Sharpen Your Kitchen Knife Like A Master Sharpener

one of the number one questions I get of all time is Josh how do you get your knife shoot when I say sharp I mean like like that but there's only one way we can do that and that is at the greatest knife shop in America so hey guys welcome to Bernal colory San Francisco's premier cutleries job here we are is it's gonna be my that's my thing Josh hey Josh Josh and Josh that's right so we're with Josh Donald Bernal cutlery San Francisco to me I think you guys are the kings of knives just why we're here to flex on everybody if we're gonna start with sharpening the first thing we need to talk about is what kind of steel should a beginner sort of begin with many people might find themselves already with knives that they want to sharpen probably Rodolphe they have them a lot of people are gonna you know be working with European stainless steels like this French chef's knife here this is a Japanese stainless and then there's all the carbon steels and hand forged knives you look at this incredible array of knives and it can be really daunting and people will just sort of default to you know a name-brand knife the way you sharpen your knife is gonna be pretty much the same for whatever steel you choose some fields are going to hold their edge longer will require you know sharpening less often others will sharpen easier so whoever you buy your knife from should be able to tell you what the sharpening is like I think that that makes a lot of sense than what's let's walk these people how to mmm let's walk these people on how to sharpen you ever don't lay where it done Oh oh it's a distort I just put it in a drawer oh and just let it kind of Clank clanking put some other stuff in there too yeah that's looking good so this is the first thing you want to notice is it there we go that's it's not too bad let's look at February tomato does it great with it yeah I think we go and start sharpening yeah they sharpen you don't need that do you or callipers yeah nobody's are stupid just stupid who uses calipers anyway and these are Japanese wet stones that are soaked in water you have coarse medium and fine grit stone is the coarsest one that we got in our lineup this is 220 grit quite coarse there's 400 in there as well here in this bin we have twelve hundred thousand and then there's our fine stones here 6,000 and 8,000 these ones have been soaking for about 30 minutes the coarse stone has a large particle removes a lot of metal medium stones little less metal removal and then the fine stones very very light metal removal so they're essentially polishing the edge do how dull the knife is would determine which stone you would start with Oh start with a 220 stone we assume that this is a doll tall knife we're gonna start with a pinch grip from our pinch grip thumb goes in the heel forefinger goes on to the spine these three fingers should be getting a good grip onto the handle and your wrist should be locked you don't want to have a bent wrist either one of these two directions so the knife should be about 45 degrees to the stone and then the angle of the edge on the stone is real important we're gonna be sharpening at somewhere around 15 degrees I don't think that anybody freehand sharpening can really tell you exactly what their angle is two quarters oftentimes for chef's knives this is kind of inaccurate but really useful because it usually gives you about what your angle should be so edge of the corners edge of the knife we're gonna have to take them off there to sharpen so don't let this finger drag on the stone two fingers from our secondary hand are gonna come down we're gonna kind of bend our fingers use the tips of our fingers and we're gonna come straight back and forth over the stone so we're starting in the heel and going straight back and forth ringg pinky and thumb up out of the way if you have them curled up in your palm as you start to work they'll kind of relax and then if you slip you can cut yourself so keep those fingers up so that if you slip you know snag those we're gonna be running off of the center line of the stone walk along the sidewalk and not veer off into the street these fingers are going to stay over the stone while we're working don't let them come over the end there's a guillotine that's formed at the end here and if your finger falls off it's less fun so to work up the blade we're gonna take tiny steps with that hand on the blade one finger comes up next one comes to meet it done slow motion here one finger comes up next one slides up to meet it as we do this the hand bow is moving further away such that these fingers always stay over the center it'll look like this is yours each grit has its own sponge so we don't introduce the grit onto our towel that we're gonna use to dry the blade yep so now that's the outside of the blade so we have the outside on the inside the inside we're gonna sharpen by switching hands same grip and I have a locked wrist previously I had two fingers coming down however when I'm holding with my secondary hand I'm going to be pushing and controlling the movement with this hand now so I'm introducing my thumb into it straight back and forth over the center of the stone so I'm pushing with the hand that's on the blade with my left hand that's holding the knife my wrist is locked but my elbow and shoulder are loose so that tonight follows this is still where the control is happening this guy's really just holding our angle the curved tip of a chef's knife or a lot of other and I it provides a little bit of a challenge to keep the same angle what we're going to do is lift the handle as we come towards ourselves and lower as we come out it's pretty simple just remember that you're lifting up the handle along with your arm so don't use your wrist so knife hand arm or all one fused unit you'll hear this noise that little