Knife Sharpening How To Use A Sharpening Steel Part 3

hi guys okay that was part one your basic kitchen knife grind types a lot of people are not familiar to most people especially in the 30 or so years I've been in the cutlery business most people kitchen knife grinds are all the same and they're not as I've just shown you so that should give you a better idea as to how to apply a honing rod to your knife keep them sharp or even a sharpening stone to your knives but a lot of the times people ask me over the years what is it that makes a knife dull and beyond the fact of taking a knife through is hacking away at something with it there are many reasons and so a lot of people actually misuse their knives inadvertently even though they don't want to they end up using them the wrong way trying to guess how they will react to the chore at hand so I'm just going to cover a few of the basic reasons why a knife will go down and the number one reason in my book that a knife will go dull is improper pressure if your knife is sharp you don't have to effort to make your knife cut right you should let the edge do the work just as I tell people all the time don't push on a stone or on a rod let the abrasive do the work because I explain when you take a knife to their steel if you push too hard the blade will roll this way and then when you come to the other side and push hard the blade will roll this way so you have to let the knife do the work improper pressure can flatten a knife edge or roll in knife edge very quickly also the medium that you're cutting on in other words your cutting board can affect how long a knife will stay sharp and I've got a whole other series on cutting boards that I think will please and surprise a lot of people but dumb a lot of your synthetic cutting boards will take the edge away from your knife quicker than a good old-fashioned hard rock maple board so the medium that you're cutting on if you have one of these acrylic boards or synthetic glass in your home and you notice your knives going dull quick get rid of it and get wood okay another thing that will affect how long or how short a knife will stay sharp is the hardness of the steel now I told you a lot of European and American made knives have a rockwell hardness of between 56 and will say 60 and that's a fairly decent range but it's also a range that requires more honing and more resharpening so your steel hardness will dictate how long your knives will stay sharp when you have a Japanese knife at a 65 Rockwell it's going to stay sharp for a long time but it's also going to be harder to sharpen if you have an incorrect or an improper abrasive the softness of the steel of your knife will dictate how long the knife will stay sharp or what causes it to go dull if you have an old-fashioned knife in your kitchen something that belonged to grandma or grandpa that turned black with age that's a non stainless it's called carbon steel carbon steel generally has a hardness of between 55 and 58 depending on when it was made today's average they can harden carbon at about 56 58 Rockwell but it's soft so it's going to go dull quicker and also go dull really quick depending on what kind of medium you're cutting on so they all interrelate to each other another reason that a knife ago dull is what are you cutting okay if you're taking a standard French or a modified French and trying to bone out some ribs that's going to dull a knife very quickly because ribbing is the chore of a cleaver and not the chore of a French or a modified French knife now yes you can bone out a chicken with a French knife because all you're doing is looking for the rotator in the joint and it's soft but to use a knife like this to do bones get to do wood to do anything other than kitchen chores will dull it very quickly obviously another reason I focal dull is general misuse using a knife like a screwdriver using a knife like a chisel or shaver it doesn't work it'll go dull another reason a knife will go dull is improper honing like I stated last week if you're too high to the honing medium you do nothing but scratch up your primary grind and if you're too low excuse me if you're too low you'll scratch up your primary grind and if you're too I to the medium you'll deform the blade and also another reason and I forego dull is improper stropping and I'm going to cover stropping on another video stropping is done on a piece of leather sometimes on a piece of paper that's dropping is different than honing on a rod so there you have ten reasons why a knife will go dull I hope you like it and in second or two I'm going to show you how to sharpen a knife on a rod even though I told you rods are only for honing stay tuned ok guys so like I told you last week your honing rod is only for honing for realigning truely or straightening the edge of your knife to allow it to cut longer to stay sharp or longer but there is a way to actually sharpen a knife on a rod and that means you have to get a new style honing rod and there are two available so to your mind what's the hardest substance known to man diamonds diamonds has always been the hardest substance known to man in fact it rates ten on the hardness scale but what's right below a diamond is ceramic it ranks about a number nine in the hardness scale now a lot of people look at these ceramic rods and they say