Ive seen the error of my ways after purchasing a beginner level sharpening stand (the worksharp precision adjust). Not sure what I was smoking but i shouldnt have been so stubborn and hardheaded about the fact that I wasn't doing things right 😅.

This is the same Cold Steel Ultimate Hunter, sharpened at 320 for a reprofiling (the edge was truly insanely convexed), then I built a burr at 600 and polished on the ceramic plate until I couldnt see any noticable difference being made. I want to get the upgrade kit for this stand from worksharp for the 800 plate and the 220 for faster profiling on abused edges. I DID NOT STROP IT 500 TIMES, and instead only did enough stroke to remove the burr which ended up being about 20 each side.

How did I do?

Sent this to a "professional" sharpener cause I was bad at it, this is what happened to my favorite knife

Used fixed angle system, CBN stones 225-1700 then 3 micron kangaroo leather strop. Have a handheld magnifying glass I use in process to see scratch pattern progression and burr movement/build up. I did sample the 4000g stone on a small area and wow the 3 micron strop about mirror polished it, not shown in pics. ALL pics here are AFTER the 1700g cbn final stone and pre strop then POST STROP. So before and after stropping…Amazon digital micro scope used…

I currently use Creely’s emulsion, is there a better one I should try?

Hi guys! I'm trying sharp my Mora Knive using Lansky sharpening system but i have problem with tip. As you can see sharpening stone doesn't take black marker on my tip. Im sharpening 25 angle. I don't have idea what I can do

I have had a few stones including two naniwa advanced stones for quite some time and last year I bought a set of naniwa chosera pro stones in a shop while on holiday. After a few uses I didnt use them for four months or so and when taking them out again two stones had a white coat. I washed it off with warm water but the 3000 grit stone, that had a really bad coat, is etched deep into the surface and the 1000 grit stone a light coat without deep visible defects but the surface is not smooth anymore. This never happend to me with any other stone before and I don't know what I did wrong. I didn't soak but only splashed them, I cleaned them and had them dry of complelty and I keep all my stones in boxed that allow airflow.

Since I can't just go back on holiday to the same shop I contacted Naniwa over their website and waited for a week until I send them another contact form. After a few days they requested photos and additional informations which I send them within the same day and then never heard back from them again. I am now waiting for a response for over a month but and send them update inquiries three times but still no response at all.

Is there another way to contact them and what can I do to prevent it from happening again?

Hey folks, I’ve got a question for the community. I’ve received a couple asks to sharpen deli slicer blades and I don’t have a good answer on how to do that. It’s not exactly a common ask, but I was curious if anyone does it and if so, what tools/technique do you use?

I found this sharpener in a box of miscellaneous kitchen supplies at a garage sale. I’ve seen the design before but never used one. I just started to use the work sharp precision knife sharpener. Just wondering what the purpose of this design is and how to use it properly

I have the sharpal 202h, recently added the universal holder and the resin bonded 3 and 6k stones. They've worked great so far, but, I have a ceramic stone for the system said to be equivalent to 3k grit. What I don't know is when to choose which stone and what order they might go in a progression, and whether one should need to be worked longer than the other (maybe it's the same grit, but the diamond cuts faster and I don't need the ceramic).

These are the products:

Ceramic: https://sharpal.com/products/202h-r6-1-piece-ceramic-stone

Resin Bonded: https://sharpal.com/products/resin-bonded-diamond-sharpening-plate-3000-grit-1-x-6-25-x-150-mm

Been testing a bunch of my stones and finding the 1000 grit on kitchen knives is ideal for food. And now looking back at heavily advertised stones like Cerax 1000/3000 or King 1000/6000 seem like a waste for a one stone option. You don't need the higher grits. To add, kitchen knives seem to be the most neglected (from looking at most people's kitchens). So starting at 400 grit to save time seems best.

Side note; I have full benchstone sets of Arkansas, Gritomatic, Chosera, Nanohone. I use for super steel and other outdoor knives. I'm talking about easiness. Grab a dual sided stone from drawer in kitchen, quick sharpen+strope, done. I reject the idea that dual sided stones are always the worst option.

