy thin.

 

[Rangen]

I bought a couple of carbon steel Opinels for sharpening practice, but they turned out to not be good for that because they were way too easy to sharpen. Might be good for a class, though.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

At school time is important my first class was not as efficient. Don't get too technical you might lose them. It's fine on a forum.

I learned from a Sushi Chef in 1982 had already been sharpening my stainless Forschners for around 10 years. Had just bought my first carbon 240 Masamoto that's what I learned on. He taught me three finger method applying pressure on trailing stroke. Letting up on pressure forward stroke. Spine pretty close to the stone I had some pretty thin edge knives after months of sharpening.
Would sharpen heel to tip.

Almost same as Jon's playlist videos the side where handle is in the way must do heel sharpening blade 90% to stone then as handle out of way go to angle position on stone. Backside handle not in the way so angle position. My first sharpening DVD was from Chiharu Sugai at Korin had bought a yanagiba from Korin & he had just put out the DVD so I bought it. Later I bought Dave Martell DVD & Murray Carter advanced techniques. Later watched Jon's playlist.

The important thing doing one on one is teaching them how to make a dull knife sharp. Your knowledge about all the stuff on this forum will take time & lose them. Getting a knife sharp is all that matters. When the Sushi chef taught me it only took about 15 minutes & after that I had sharpest knives in kitchen. Not only that his English was just good enough for me to understand him.

I would show them a knife that had been sharpened sloppy with high heel & bird beak tip. Then an old 10" Forschner that had even blade road heel to tip after many sharpenings. The importance of a steady spine & same angle heel to tip. Both on thinning bevel & micro. At first was teaching how I learned changing fingerpad pressure on leading & trailing strokes. This was too difficult for some & on thinning bevel their school kit Mercers were getting scuffed up.

So changed it to sharpening lifting blade slightly off the stone after each stroke. I tried it first at home & knife got just as sharp & time difference was negligible. It made it much easier to teach. Would tell them little about carbon, stainless, & San Mai blades. Stainless clad with harder core steel. Did Carter's trick of dulling his neck knife & shaving with it. I had a thick tough carbon Santoku would use over & over again teaching classes. Would dull it on the gas burner metal grate. It would just bend newspaper. Than would speed sharpen thinning bevel first than micro bevel remove burr with lateral stroke then stop timing.
After would do couple sweeps on newspaper to take off any residual burr. Then would cut through newspaper in one quick stroke. I could do both bevels & remove burr usually between 30 - 40 seconds. Of coarse carbon santoku stupid easy to get from really dull to
Newspaper fairly sharp quickly. That would get their attention. One on one would do two students at a time one hands on other. watching than switch. First I would slowly show them how to sharpen explaining what I was doing as they filmed it on smart phones.
Would tell them to charge phones before class. Gave them handouts that typed up then made copies at the school. One page was internet info. on good knives all under 200.00 a lot for culinary student. Also info. for Jon's playlist. Other sharpening stones, diamond plate, mag lope, felt blocks etc.
We got king stones at student discount from Cherry Japanese imports they would deliver stones to the school. Also shapton pro. Would teach quick touch on shapton pro 2k stone instead of wailing away on a steel that they were doing before I got there. Quite a few students bought the shapton stone too.
Also some techniques on how to get knife even sharper like lighter pressure strokes & stropping. Would teach single bevel sharpening on rare times student would buy
a yanagiba or fish Deba. I would teach whole class at once on how to sharpen a boning knife & cleaver.


Would tell them jokes keep it light make fun of myself. Over six years before COVID went one on one with couple hundred students & teachers at the school. That's just how I did it
Many students picked it up quickly & taught it to others. Some told me teaching workers at their jobs.

 

[Jovidah]

I wouldn't really go for Opinels to start with. While the steel is quite beginner friendly IMO the curvy tip is not. The flatter the profile the easier something is to learn to sharpen IMO.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

They should provide their own knives that is what they will be using. In Singapore would expect some Santoku. You could bring a carbon core stainless clad San Mai gyuto to show them how easy it is to sharpen carbon. Bring a coarse stone to class because some of their knives might be pretty dull others brand new that's my experience. Wore down couple coarse stones teaching bought a extra large gesshin 400 that was good. Used extra large gesshin 1K for teaching. Old well used gesshin 1K next to a new one.

