many people think sharpening is just grinding a tiny bit of the edge to get through the food and stuff but truth is it's not all that today I'm going to use this santoku to show you how to kind of properly sharpen especially Japanese knives well if you're new to sharpening or Japanese knives you may think this is a sharpening tool in fact this is we call it horing tool difference between sharpening and horning is that this tool is to try to maintain the existing Edge just takes the bit of bur off and keeps the edge nice and straight where sharpening stone or the sharpening techniques that I'm going to show you today is going to remove the Steel W if you want to know how to use this honing R properly there's the video when it comes to sharpening lots of people think all they need to do is just grind the tip of the edge so that it goes through the food nicely but this type of technique can be used for many other Japanese knives don't get me wrong sharpening the last Edge is very important when it comes to knife sharpening so every time you sharpen the edge of knife what happens is that it comes up up up when it comes to couple millimet up that will make the edge very thick and thicker knives will cut like an axe they they try to break the food rather than slicing through so what we're going to do is to actually sharpen this whole bevel to keep the edge nice and thin then we'll put the final bevel at the edge level so if you're just a beginner wants to learn how to just sharpen the edge skip through or check out our Nathan's nice sharpening Basics video all right here's what I'm going going to use I'm going to use a knif war 220 grit Stone this is going to do most the heavy lifting on the knife hiiki 1000 Stone I'm going to use this to kind of set up the micro bevel and nightware 1000 Stone this will blend that the scratches very nicely this one of my favorite Stone so I'm going to finish with knif forare 4,000 Stone to give it extra smooth edge and don't forget to grab a triing stone this will keep your stone nice and flat then Lether sh to just take the micro be off first off I'm going to use knifer 220 to sharpen this whole bevel what we're going to do is to sharpen this whole bevel by putting the knife flat on the blade so that it makes this whole bevel nice and thin you want to thin it until this micro bevel is not visible so if you want to go in more in depth on this how to thin your knife check out this video but here's the simple quick version so in order to tell the angle it's pretty easy Put The Knife flat on the stone then push the bevel then that will give you the angle I usually start from the tip you could definitely serve from the heel it really doesn't matter all you have to do is just go simple back and forth motion make sure you put enough pressure down but don't put too much pressure so that it impedes that the motion like this you want to do very nice nice Glide in order to get a nice Glide you want to have enough water as well niif like santoku you can probably do it with the three different sections dip middle and heel so I'm going to move to the middle so when you compare so this is the before you can still see the about like half millimeter of micro bevel there you may see the still very fine hairline along the edge but it's fine because if you make it too thin it's almost like it start to crumble it's like um you know fabric frailing do the same on the next second side if you're uncomfortable just hold the knife on the same hand all the time it's not that hard all you have to do again is to put the knife flat and press PR down where the bevel is and that will give you an angle again I usually start from the tip the micro bevel is almost almost gone so this is how much you want to do the thinning with 220 grit 220 grit is essential Stone because this stone is does do the almost all the heavy lifting it does grind more steel than any other stones that I'm going to use today I'm going to you move on to the next Stone kner 1000 Stone after you finish your bevel with 220 grit it's pretty rough so that it could actually drag the food along you want to make it kind of a little bit more smoother because it can actually affect the taste yeah also a lot of people don't really like the uh you know scratch bevel the look also another thing is that this is carbon steel knife deeper than the scratches it is easier to rust so basically do the same thing you know find the angle by pressing it down back and forth so this is basically the same technique probably you don't have to push it as much as two when you're using a 220 grit so as I was sharpening on 1,00 grit Stone I noticed actually there is a spot on this knife the actually bevel that's not touching on the 1,000 Stone it is actually a little bit low spot that's why it's not touching on a 1,000 Stone it happens quite often because the Japanese knives often the handmade Japanese knives aren't made or sharpened with this Stone that's looks like a big wheel so making a bevel completely flat with the wheelstone is quite hard so you you will see you most likely will see the little low spots like these on many handmade Japanese knives you don't have to worry too much about them though because functionally it's not going to do any harm as you keep sharpening as you keep thinning your knife this l spots will be gone now I'm done with the knifewear 1,000 Stone on this side most the spots are nicely polished off but you can still see little scratches as you know as I explained it's a low spots so you can use the I I'm going to use this finger Stone it's just basically a small