Sharpening and the fear of grinding your knife down too fast.

[HappyamateurDK]

Hi all.

Okay. Calling it a fear might be a bit too much. And it really is an odd thing to worry about. But still.. I can't help thinking that sharpening my knives often will grind them down to unusable too fast.

Am I the only one with such a concern?

My problem is mostly with my shirogami knives, I really enjoy using them. But they loose there peak sharpness(after 2-4 weaks)

So.. what do you guys think.

Will I remove the most material by maintaining a sharp edge with stropping on a high grit stone, and leather. Or will I remove the most material by letting the knife become dull and sharpening it from the bottom.

And what are really the chances of grinding larger amounts of material away on a knife by sharpening.. let's say 1 a month?

Thanks in advance.

Have a nice day.

 

[Jovidah]

I don't really have sharpening reluctance but I do have reluctance to buy sujihikis, since I'll inevitably end up with a dozen of them...

 

[Barmoley]

Pro chefs can loose 4-5 mm a year on a knife made out of shirogami class steels. This translates to probably a lifetime for a home cook with one knife. With multiple knives there is no reason to fear as you will never wear out your knife by sharpening. If you are really concerned get a dickoron micro and see if that works for you.

 

[aporigine]

Hi all.

Okay. Calling it a fear might be a bit too much. And it really is an odd thing to worry about. But still.. I can't help thinking that sharpening my knives often will grind them down to unusable too fast.

Am I the only one with such a concern?

My problem is mostly with my shirogami knives, I really enjoy using them. But they loose there peak sharpness(after 2-4 weaks)

So.. what do you guys think.

Will I remove the most material by maintaining a sharp edge with stropping on a high grit stone, and leather. Or will I remove the most material by letting the knife become dull and sharpening it from the bottom.

And what are really the chances of grinding larger amounts of material away on a knife by sharpening.. let's say 1 a month?

Thanks in advance.

Have a nice day.

It is my considered opinion that you’d have to be a pro spending hours a day going through massive quantities of product in order to actually wear a knife out.

In case my preference has value, I like a sharp knife. My fish Lambos spend more time on stones than a cutting board. My primary use knives get touched up on a strop weekly, and get a full or partial progression on the stones every coupla months. My Dirty Harrys (knives that get the **** jobs to which one wouldn’t subject a beater) and my Vic parer get sharpened every other week, with the DHs getting some of that DMT tough love.

For me, the knife shenanigan is 1/4 bragging rights, 1/4 the joy of operating something made by élite craftspeople — and the remaining half is the dual pleasure of using a really sharp knife and being able to keep it in a high state of tune.

Hope this helps!

 

[esoo]

Maintain your edge on high grit. When it gets too thick, thin and then go back to maintaining.

As a home cook, you will never get to Morimoto level who daily sharpens. That's apparently 3 years on the most worn from what I read.

 

[azn_knives_4l]

I think it's real, lol. It's not 'normal', really, but neither are your edge preferences Fwiw, my 200mm Vic is ~148g from the factory and balances just in front of the handle so ~50% of that weight is the sharpenable portion of blade, ~74g. I thinned it just last week to ~143.4g total weight so a loss of 4.6g/74g available is a ~6% reduction in *one* go, lmao. Really can't do that too often

 

[tostadas]

The simple solution is to just buy more knives. If you have enough that half of them end up sitting in storage most of the time, then wear from sharpening will be the least of your worries.

 

[Pie]

I used to worry about this. Once I reached critical mass of about 6-8 gyuto, I stopped worrying about it.

I do touch up every 3-4 uses on a fine natural stone, but there’s barely any material removed.

I don’t do full sharpens often, almost never.. like once a year, if that? There’s always some geometry and thinning work and it ends up being a week long project or so.

The only way I can see it becoming an issue is if you’re constantly repairing chips each time they happen. Like big chips.

 

[mengwong]

From an engineering or design point of view, wabi may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and construction/manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; in this instance, sabi could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or the limited mortality of any object, hence the phonological and etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi (錆, lit. 'to rust'). Although the kanji characters for "rust" are not the same as sabi (寂) in wabi-sabi, the original spoken word (pre-kanji, yamato-kotoba) are believed to be one and the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Use your knives. Maintain and sharpen your knives. That's why you have them. That's the joy, both using and being able to maintain them.

 

[aporigine]

The simple solution is to just buy more knives. If you have enough that half of them end up sitting in storage most of the time, then wear from sharpening will be the least of your worries.

I am not a knife collector. Reallytruly I am not.

 

[aporigine]

Maintain your edge on high grit. When it gets too thick, thin and then go back to maintaining.

As a home cook, you will never get to Morimoto level who daily sharpens. That's apparently 3 years on the most worn from what I read.
View attachment 329458

The wear pattern on the handles is a sight to behold.

 

[mengwong]

I recently took an edge from 450 BESS to 150, deleting micro-chips and micro-serrations and rebeveling from 20° to 15°. Blade height was reduced by maybe 30–40 microns. SG2K,4K,8K took about 1 hour including lots of measurement faff. Microscopy available upon request.

If a gyuto has, say, 1cm of height to lose before it becomes a sujihiki, that’s 10,000 microns. 250 sharpenings. If monthly, approx 20 years.

I would love to be able to wear out any one of my stones, or knives.

 

[Benuser]

I used to worry about this. Once I reached critical mass of about 6-8 gyuto, I stopped worrying about it.

I do touch up every 3-4 uses on a fine natural stone, but there’s barely any material removed.

I don’t do full sharpens often, almost never.. like once a year, if that? There’s always some geometry and thinning work and it ends up being a week long project or so.

The only way I can see it becoming an issue is if you’re constantly repairing chips each time they happen. Like big chips.

