What I'm about to say may be blindingly obvious and been talked about before, but I'd never thought about it this way...
I was doing some work today on a lovely old Sab Chef's knife that belonged to my wife's grandmother:
In particular I was doing some more work on the finger guard/bolster bit. Anyone who's sharpened knives for other people (and I'm guessing that's almost everyone here) will know these are the bane of your life. So I was taking it down to a more appropriate angle to allow sharpening, using a coarse SiC stone, 100-120 grit ish. Something like like this:
When I got there I decided, rather than going any further, I'd try putting an edge on using the finger guard as an angle guide. I did this one-handed with a few edge leading strokes on the same 100 grit SiC stone, abrading metal off the guard as part of the stoke, and then stropped it on my sleeve. It was quite easy - took about 30 seconds.
It's probably sharper now than 99% of normal people's kitchen knives. And strikes me that the finger-guard-as-angle-guide is probably quite a good idea, or even part of what they were intended for. I realise that over time the sharpening angle will increase unless someone's being careful, but it still seems a feck of a lot better an option than relentlessly over-steeling something until it becomes useless...
I was doing some work today on a lovely old Sab Chef's knife that belonged to my wife's grandmother:
In particular I was doing some more work on the finger guard/bolster bit. Anyone who's sharpened knives for other people (and I'm guessing that's almost everyone here) will know these are the bane of your life. So I was taking it down to a more appropriate angle to allow sharpening, using a coarse SiC stone, 100-120 grit ish. Something like like this:
When I got there I decided, rather than going any further, I'd try putting an edge on using the finger guard as an angle guide. I did this one-handed with a few edge leading strokes on the same 100 grit SiC stone, abrading metal off the guard as part of the stoke, and then stropped it on my sleeve. It was quite easy - took about 30 seconds.
It's probably sharper now than 99% of normal people's kitchen knives. And strikes me that the finger-guard-as-angle-guide is probably quite a good idea, or even part of what they were intended for. I realise that over time the sharpening angle will increase unless someone's being careful, but it still seems a feck of a lot better an option than relentlessly over-steeling something until it becomes useless...
