BEST BUDGET ($6-$26) KNIFE SHARPENING For Japanese Knives

what's up guys welcome back to another episode of outdoor chef life this video is sponsored by forge to table and they provided me with all the knives that I'll be using today for this video so a couple weeks ago I did a budget knife review video if you haven't seen that video go and check that out and I recommended the forge to table knives they like that review video so much that they decided to sponsor this one and today we're talking about budget sharpening tools ok so what's gonna be the best on a budget to sharpen your knives so I have five knives here all from Forge to table now let me just take them all out 8-inch Guto is the one I recommended in the last video and we're gonna be testing its sharpen ability in that review video some people were commenting saying that a true test of a knife or the quality of the knife is the sharpen ability is it easy to sharpen or is it difficult to sharpen so we're gonna test that today and and I agree with them as well that has to be taken into account when you are getting a new knife the next one I have a 7-inch bunka the next one I have is a 7-inch naki and I also have a petty knife as well five inch petty knife or is a six inch 6 inch petty knife all of these you can get on their website and I'll leave a link in the description below and they also have provided me with a 20% off discount so you guys can use that code outdoor chef that check out to get 20% off anything on their website all of those are available on there but this one right here this is a custom one Damascus steel heated ski that he made for me just for me and it is not available for sale but yeah I just wanted to show you guys what he made me really nice beautiful Damascus pattern with a nice handle I can't wait to put this to use we have three different types of sharpening tools and the first one is this little guy here this is six dollars on Amazon and all you do is there they have two sides one the coarse ones a fine and you just run the knife through these things and it's supposed to sharpen your knife the next one we have is a honing rod this is a ceramic honing rod and this was $15 and that is a $15.00 for a ceramic honing rod is actually a steel this is the coldest steel as well and the last one we have is a 1200 grit King whetstone and this one is $26 on Amazon so $26 on Amazon for a whetstone so these are the three that were testing out today if you know anything about knife sharpening it's may be it may already be obvious what's gonna be the best one but we're gonna put it to the test you never know you might be surprised all we need to do is pick three knives okay and I think I'm gonna go with these these three knives they're the most similar butyl bunka and not Kitty these are all the same steel vg-10 steel so that's our control group are the knives and the steel all from the same company all the same type of Steel so that that will give us an accurate measure of each sharpening device okay and I just have this guy right here all I'm gonna do is I'm going to run each blade against this stone about ten times I think let's go with ten times kind of hurts doing this before I'd all the knives let's just give him a little test on the sharpness right sharp yes good ready 1 2 3 1 2 3 all right let's try to try the cut test now see if it still cuts look Oh nope not at all oh yeah there you go very rough though it cuts but it's very rough yeah yeah you can hear that it's so rough all right let's make a mess extra dull I'm gonna do 20 times with each knife so ten more times yeah kinda hurts to run a sharp knife against the stone all right just so we know that they're extra door I'm sorry for Easter table knives but we're gonna do it for the sake of science let's see don't all right let's pair up the knives with the sharpening tool butyl is gonna get the stone all right this is the Guto gonna get the stone now katie is going to get the ceramic honing rod and the bunka is going to get the kitchen IQ little sharpener all right six dollars fifteen dollars and twenty six dollars let's get started we're gonna start with these guys right here all right we move these off to the side this is a whetstone so you have to you have to soak it in water before you use it for about 15 minutes so I'm going to get that soaking right here so I'm gonna first use the coarse side there's two sides to this there's a coarse side and there's a fine side so I'm gonna use the coarse side and then I will move on to the fine side well I did that 20 times so far let's just see how it's looking doesn't feel any sharper at all this is probably hurting the knife more than it's making it better normally I would never use this to sharpen a kitchen knife I've used this guy just sharp in my pocket knives that you know some cheap pocket knives and I don't really care about and I just want to cut boxes with I'll use this but for a kitchen knife this is probably the worst thing you can use 30 35 times on the course one now let me go with the fine so I went about 35 times in the course one and about 20 times 20 30 times on the fine the fine one see if that did any any sharpening okay okay so it made it a little bit sharper not not very much yeah he made it a tiny tiny bit sharper oh yeah gosh what that sound was awful okay should I go a little bit more I'll try it let's try it let's try double that oh all right list it let's see if that made any difference all right feels a little sharper there you go it's not perfect but yeah just a little bit sharper maybe 40% sharper I'm talking about 40% sharper than the dull State yeah that's not very good that's not very good at all well let's put that off to the side so now let's talk about the honing rod okay so when it comes to Japanese blades generally you want to avoid using a honing rod especially if it's a steel honing rod I have a ceramic one which is much better than a