 

[TM001]

Alternating between telling/showing and letting them try it generally works well from an educational standpoint. Keep demos/talking to around 5 - 15 minutes and then let them work/do something for 10-15 minutes. Educational research indicates attention span is 15 minutes tops, so you need to break stuff up into short chunks. If the class is more than 60 minutes, a 5- 10 minute break in middle is a good idea.

For example, demo sharpening on coarse stone for 5-10 minutes, how to detect a burr, etc. Then let them do it for 5-10 minutes. Then take and answer questions and give pointers or additional short demo to clarify things. Repeat this for each skill/task you want them to do. So for 180 minute class, break it up into twelve 15 minute segments alternating between you teaching and them trying or something like ten 15 minute segments with a final 30 minute segment for them to try everything at their own pace.

With whatever time you have left, let them sharpen from start to finish as you float around room giving help as needed.

have them bring a knife or two of theirs they want to sharpen (paring/chefs) and if you want to provide knives to sharpen, something like Pallares carbon paring or Victronox stainless paring would be good.

 

[mengwong]

At school time is important

How much time did you have with the students? Was it 3 hours a week for a whole semester or a 1 hour one-off or something in between? Maybe I should break it into two workshops, one intro to get them started and one advanced a few weeks/months later.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

They wanted me to teach in beginning classes because after that Chef Instructors didn't have time to teach or sharpen students knives.

Did two begining classes a year average 20-25 students each. Would give whole class intro speech general information about knives & stones. That they could order stone to be delivered to their classroom. Learned early on that if they didn't buy a stone usually my teaching was wasted on them. So I made it a condition to get a king stone before would teach them one on one. Teaching I used the large Gesshin stones for volume of knives. Everything covered in above post was in intro speech also handed out couple pages of some of stuff covered + internet. That was all done in one hour. Then they would come in one hour early on own time two at a time to learn freehand so two students one hour both hands on one on one. As mentioned would show them first explaining exactly why & what I was doing as they caught it on cell phones. Most times the second person would pick it up quickly after watching me guide & correct first person. Most all of the class would come in on own time.

I came in one hour a day until students signed up were taught. At that time I lived right next to the campus so would walk over. School had other volunteer teachers one friend of mine taught them how to make sushi in advanced Asian class.
I enjoyed teaching working with kids.

I'm glad that the beginning class chef instructors I taught also & they watched me enough. Since I was volunteer they just kept using me. I would get treated to dinners in the school meals advanced students for the public. I took advantage of that with Janice the dinners were good.

Also got thank you cards from students couple I've kept them also helps me remember students names

 

[Kawa]

We all started sharpening our own cheap stainless steel, I guess.
We all got it sharpener then before.
So we could all do it the first time.

Let them bring their own knive. Have some knives at spare for those who forget or bring a FUBAR or serrated knife.
I bet it's more fun to bring home your own knife, sharper then before class, than to practise on something you are not going to use/ profit from at home.
The basics are the same on all knives.

The ones you touch by heart with sharpening, will continue.
The ones who don't like it, it's simply not their thing.

As a teacher, I'd say you deepdive to much into details for a first encounter workshop with sharpening.
The focus should be on 'what to do to get the knife sharp again', not yet on the 'whats happening in detail behind the scenes'.
The interessted ones will figure that out later by themselves. We all did that.

Edge geometry, different steels, getting a 'gut feel' etc would not be my goal for the 'first encounter with sharpening'.

What they should learn is something they can reproduce at home again, that gives good enthousiasm. Thats what gets them into this world.

 

[Benuser]

Cheap, neglected soft stainless is often far too fat and highly abrasion resistant and will require heavy thinning before you may even think of putting an edge on it. Not exactly what will raise enthusiasm, I'm afraid.

 

[natto]

First thing first. It's not you teaching how to sharpen.

Is is you learning how to teach sharpening.

Don't get too technical you might lose them.

Learned early on that if they didn't buy a stone usually my teaching was wasted on them.

I failed early on people that would like sharp knives, but didnt like the effort. Some upgraded to cheap V-sharpeners

Thank you @Keith Sinclair. That's good advice.

 

[Kawa]

Cheap, neglected soft stainless is often far too fat and highly abrasion resistant and will require heavy thinning before you may even think of putting an edge on it. Not exactly what will raise enthusiasm, I'm afraid.