they're too smooth to sharpen a knife okay how can you do it how can you do it because this ceramic is harder than the steel on your knife now I told you last week that a honing rod like is that only straightens a blade okay and that sharpening is the process of removing metal from a blade so when you look at a ceramic rod like this if you can see the gray inside of the white that is metal removal it's very slight but it's there and if I continue it'll get darker and darker because this ceramic is removing a certain amount of metal from the blade hence your sharpening so if you're a professional at work and you can't carry a stone in your bag where the try stone at work isn't satisfactory because it's out of alignment and I'm going to show you in later videos how to maintain your sharpening stones for optimum performance because I'll tell you what in 30-plus years in this business I have not seen many people who massage or true their sharpening stones so their stones bow where the stones are gully to one side or another therefore they don't get a perfect match between the stone and the blade they're for improper sharpening but back to how to sharpen on a rod that a diamond rod this is a diamond impregnated rod okay the diamonds that go on this rod are mono surface and what I mean by mono surfaced like this the diamonds are flat like a piece of paper mono surfaced diamonds now some inferior diamond rods will use what they call poly surface diamonds poly surface diamonds look like a jagged cliff and that's not the kind of rod that's not the kind of stone you want to use on your knives a lot of people say today that they won't use diamonds they're very aggressive and that's just not the truth today's diamond technology is as gentle or as rough depending on I use it as using natural stones or synthetic stones of another order like India or crystalline or alumina okay it just depends on how you use them okay so if you work as a chef as a cook or even at home and you don't have stones and you want your knives to get sharp then you buy a diamond rod because this diamond rod at a 600 mesh or 600 grit which is a medium range will remove metal as you use it lightly and said you don't have to put lightly this diamond rod will remove metal okay just remember your degree angle okay this rod will take off a certain amount of metal okay now here's the thing about removing metal or sharpening a knife when you look at the edge that you've created under a magnifying glass or a microscope okay that edge has all kinds of scratches in order to scratch metal or anything that means something had to dig its way into the metal therefore when you're looking at a scratch surface of metal it looks like lands and grooves and each consecutive grit stone or each consecutive grit rod that you go to will micro bevel the lands down to the groove and that's the principle each consecutive grit the higher number of the grit the more micro beveling the lower the number grit the more aggressive that's your shaper okay so it's all about micro beveling and I tell people all day long in the shop you can't sharpen a knife on just one stone you have to go through a micro beveling process consecutive grits a minimum of three stones now this rod as I said is a 600 mesh or roughly a 600 grit that is a medium grit the rod that I'm using is about a 1,200 to about a 1500 grit okay now this is sharp okay I could go to work right now hear that okay you hear that like my friend beau says you can hear the crickets okay I can work with that right now yeah I could work with that right now but do I want to know now I'm going to micro bevel it down using this ceramic rod this ceramic rod will take even more steel off the knife but not very much not very much but what it's going to do it's going to take those high lands and bring them down to the grooves this mimicking a scratch here's the land here's the groove it's going to micro bevel this land down to this groove micro bevel very important to know especially if you want to get into sharpening I love sharpening it's an art it's a talent it's a tradable skill light strokes on the Saran there we go not too many watch what you're doing make sure you go from the end of the neck to the front this is how you sharpen a knife in the field a couple more much better much better so sharp see you taking the hair here you go for crickets okay dinner not like I said check the cut okay check the cut feather and it works feather some cuts okay that's my bird in the back on pay no mind I have to lock them up in the other room where else will drive us all crazy all right sharpen up for you I can just keep on doing this day in and day out okay there you have it a knife that's been sharpened by sharpening rods okay I hope you enjoyed it I know I did see on the next video take care

Channel: Richard Blaine

Views: 148,256

Keywords: knife sharpening, kitchen knife sharpening, knife sharpening techniques, sharpening, knife sharpeners, sharpening stones, knife sharpener, sharpening rod, sharpening steel, ceramic sharpening rod, steel sharpening, steel knife sharpener, honing steel, diamond honing steel, how to use a sharpening steel, how to sharpen a kitchen knife, Knives, Blade, Kitchen Knife (Culinary Tool), Knife (Sports Equipment)

Id: SVJGxhW3iu4

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2011