That's basically what I do, using a small Blue Belgian. If any more is needed, a Chosera 2k — which happens rarely. Both bevels convexed, even those few strokes on the BBW started well behind the very edge. Full sharpenings are rare, indeed.

 

[stringer]

I am pretty hard on my equipment. And I leave them on the prep table and on the line for whatever random joker to use. Both are many years old and have been used to cut thousands and thousands of pounds of stuff and been sharpened hundreds of times.

https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/old-beater-meet-new-beater.44563/post-1066831

Latest photo

 

[Heckel7302]

I used to worry about this, but let’s look at it logically.

As long as you aren’t creating a massive burr when you sharpen I’d say one might lose one mm of height for every 20 sharpenings.

If a hard working prep cook needs to sharpen twice a week, that’s about 100 sharpenings a year, or 5mm of height.

A home cook might need to do a full sharpening every three months if that’s their only knife. To lose the same amount of height as the pro would take 25 years.

 

[Nemo]

Why are you worried about this? At worst, it's an excuse to buy another knife.

 

[bsfsu]

If you wait a long time between sharpening you will have to go down to a low grit stone, this will remove lots of material (relatively) and then move up your progression of stones removing more material (each stone in the progression will remove less than the last stone, but more will be removed in totality).

If you touch up sharpen on a higher grit stone, more often. You will remove less steel (relatively) than a full progression.

edit: the more you sharpen the less steel is lost

 

[Pie]

Let’s be real, it’s just an excuse to take a few swipes at a stone I like smelling.

 

[cotedupy]

Will I remove the most material by maintaining a sharp edge with stropping on a high grit stone, and leather. Or will I remove the most material by letting the knife become dull and sharpening it from the bottom.

In theory; in a completely perfect world, where one could sharpen with total and complete accuracy, it would make no difference.

In practice; you will almost certainly lose more material if you let a knife get very blunt and then start at a lower grit. And less material if you do more regular touch-ups at a higher grit, or use something like a pasted/loaded strop.


[I've just noticed @bsfsu already answered this. But yeah - what he said]

And what are really the chances of grinding larger amounts of material away on a knife by sharpening.. let's say 1 a month?

It's not really worth worrying about. In home use, assuming you don't chip or break it, a kitchen knife is going to last most or all of your life.

 

[Benuser]

And what are really the chances of grinding larger amounts of material away on a knife by sharpening.. let's say 1 a month?

As said before I prefer, as a humble cook, touching-up as long as possible rather than often applying a full sharpening. But even then much will depend on your sharpening practice. If you insist on a full sharpening every time you experience some diminished performance, AND every full sharpening starts with a 320 stone, there's a considerable waste of material.
Perhaps a good occasion to reconsider the angles you're using. Shirogami will take and hold very acute angles, but with a thin geometry, an 8° bevel — say a 20° inclusive edge — won't perform much better than a 30° inclusive edge. The last one is likely so much better survive board contact. The difference in edge retention is huge.

 

[azn_knives_4l]

As said before I prefer, as a humble cook, touching-up as long as possible rather than often applying a full sharpening. But even then much will depend on your sharpening practice. If you insist on a full sharpening every time you experience some diminished performance, AND every full sharpening starts with a 320 stone, there's a considerable waste of material.
Perhaps a good occasion to reconsider the angles you're using. Shirogami will take and hold very acute angles, but with a thin geometry, an 8° bevel — say a 20° inclusive edge — won't perform much better than a 30° inclusive edge. The last one is likely so much better survive board contact. The difference in edge retention is huge.

Yeh... It's kinda the new and in-vogue thing to recommend always starting lower grits (also diamonds ) in the YouTube sharpening space. Is what it is.

 

[Barmoley]

Yeh... It's kinda the new and in-vogue thing to recommend always starting lower grits (also diamonds ) in the YouTube sharpening space. Is what it is.

With better diamond offerings these days and with more modern, high alloy steels being used both suggestions make a lot of sense. While using high grid stones allows for less material to be removed, in cases when you need to grind for a while you are better off starting with a lower grid stone. Keeping consistency for prolonged period of time is difficult for most people so in many cases getting a burr going after just a few swipes is the better way to go.

 

[panda]

unless you're using low grits every time thinning a lot, this isn't something a home cook needs to worry about. you're not alone that has this pointless "fear". Just sharpen it..

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Yeh... It's kinda the new and in-vogue thing to recommend always starting lower grits (also diamonds ) in the YouTube sharpening space. Is what it is.

I absolutely use diamonds. I use them for soft stainless and high-carbide steels. I also use them for thinning when it feels right.

 

[azn_knives_4l]

I absolutely use diamonds. I use them for soft stainless and high-carbide steels. I also use them for thinning when it feels right.

As do I, lol.

 

[M1k3]

Yeh... It's kinda the new and in-vogue thing to recommend always starting lower grits (also diamonds ) in the YouTube sharpening space. Is what it is.

If you actually need to do a full sharpening of a dull knife, a lower grit stone will save you time.

If you just need to get it from "struggling a bit on tomatoes" to "", you shouldn't need to use a coarse stone. Your finishing stone should be more than adequate.

 

[azn_knives_4l]

If you actually need to do a full sharpening of a dull knife, a lower grit stone will save you time.

If you just need to get it from "struggling a bit on tomatoes" to "", you shouldn't need to use a coarse stone. Your finishing stone should be more than adequate.

No doubt. I'm talking about YouTube, lol, and make no such recommendation.

 

[aporigine]

No doubt. I'm talking about YouTube, lol, and make no such recommendation.

the Tube is also home to folks who will passionately argue that the world is flat. I once got a headache trying to follow their logic.

 

[M1k3]

No doubt. I'm talking about YouTube, lol, and make no such recommendation.

Yeah, there's a lot of junk mixed in with the good stuff. A LOT of junk..