For your standard yes.
Not for someone who used a dull knive for 10 years and still calls it sharp, because they dont know better.

Our first knives were the same fat worthless stainless crap, and we put an edge on it and it was sharper then before. We all felt good about it.

Heavy thinning is not for the first workshop, thats advanced stuff about how to maintain your knife and how to make a good cutter out of a worthless knive.

When you enter a 'knife sharpening' workshop, as a teacher you have to stand still by what is expected from the course by the students. They assume to bring in a blunt knife and leave with a sharp one. Provide that.
If you go into to 'hours grinding' to reprofile a knife, thats not what they expect. Because they dont know thats part of the hobby.
Even though you are right,I dont think its 'getting to know the subject' stuff to raise enthousiasm

 

[Jovidah]

As someone who learned to sharpen on cheap Chinese knockoff VG10 I can highly recommend against teaching people how to sharpen on whatever random junk they may bring in. Yes it may be their knife, but you're introducing all kinds of potential variables that can make the actual teaching a lot more difficult, slower and frustrating. If they bring in good knives made of good steel it's not a problem, but how likely is that?

 

[Kawa]

Do you think those people buy a 200+ knife to learn how to sharpen after a introduction course?

No, that comes after a while, if they enjoy the hobby.


Again, we all started on crap. And we all continued. Please read this last sentence twice.

 

[Jovidah]

Yes but starting on crap was one of the reasons it took me far longer to get the hang of sharpening than necessary, without really adding anything positive to that experience. If people have more time than money that's not a problem... but if you have 3 hours to try and teach people sharpening do you really want to run the risk that they get nowhere simply because the knife they brought is made of junk steel with some botched heat treatment?

 

[Kawa]

Partly I can agree.
On the other side:
Would you like to give them the false impression its so fast and easy like in the course? Letting them experience easy steel and telling them 'your knives at home are more difficult' will never give them the feeling what they need to do to get their home knives sharp again.

I don't think it should be the goal to convince coursists to start sharpening. You should give them the tools to start in the right way. Help them to find the right angle, make them raise a burr and 'some deburring'. If they like what they are doing, they will continue anyway. You should give them a 'get to know this world' experience if its a one time course.

Is it a course like 'one hour every week for 24 week', there should be a different approach.

 

[natto]

Cheap, neglected soft stainless is often far too fat and highly abrasion resistant and will require heavy thinning before you may even think of putting an edge on it. Not exactly what will raise enthusiasm, I'm afraid.

First hands on lesson is to get a nice and even stroke. Why not give the student a rough stone? Tell them to get a feel and a steady stroke. They can look how the new bevel developes. I liked that experience.

To me there is no best way. There are different ways to success, depending on the situation.

Bring a coarse stone to class because some of their knives might be pretty dull

Or the teacher can scrub off the shoulders.

But a beginner with a slow 1k will become frustated on that knife. This happened to many, learning on their own. Telling students to bring their own knives needs a teacher who can handle such problems.

 

[Benuser]

No idea about the budget for those lessons. But thin, simple carbons don't cost much. Wouldn't like to imagine pupils bringing a Wüsthof that hasn't ever been sharpened for twenty years, or, worse, a Kai Wasabi with its crazy clustering carbides.

 

[Rangen]

No idea about the budget for those lessons. But thin, simple carbons don't cost much. Wouldn't like to imagine pupils bringing a Wüsthof that hasn't ever been sharpened for twenty years, or, worse, a Kai Wasabi with its crazy clustering carbides.

My own sharpening journey started with a class, decades ago. It was put on by a woodworking shop, and they asked us to bring a chisel or plane blade, and whatever stone we were sharpening it on.

The instructor walked around the room, looking at what each person brought, saying nothing. Finally he went to the front of the room, and said only "I think I can help you improve on what you have now."

Putting myself back in that classroom, remembering how it was, puts me on the side of those who say people should bring their own knives. That's what you start out wanting, some skills to improve what you are already working with, and the visceral experience of doing the improving yourself, under guidance. A student who goes home at the end feeling as though he's got some hands-on experience improving the exact dull knives that made him sign up for the class in the first place is a happy student, however unhappy those knives might make us.

 

[cotedupy]

Some thoughts from blighty on how I might approach it...

