A Guide to Choosing and Using a Whetstone or Sharpening Stone

hi my name is Andre king from house tonight then give you an education about sharpening stones and eliminate a lot of different myths about them out there so starting from entry level we have sokham carbide stones that's the entry level the three green ones you see in front of us here and as you get into the higher quality ones you have the aluminum oxide stone here with a white and a brown and then the highest quality ones being the Japanese water stones that actually come from Japan and we'll also talk about other materials as well such as diamond so to start with what you're getting from a sharpening stone for me when you go through a good better best scenario is not only the different grit of the materials that they come in but also the composition of it so starting at the silicon carbide it is a hardest material what are the three stones that you see in front of us here and that's actually not a good thing you want it hard but you also want these going to be soft enough that actually wears away and that's as a wears way it reflects and exposes more polishing properties of the stone so from soaking carpet we then go to the aluminum oxide and this one particular one comes in a great great of one thousand three thousand but although it's a higher grit than the silicon carbide ones it actually is a little bit softer and not as brittle when you get into the highest quality ones the Japanese famous Japanese water stones actually are a natural stone from Japan this particular one is a three hundred one thousand grit but you can get them all the way up to about twenty thousand grit and these are much more expensive than the synthetic stones but for anyone who does a lot of specialized tools there's nothing else to like it so let's talk a little bit about the grits of the stone so basically if you think about stones like sandpaper they'll come anywhere from 100 grit all the way up to us at 20,000 good the lower the number the course of the stone is in in general the softer the stone is because it wears way and in general your one use a course or stone on knives that are very dull or dead Warren and then you want to finish off up the higher grit here such as the 1000 to give you a really fine polished honed edge because basically the better polished edge you have on it less resistance as your cancer your food and materials we also have a very popular diamond as well so diamonds as an abrasive or the most efficient sharp where you can get in the world and these are not made from like jewelry diamonds but industrial diamonds this fifth layer one is a cut a quad stone it's very popular because it has the four different grips here shown with the 150 300 600 and 1,000 grit so it gives you the most versatile and most options available for a sharpening year ago chisels or your knives and diamond stones can be used with water or they can be used drawing and that's a very common question that we get in terms of how do you lubricate a stone so all good synthetic stones you just utilize water you don't wanna use oil with them you can't use oil with them but it's actually not as beneficial as water and one of the downfalls of using oil if you were just gonna use it you want to stay with the way you can't mix oil and water once you start utilizing with a stone now the higher quality Japanese water stones these you only use in water and you soak them for upwards of an hour depending on the specifications by the manufacturer where the synthetic stones here you can soak them literally just a minutes before use and then another very common question is size so as you see in front of us here we have stone from four inches all the way up to 7 inches and the general rule of thumb is you want to have the stone as close to the longest length of nice that you're gonna be sharpening with to fit so in this situation we have an 8 inch chef's knife we're gonna be sharpening so any of these stones here in the seven inch range would be more than adequate ideally you could have it longer would be better but 7 inches is adequate now that we talked about sharpie and this one's been smoking here for a few minutes and this is a silicon carbide stone here with a 400 1000 so the key with any sharp me whether it be a maintenance device or a stone it's all about one angle correct angle and secondary to that is technique so as a lot of you guys may or may not know whether you're utilizing steel or a stone if you know that as you're ninety degrees your knife to your stone half of that gives you about 45 after that game gives you the 22 and a half degrees depending on the usage of the knife and the durability of the edge you want on it you're gonna be sharpening or honing your knives anywhere from 15 to 20 degrees I would say so the general rule of thumb is the higher the angle the more durable your edges the lower the angle the sharper it is but less durable it is so it's a give and take depending on the type of cutlery and what your personal preference is so when you as a sharpening stone it's all about technique and angle so if you've got that proper angle on there and in this case here I'm gonna use about 20 degrees I'm going to place my knife at the edge of the storm here and basically I want to put my fingers across the blade so I get even pressure and as I work across the stone I cut into the storm and finish out the tip very simple and the key is consistent pressure across the way and then you would alternate this way to do the other side as well and that's really the key in the challenge when you do any type sharpening to maintain that consistent angle on both sides so one of the greatest old tricks that you can use to help judge the angle that you're sharpening it is just take a nice big black marker here and what you want to do is score the edge of your knife here removing the actual cutting edge what that's been allowing me to do is judge the angle that I'm sharpening that to to give me an indication whether I'm holding a knife too low or too high and Lango I mean what 20 degrees on this one but if I happen to get it too low and they pour across my stone I'm gonna show you what's gonna happen here as you may see here on the blade a lot of the steel has been run away quite high up onto the felt whereas if I have the correct angle got that degrees right you'll see that the wear is much lower on the weight here so that's the correct angle I know my angle is correct because it's wearing a way to felt their wares if I look on the backside here it's not as consistent right and it also gives me a good indication along the full length of the blade from the tip right to the heal how the sharpening has worn away so when you continue on at the correct angle depending on the sharpness or dullness of your knife if you will that will dictate which you're gonna start with in this case here I've chosen the 1000 because this mate is pretty sharp so I'm just basically just giving it a touch up and if it's pretty sharp already then you can alternate your strokes from one side to another if it was a really bad shape and dull then I would just work one side at a time before I go to alternating strokes and basically again depending on the quality steel your knife and the grid of the stone it can take anywhere from six to maybe even twenty four strokes on on each side so again it's paramount a sharp knife is a safe night and thanks for watching today

Channel: House of Knives

Views: 1,638,590

Keywords: sharpening stone set, sharpening stone guide, Whetstone, best sharpening stone, Sharpening Stone, sharpening stones for knives, whetstone knife sharpening, How to use a whetstone, how to use a whetstone, House of Knives, how to use a sharpening stone, how to use sharpening stone, how to use a sharpening stone for a pocket knife, how to use a sharpening stone with oil, how to use a sharpening stone with water, how to use sharpening stone on knife, how to use sharpening stone knife

Id: kSKpz1UqIl4

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2015