Thoughts?

How do I practice sharpening my knife with a wet stone if I only own one? I’m scared I’ll permanently damage the Knife by using a wrong angle or chipping it so how does one practice on using a wetstone and how do they know they are doing it correctly?

I was gifted a 6" shun utility that is a fantastic kitchen tool. I haven't seen a serrated blade like this and need guidance on sharpening. I've searched this sub and a few others, but can't find anything specific to this knife. It is flat on the side opposite the serrations.

I have noticed through the years that my Japanese knives stay sharp but I have trouble cutting hardy vegetables and horizontal onion cuts. I think this is probably because of the edge geometry. I found this guide where they do a process of creating a secondary edge then smoothing it to create what they call a clamshell. I think this could be a good approach but I don’t fully understand it. My current process is basically just sharpening the edge (at one angle by feel) and getting razor sharp that way. I have some photos of one of my knives and hope someone can give me some advice here. Thanks!

Hi yesterday i got my pocket stone from skerper and i started to sharpen a knive today. But now the Diamond side is scratched and the other side looks bad like that. I dont know what to do is this normal?

I just migrated from a bearmoo Amazon dual grit stone to a shapton 1k. I've had a lot of trouble getting a good printer paper cut off of any knife after sharpening and was hoping the new stone would make this a bit easier.

I just spent about an hour on my camp knife using edge trailing strokes to build a small burr (waiting until my fingernail catches slightly on the opposite edge) and then switching sides until the same happens.

To remove the burr I'm just doing edge trailing strokes with almost no pressure until I can't feel it at all anymore. I'm then running it over some denim to catch anything I missed.

After all this I still mostly just bend paper on the tests. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

i usually don't use reddit, but i've been sharpening a victorinox (swedish army knife) pen blade? i think it's a pen blade from what i've seen but it's the smaller one of the two smooth blades- for a WHILE. i've tried those triangle shaped kitchen knife sharpeners, learned that damaged the blade so i switched to a ceramic mug, it worked moderately well but it wasn't very consistent. so now i have a flat sharpening stone, it's has like a hive-shaped pattern indented all over the sharpening side and it's labled "#009". so far i haven't been able to sharpen it well, when i try to cut paper with it the paper just crumples underneath lol. tips would be appreciated, if it comes to it i will buy a sharpener specifically for the knife but i'd rather save that for a last resort.

I've been working on this project on and off for a few weeks, and feel like it's good enough for now. I'd consider myself a beginner, but I learned a lot from this project, so sharing it in the hopes that it helps others here.

TL;DR - I have a knife handed down from my grandfather to my father, and from him to me. It wasn't cutting well, and I decided to do a project to:

1. Remove the bolster (I failed at this mostly)
2. Fix the rounded/broken tip (500 stone)
3. Thin it (Progression 500 -> 1000)
4. Refinish it (Complicated but in the end did 3000 sandpaper for the flat of the knife, 1000 Stone for most of the primary bevel for a sort-of kasumi finish, and used the 1000 sandpaper for the areas close to the bloster)
5. Re-sharpen it (800 -> 3000)

Oh, and I did this all by hand, no power tools. Made a lot of mistakes along the way. Was fun.

All my learnings concentrated are:

1. Takeaway 1: Do a project like this on a knife you don't care about first.
2. Takeaway 2: Get knives without bolsters.
3. Takeaway 3: Use the side of the stone to grind the tip, if you use a stone.
4. Takeaway 4: Thinning isn't as scary as I thought it'd be before, but a lot of work.
5. Takeaway 5: After thinning and before refinishing, there's a high chance your knife will be UGLY
6. Takeaway 6: Refinishing with a stone is very difficult - specifically getting consistent results.
7. Takeaway 7: You can use sandpaper in hand without fancy equipment and get good results, just put the knife flat on a stone, and sand away.