steel honing rod let me tell you why so a metal honing rod you see chefs you know sharpening just like that or honing Japanese knives you're not meant to do it like that because a Japanese blade as much more brittle it's a lot more brittle than western blades so which means that these are these knives are meant to be sharp and stay sharp because of that it's more brittle and it has a chance of chipping a higher likelihood of chipping than any Western knives okay and when you make contact with the rod and for instance you kind of slip and you bang it a little too hard if you're using a metal honing rod and you have a Japanese blade you can end up chipping your very nice Japanese steel all right so that's why if you're gonna use a honing rod use a ceramic rod unless you're using Western knives then you can go ahead and use those the metal let me teach you a way you can do it very more efficiently you know it doesn't look at school I was doing it real fast like this but this is the proper way get a towel place the honing rod directly on there and now you can go here so this is 90 degrees so half of that is 45 degrees half dies 22 and a half and you go a little less than that all right so that's the angle that you're going to sharpen at and you start from the top at the heel of the knife and just like that and a honing rod is not actually doing any sharpening all it's doing is it is straining the edge of the blade say that this is the edge of the blade all right so this is a knife edge and overtime or just especially with the western knives because they're softer they end up you know you use it and they end up kind of getting crinkled up like just like that so what the honing rod is doing is you're running you're running this edge along the honing rod and that is going to strain the edge back to almost you know not perfectly but it's going to align it and that is going to give the effect of being more sharp okay so that's what the honing rod is doing so it's not actually doing any sharpening just straightening the edge for a ceramic rod this is actually very cheap $15 it's not the highest quality ceramic rod this is a budget knife sharpening video after all so when was the cheapest one I can find but in general don't use a honing rod with your Japanese blade let's see if we can cut okay hey not bad alright look at that much better than that first one it's definitely sharper again actually feels pretty smooth but is it does leave a little bit of a rough edge so it's not completely sharp but it's definitely sharpening the other one doesn't really slip at all there you go okay not bad so for maintaining your knife if you don't have enough time to do a full sharpening a ceramic honing rod there's pretty decent it's pretty decent now let's move on to the last sharpening tool and that is the 1200 grit King whetstone look how thick this is this is about an inch and a quarter of thickness and this will last you a very very long time and 1200 grit that's probably about a perfect grid count for your usual you know sharpening so I'm gonna wet the stone a bit I'm gonna wet my knife a little too [Music] it starts getting dry just some more water on it make sure it stays wet I'm gonna do the other side so a lot of people are asking about me making a sharpening video I already have one but I will make another one soon oh [Music] right now I'm gonna just wipe that off I'm gonna just air dry it really quick vg10 it's pretty easy to sharpen and it'll hold the edge pretty sharp for a while so I definitely recommend these these nice Liz Forge 2 table knives nice and affordable good steel good handle beautiful design but now let's cut it there you go [Applause] there you go think we have a winner yeah you can even hear the difference exactly just so much smoother the bunka will sharpen using this little guy a six-dollar I feel sorry for this guy but let's okay yeah it's not very sharp yeah not very sharp I'll sharpen you up don't worry this one was used with the ceramic honing rod and this one not bad not bad not bad for just a honing rod alright and this one with the whetstone there you go guys these knives are very easy to sharpen really good for beginners I think and this stone is very good as well for you to grab these are both affordable for its a table sponsor this video and they are giving everybody 20% off so I'll leave that link in the description below so this combo right here is gonna cost you a total of $100 and this this is gonna last you for a very long time and it's gonna stay sharp and you're going to be able to cut very well with these to set up even if you're on that budget you can still have a beautiful Japanese style blade and it's gonna it's gonna perform very well for a very long time there you have it guys the winner is the whetstone of course I think for a lot of you it was pretty obvious that the whetstone was gonna be the best one this is going to last two years this is a stone that I've used in the past many many times and I know it performs very well for the price you can't beat that I'll leave links for everything in the description below if you want to get the ceramic rod go for it but this is gonna be what you want to sharpen your Japanese blades with all right I'm gonna be making a very thorough how to sharpen video so if you guys want to see exactly how to use one of these make sure to check back and I'll be posting that real alright guys hope you liked the video I hope you learned something and if you liked it make sure to hit that thumbs up and subscribe see you guys next time face

Channel: Outdoor Chef Life

Views: 49,656

Rating: 4.90622 out of 5

Keywords: Outdoor chef life, taku, taku tuesday, japanese knives, sharpening, honing rod, steel, vg10, japanese steel, forge to table, budget, cheap, how to sharpen, sharpening tools, guide, whetstone, 1000 grit, 1200 grit

Id: _yCtrdTfFrM

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020