broken out Stone of this particular same Stone and I just going to do this technique just back and forth you could use the same technique with the uh with the Sandpaper make sure that the uh you wet your with your sandpaper as well be careful because the EDG is right here even though you're sharpening it there's still a potential that you cut yourself I'm just pressing it very lightly yeah there give the uh much more consistent look so I I usually switch my hand so that it looks exactly the same as the other side that I just sharpened but again it's aesthetic thing oh this side is good it didn't have much uh low spots so now I'm down with the thinning process from here what I'm going to show you is to basically sharpen the last Edge or the micro bevel or in Japanese we call it Koba what I would do is just give about 15° on the edge then do the back and forth if you want to learn more about this basic sharpening technique again you can check out the Nathan's knife sharpening basic video I I like to use for this first section of putting the micro bevel on I like to use bit harder 1,000 Stone which I have this a hiiki 1000 it just gives you a little bit more precise Edge than bit of softer Stone of the knifer 1000 what I would do is set it down find angle if you want to know how to find the right angle check out this video as well maybe here maybe here basically what I would do is find angle and do back and forth make sure that the angle you're sharpening stays the same I do it from heel middle and the tip until you raise a bur and once you actually thin your knife it's not going to take that long to raise the bur because you already made your knife nice and thin so here with very few Strokes I already foamed the bur on the the other side okay so what I'm going to do is flip it and find again angle do it back in for and always you want to keep your fingers very close to the edge that is that is a that add the pressure right so when there is a bur basically it will look like this so it's not going to actually cut anything it's still rounded so you want to break this bar to make it nice and straight you could do either very similar similar angle it doesn't have to be exactly the same similar angle just the weight of the knife and the finger to I guess support a few Strokes like this or you could do this shib batasan and I like to do this but it's basically the same right like when you're taking that the bur off with the honning rod you're always cutting into it so and one few Strokes like this once you remove the bur from both sides the knife is sharp so after this I'm going to finish this knife with the little bit of finer Stone like 4,000 grit so the edge that you created already with the 1,000 it's really good Universal Edge it will cut tomatoes without like without issues uh we like to finish Japanese knives especially with a little bit of fine their grits like 4,000 some people finish up really high like 8,000 since it's a multi-purpose knife I usually like to finish around 4,000 to give silkiness as well as the enough bite to it you know find angle as you same angle as you were sharpening on the 1,000 Stone because if you change the angle you're not really sharpening The Edge especially when you're like Sharpening at the lower angle than you're sharpening one the 1,000 the 4,000 will never reach to the edge so just back and forth I like to do with the 4,000 grit especially this KN for 4,000 grit is to build this little slurry slurry will help polished The Edge really nicely as well one of the ways that you can tell when you're done with the 4,000 grit really is the how shiny how polished that edge had become if you compare that one from one side with finish 1,000 grit to the 4,000 grit you can see the the micro bevel is like super super shiny it's almost like mirror polish although this micro bevel is micro as I said it's almost like hairline you'll be able to tell by reflecting the light at the tip it actually changed the angle because there is a little bit of a carved up tip here when you actually keep sharpening you actually do have to tip the knife up a little bit so that the tip of knife actually hit the stone or touch the stone then I'm going to finish with the other side 4,000 grit same technique you could definitely stir from anywhere I usually stir from the heel but it doesn't really matter you can definitely stir from the tip again tip little bit of little bit of upward motion right here you do not have to put as much pressure with this finishing Stone like 4,000 or up 8,000 grit because you basically polishing it out you're building nice slurry uh you're doing very nice fine polishing job right here you're not really removing that much of Steel okay so once you're done take the bur off this point I like to finish with the leather STP it's great tool there if when there is a little bit of a bur left this will help to take that bit of bur about same again angle you don't want to cut into the leather just lightly go get the food cut the tomatoes potatoes whatever you're cooking meat maybe go you know treat yourself get the 5A wagu from the local grocery store storage test it out it's it's fun it's a cooking knife it's you're cooking with it so go go wild at it well that's it that was how to sharpen the santoku and also you can apply to the other knives if you want to know more about knife sharpening check out this playlist or take a class from one of our stores and if you think that was too much to do at home you can bring your knives to our local stores or use our mailing sharpening services o [Music] [Music] [Applause]