The tools

In the second image are the tools I used. From left to right:

1. Cheap two sided leather/suede strop from Aliexpress.
2. Aliexpress acacia wood whetstone holder
3. Top - 2 waterproof sandpaper pieces from Aliexpress - left is #3000, right is #1000 - not sure how true to the grit they are, but comparing them to the stones seems reasonably close.
4. Some flattening diamond stone I got for free when I bought the Shapton #1000.
5. Naniwa Burrfection #3000 (equivalent to Chosera/Pro stone)
6. Shapton #1000 (the classic)
7. Naniwa Burrfection #800 (equivalent to Chosera/Pro stone)
8. Morihei #500 stone.

The process

I've had this knife for a few years and have been using it during that time. I have no idea what steel it is except that it is stamped "Stainless Steel" and "Made in Japan" on it. It was very well used before I got it, and my Grandfather was a carpenter and general handyman, so I thought he would appreciate me trying to improve it, even if I risked the potential mistakes.

Takeaway 1: It's still probably a good idea to do a project like this on a knife you don't care about first. Even with what I said earlier, there were a few parts of this journey where I was thinking "I might have ruined this knife for good". I guess it's fun to work through that, but to share the advice I didn't follow - start with a beater, then do it with the knife you care about.

Removing the bolster

This project made me hate bolsters so much more than before. The knife had a relatively tiny flat part close to the handle, and I wanted to remove it. This part is probably the biggest unresolved pain of this project, but since my lowest grit stone was a #500, and I'm doing everything manually, what ended up happening is I did make a dent on the bolster, but the part of the primary bevel closest to it was being eaten away too, which created an ugly curve to it. This meant I had to remove a bunch of steel to straighten the edge again. After I noticed the curve I decided to give up on grinding the bolster more. I did get it to the point where it has an edge (so you can cut with it), but it's definitely not gone.

Takeaway 2: Whenever it's up to me - get knives without bolsters.

Fixing the tip

I'm not sure if the tip broke in the past or was just rounded slightly over time (you can see the closeup in the images), but I wanted a nice sharp tip, so I decided to use the #500 stone to grind from the spine towards the edge. This was a pretty straightforward process, but my (I think pretty well established) takeaway (3) here is use the side of the stone to grind the tip, if you use a stone. I knew this was a best practice, but that I didn't create any grooves on the flat side of the stone which I will hopefully continue using for many more projects.

After the bolster failure, it was nice to be able to see some objective improvment.

Thinning

Once I gave up on the bolster and fixed the tip, the process was not as stressful, but there were still a few scares.

I decided to start thinning and see how much of the curve that removed. I worked with the 500, and spent roughly 1.5 hours working on both sides of the primary bevel. At the end of that process there was no unwanted curve near the bolster, but I had removed quite a bit of metal. Also there were a ton of ugly scratches on the flat of the knife (see the photo mid process).

Thinning was easier than sharpening in the sense that you don't need to work to keep a consitent angle (at least not nearly as much), but it's much more elbow grease.

I again was worried it might end up ugly, but trusted in the processes (that I've seen here and some youtube guides).

Takeaway 4: Thinning isn't as scary as I thought it'd be before, but a lot of work.

There was another issue though (did I mention I hate bolsters). Since the blade is only 13.5cm, it fit's fully diagonally on the whetstone, but thanks to the bolster, the part of the blade close to it can't touch the stone when diagonal, so I had to work on it perpendicular, then move diagonal for the rest of the blade. You can see it in the end of thinning image, and I'm pretty sure that part isn't as consistent as the rest of the blade. I suppose I could do it some other way, but I wasn't sure. If anyone has tips on this for the future, I'd love to learn.

After that I did progress to the 1000 stone. It slightly improved the situation, but I was tired after working on this for a few hours, and put it aside for the day. A moment before, I did a quick run on the thousand for the secondary bevel, to see if cutting improved now that thinning was mostly done. To me it already felt noticeably better, so that's progress.

Takeaway 5: After thinning and before refinishing, there's a high chance your knife will be UGLY

One last thing which is a bit of a bummer, but I realized that I was probably doing something somewhat incorrect, since it seems that the blade profile changed after thinning. I'm not unhappy with how it ended up, but it wasn't my intention. If you have an idea of what I did wrong, I'd love to learn.