- Don't use putty knives. Being able to sharpen a putty knife would be a completely non-transferrable skill as they'll behave entirely differently to a proper edged blade. Opinels sounded like a reasonable option to me, but actually what @Jovidah said about the curved tips is a very good point. That part of Opinels is really pretty tricky to sharpen.

- Kiwi knives are an obvious choice I think, and I assume in Singapore are probably in pretty much every supermarket...(?). They cost sod all, come in whatever shape and size you want, very thin, soft and easy to sharpen steel, but it actually forms proper burrs unlike a lot of stainless.

- Don't do a 3 hr session in one go. Split it into two with some gap between (like days or weeks), so people can practice on their own knives if they want. Keep the first session using identical Kiwis, then do the second bringing their own. Obviously it throws a ton more variables into the mix, but @Kawa is right - people will expect it.

- I wouldn't use scopes personally, because it's probably not something people are going to do themselves at home. You could show them stuff briefly under a scope if you reckon they'd be interested, but tactile and visual identification of burrs and when an apex is formed should take up a decent amount of the class.

- It sounds to me like @TM001 has taught sharpening (or at least taught something) before. This is basically exactly how I'd structure things:

Alternating between telling/showing and letting them try it generally works well from an educational standpoint. Keep demos/talking to around 5 - 15 minutes and then let them work/do something for 10-15 minutes. Educational research indicates attention span is 15 minutes tops, so you need to break stuff up into short chunks. If the class is more than 60 minutes, a 5- 10 minute break in middle is a good idea.

For example, demo sharpening on coarse stone for 5-10 minutes, how to detect a burr, etc. Then let them do it for 5-10 minutes. Then take and answer questions and give pointers or additional short demo to clarify things. Repeat this for each skill/task you want them to do. So for 180 minute class, break it up into twelve 15 minute segments alternating between you teaching and them trying or something like ten 15 minute segments with a final 30 minute segment for them to try everything at their own pace.

With whatever time you have left, let them sharpen from start to finish as you float around room giving help as needed.

have them bring a knife or two of theirs they want to sharpen (paring/chefs) and if you want to provide knives to sharpen, something like Pallares carbon paring or Victronox stainless paring would be good.

- Be prepared for some people to just be absolutely hopeless, and require a lot of special attention. For this reason you don't really want too many people in a class. 6 to 8 tops I'd say.

- Everyone will instinctively try to sharpen at too low an angle. So watch that.

- Hard-backed leather strop. No one's going to master perfect deburring after an hour practice, so take the knives off them after they've sharpened them and show them stropping. Leather stropping can hide/correct a multitude of imperfections, and by cunningly altering the amount of pressure you use - even the worst student will achieve a sharp knife. Is this cheating? Not really I don't think. It might be if you wanged a load of compound on it, but lots of (perhaps most?) people strop on non-pasted leather after sharpening.

- Leather stops are extremely cheap to make yourself, so you could make a few and give people one each. People will get the hang of it much quicker than they do stone sharpening. You could even sell 'em at the end, make a few $.

- Ignore coarse stones. Ideally you'd want fast SnG combis at 700-1k and 2-3k. Though I can't really think of many off the top of my head, a lot of combis seem to be soakers now that I think about it.

- You'd want at least one coarse stone as backup though, for when people bring in their own stuff in a terrible state. So you can quickly get the knife to a position where the person can sharpen it.

- Spray bottles of water. People won't use enough water, so remind them.

- Give them a printout at the end re-iterating the basics of the theory and technique. Otherwise people just forget things.


---


That's just some random thoughts about how I'd do it anyway. Hopefully some of those points or considerations might be useful for you!

 

[Benuser]

Do you think those people buy a 200+ knife to learn how to sharpen after a introduction course?

I was more thinking about a thin carbon of €25 to learn sharpening on.

 

[mengwong]

Amazon to the rescue! The prices are such that I could provide half a dozen training knives without much pinch.

 

[mengwong]

So I made it a condition to get a king stone before would teach them one on one.

Speaking of King stones, check out this once-in-lifetime deal I got on the K-80 250/1000 combo… I ordered a couple with the class in mind when the Yen wobbled last year. The price has since tripled.

 

[cotedupy]

Amazon to the rescue! The prices are such that I could provide half a dozen training knives without much pinch.

There you go... gotta love Kiwis!

(You should be able to find them in basically any supermarket there too, I imagine. And possibly even cheaper).