swish so I've worked each side is where I might start feeling a little roughness form there's a little flange of metal a little overhang that will form that will form a little burden that's our indication that we've started our process of sharpening we have a new edge and then we can then refine it this course run has done its job and it can go back into its back so and this is like if you need to like you're you're removing a lot of metal you're like really resetting yeah you want to get that you want to get your work done fast so now we'll go to the medium stone and these are the ones that you'd be using most often like you want to maintain that angle from every point of the knife don't ever want to change that no and that's why that's maintaining that angle is a lot of why I like to have the edge facing there's lots of different ways to get to a sharp knife does not say those are wrong I just added it so you don't need a ton of water on top I always notice it but I always put like I just put a lot of water no we're not letting the the tip of the knife lead the way so if we get a nice long stroke along the whole length of the stone and it's a lot easier to maintain our angle then if we do lots of short long strokes not short strokes nobody likes short strokes oh there's a time and place for it but that's that's a different video soon our fine stones so this is 6,000 and 8,000 the the finer the the polish it's not necessarily the better of the edge so now that we've was art so that again I just said ass clapping this is all Nagas restaurant a little dressing stone this is going to raise a mud and smooth the surface of the stone we're talking about right like we switched through so many different stones it's like people get so crazy about this but really the only most important thing to understand is just a technique of actually just sharpening the knife once you understand that you can play with all the different kinds of stones you I think the the most difficult thing is keeping a consistent angle and even if you do this badly you're not gonna ruin your knife you might temporarily but the benefits of doing this even if you do it somewhat poorly are way better than doing nothing so the last thing is to strop and this is a this is a cork strop here make sure your table is nice and yep I'm sure there's no grit on the knife and you do this this goes on to the edge of your work surface and then we're just pulling is that the same angle yep same angle that you sharpen on in Inglourious Basterds worried sick staining their leather stropping his uh with his belt or you could but it's not it looks cool but now what is effective I like it flat like this usually half a dozen strokes on the strop and the burr is removed and it is done and there'll be different ways to test it so cuts paper shapes hair or sticks to a fingernail or cut to work it floating it about food is ultimately the best test think is you probably aren't eating a lot of paper in here I actually ate hair huh while we were traveling came out of the air vent in the car and I will say that the texture of the hair was it was not from someone at the bottom off right okay look at that right through here right cut that if it's through right it didn't didn't we're not cutting all the way through and we're just gonna turn cut around and unroll this as we're cutting it's a lot easier to do these thin slices yeah why don't you show the camera what you're doing they're very nice very nice yeah it should when you're in here you should feel nothing but Kirby we all haven't eaten then we're like this amazing don't ever have my wife it's 11 a.m. this stone is gonna get worn away away from being completely flat boy was that so we draw an X over our stone but this will let us know where the low spots are that's the low spot flatten the rest of stone it actually helps the stone last longer keeps our work more accurate you don't want to sharpen your knives you don't want to flex on your friends because you can sharpen your knives or seams area to your anyway long story short this is how you sharpen your knife Josh thank you so much back today yep yeah okay thanks Josh appreciate you oh man what did he do these they're sharp I swear well actually I haven't sharpen that in a while wait don't look at that do you want to know what I want to look at [Music] look how much fun you're having folks so we are back in town uh so that was a ton of fun humongous thank you to Bernal cutlery Josh Donald and all the people there that helped make this happen thank you guys so much last second I posted on my Instagram stories which by the way if you don't follow me the link is in the description but last second I posted like hey I'm gonna do this little thing where you can come and ask me questions and I'm just gonna be hanging out and it was very last second and I was surprised by how many people actually showed up thank you guys for coming out and there will be more moments for me to kind of like meet you guys I really want to go out and just start seeing you and meeting you in the meantime don't you just go sharpen your knives just low I think i'ma lose my voice right now with all that said if you enjoyed this video or you learned something leave a like subscribe and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Joshua Weissman

Views: 3,407,020

Keywords: knife sharpening guide, how to sharpen a knife, how to sharpen a chefs knife, how to sharpen a chefs knife with a whetstone, how to use a whetstone, what kind of whetstone to sharpen a knife, how to polish a knife, easy knife sharpening, japanese knife sharpening, sat bawl pro, josh weissman, knife, kitchen skills, knife sharpening, whetstone, knife sharpening system, knife sharpening stone, knife sharpener, sharpening stone, polishing, sharp knife

Id: nhRjIFwExqI

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 08 2020