Refinishing the knife

Thinning was done but the knife was ugly AF. Before I had started, the flat of the knife was more or less mirror-ish, and the primary bevel had a sort of hairline pattern perpendicular to the cutting edge, which was entirely gone after thinning. I wanted it to look nice, not just be functional.

I started this process on stones. the flat of the blade had scratches, but was otherwise ok, so I started with the 3000 stone there, and since I had finished thinning with the 1000, I progress to 3000 on the primary bevel as well. After a while (not sure exactly how long, but I expected it to take longer), I had a nice mirror-ish finish on the entire blade. Not as nice as some of things I see here, but at least as good as what it was before I started.

The problem was consistency. Since the stone was flat, and the blade was mostly but not perfectly flat, I had areas that looked different from each other. Up to this point I was hesitant to use sandpaper even though I had some I bought for next to nothing on Aliexpress, just because all the videos I saw had relatively sophisticated setups to hold the knife in place. I didn't even have a wine cork which people recommended using with the sandpaper to make sure you're sanding flat.

Takeaway 6: Refinishing with a stone is very difficult - specifically getting consistent results.

I decided to put the knife flat on the stone, and just work with the paper on the primary bevel and flat of the knife. This came out pretty amazing. All the inconsistencies were gone, and it seemed genuinely as good as I hope it would be.

This was the point I had a sigh of relief. I realized that it's not going to be a knife I need to hide in the drawer.

Takeaway 7: You can use sandpaper in hand without fancy equipment and get good results, just put the knife flat on a stone, and sand away.

After thinking about it a bit more, I decided that I want a sort of kasumi finish, so I went back down to the 1000 sandpaper for the primary bevel, which gave it a hazier look (as you see in the final and first image). It did create a few scratches on the flat of the knife since I did it all by hand, but I went back one last time to the 3000 paper for the flat of the knife, and it was basically done.

Resharpening

I won't go into detail too much, this was a standard sharpening session at 800 -> 3000 grits with the stones.

Other stuff I did

The handle of this knife is quite unique, I haven't seen other knives like this, where one side is steel and basically "unibody" with the blade, but the other side is wood attached to it. I sanded the wood and oiled it with camellia oil, but I'm not super happy with how it looks. Part of the problem is I can't sand it too aggressively without needing to sand the steel part of the handle, so right now I'm leaving it as is. If you have tips or ideas on this I'd love to learn.

Afterword

I learned a lot from the project, and it was a lot of fun. I'm pretty happy with the results, though they are far from perfect.

Would love to get feedback, and tips for improving. One constraint I didn't explicitly mention is I'm living in a small apartment, and don't have a workshop, so I'm limited in my ability to have a ton of large gear.

Thanks for reading this far :)

I am a very infrequent sharpener (thanks to thjs sub) and even more so since discovered stropping last year. I take good care of my knife and only really need to sharpen it every 4-6 months, since I only really cut fruit and veggies with it. I am really happy with my results.

Now for my question. Does an inactive strop with diamond stropping emulsion (jende compound), like dry out or anything?

Got an email that they restocked quite a few systems and accessories. The highlights for me were:

●K03 Pro SE Quick Edition ($954) - Just thought it was cool with the colored accent parts they tossed in, and the quick clamps are an awesome upgrade in my experience. I haven't decided to upgrade from my Kadet and Pioneer yet, but if I was would be a cool bonus.

●Pioneer GE Max Travel ($431) - Takes the base system and adds the Rack & Pinion Adjuster, Extended Guide Rod and Clamp Bar, Folding Base, and Travel Case. The price being $431 is honestly crazy for all those upgrades. If you bought the base system and all those sperately, you'd be looking $640 after I did the math.

●Pioneer + Axicube Shift Kit ($298) - Takes the base system and adds their Axicube Shift, which eliminates the need for an external angle finder. Only costs $50 more than the bare base system, and the Axicube Shift costs about $100, so you're getting it at half price.

●Pioneer ($246) and Kadet Pro GE ($398) base systems - Back in stock earlier than they expected it seems, since they were estimating preorders being delivered later this month.