Sharpening with a whetstone | How to get started

this video is sponsored by squarespace so here's a primer on sharpening kitchen knives with stones whetstones they're called with an h we'll talk about what the h means we're going to cover the basic theory of knife sharpening the minimal gear you'd need technique cleanup and maintenance even if you don't plan to actually try this yourself this video should be interesting if you like to understand how things work i mean in this humble home cook's opinion the best sharpener is the one that you're actually going to use a well-reviewed multi-stage pull through sharpener like this has served me well for many years the first stage cuts the new edge the second stage refines it easy i think these are good enough for us normals as long as you get one that's made for the basic kind of knife and steel that you have we'll get to that but it is true that the pros generally sharpen with stones the old-fashioned way the hard way or they pay someone to do it the hard way as many excellent chefs have paid my buddy chef davis wells to sharpen their knives a few james beard award winners ashley christensen steven satterfield chidi kumar who is nominee always the pride maid and not the bride but i love you chibi these are some of the very top chefs here in the american southeast and davis does their knives or he used to do their knives it was eventually easier to actually go back into a kitchen because sharpening 40 to 60 knives a week is really a lot of strain on my body especially my hands and joints when working the line at high-end restaurants is the comparatively easy job then you know you're talking about doing something that's pretty tough why do people bother most other sharpening devices are basically ripping metal across the edge so like a pull through sharpener or they are grinding it off mechanically and the advantage here is a stone remains cool so it won't detemper the blade which will make the blade prematurely dull or not even get too sharp it results in a finer clean edge and by not mechanically grinding you're not removing more steel than you really need to be for a truly sharp knife and that last point matters especially if you invest in some really nice knives like davis owns thousands of dollars worth of steel the less metal you remove every time you sharpen the less money you're grinding away the longer the knife is going to last you and of course stones offer you total control you can use them to cut a very narrow cutting angle like this be really really sharp or you can use them to cut a wider cutting edge like this this will be really tough like an axe and you can use stones for the standard western double beveled knives or single beveled asian style knives like these knives that only taper down to a point on one side we're talking about double beveled sharpening today but stones can do it all that doesn't mean however that you can sharpen any knife on any stone this is the first kind of unfortunate thing about sharpening with stones there isn't really one all-purpose piece of gear that you can buy to get started you're going to need to buy at least two or three things even if you only have one knife to sharpen so from the top here's davis showing us this cross-section view of a dull knife the cross-section of a blade is known as its geometry and the whole point of sharpening is to take two planes like this like this and make them converge at a point of zero thickness right here and as we progressively grind away metal to make those planes converge a little piece of metal will shoot past like this and it'll feel like a little fingernail on the edge of it this is known as the bur and you can feel it safely by pulling your thumb across perpendicular to the blade you go parallel to the blade you're going to slice yourself open but if you go perpendicular to the blade that's safe that's what we do when we're shaving right you can safely feel for the burr and you kind of have to feel for the burr because you really can't see it not even under my microscope camera this area down here this is the face of the knife this area is the newly sharpened bevel and this tiny distinct strip at the top if you can see that that is the burr if we look at the knife from above i can't even see the burr what i can see now is where the burr is missing in the spot where my microscope just touched the edge missing bit of burr right there the bur bends or breaks off really easily and it's supposed to and the whole point of sharpening is to create a burr and a nice consistent even bird down the whole length of the blade and then remove that so that you just get that with a clean point of again zero thickness and that happens in the finishing phase of sharpening we use a coarsely textured stone to grind out that new edge grind out that bur and then we have to switch over to a more finely textured stone we use this to polish off that bur and to align the micro serrations we've been talking thus far about the geometry or cross-section of the blade now we talk about its profile all knife edges are serrated and they are what are called teeth and these teeth are determined by the grit at which they were sharpened a coarser stone with bigger micro particles is going to cut bigger wider teeth right like if you imagine like this is a big particle in a big coarse stone it is going to knock a big chunk out of the knife as the blade comes down across that particle if this is a small particle from a finer stone it's going to take a smaller chunk out of the blade as it passes by the number on these stones indicates the particle size confusingly the bigger the number the smaller the particle size this is because the number goes by the spatial density of particles fewer big particles will fit into a given area right that's why you would call the grit of this one ten and the grit of this one twenty a twelve hundred stone like this is a medium grit stone davis does not recommend super coarse stones for us beginners because we might end up grinding off way too much material he recommends we start with a medium grit stone this is going to be our coarse stone this is for that initial phase of cutting out the new edge that's what will give you those big teeth working the knife against a finer stone wears away at that bur of big teeth so that eventually these become fine enough where they could you know shave the hair on your arm dice an onion without making you cry these are the things that a real sharp knife does well and that right there is the main reason why chefs don't cry when they cut onions it's not that they're tougher than you they just have way sharper knives that rupture fewer cell walls that said it is possible to sharpen the knife to the point where the teeth are kind of too small too fine and they have trouble kind of biting into tough things like tomato skins people who get really advanced with this stuff will finish a knife with a coarser stone to get big teeth for cutting certain things and they'll finish a knife with a finer stone to get tiny teeth for cutting things like raw fish you know doing sashimi where you want a really nice glossy smooth finish you want very very fine teeth and that way the japanese feel you actually improve the taste of the fish so which grit of stone you buy depends on what you want to do with your knife furthermore it depends on what kind of knife you have broadly speaking you've got german or european style knives and you have japanese or asian style knives they differ in their profile that is their shape they differ in their geometry and they differ in the hardness of the steel as indicated by the numbers on the rockwell hardness scale german french on the low end you'll start at about 52 to 54 rockwell hardness and these will go all the way up to typically about 58. glass is 60 rockwell hardness i'm sure we have knife nerds quibbling in the comments already and now we've got glass nerds yes there's definitely different kinds of glass he's talking in generalities your basic window glass so if your knife can scratch glass and leave a mark on it it means it is above 60 rockwell hardness so german and french steels generally you want to finish in the you know 2 000 to up to 4 000 range beyond that largely because of chromium content and softness of the steel you won't really improve the edge and chances are it will feel duller on the other end of the spectrum you have japanese steel which is often getting into the 60s on the rockwell scale harder than window glass the harder the steel the finer or narrower the edge it will hold very very tiny very spiky teeth very very sharp very very clean cuts but these are hard to work with hard to sharpen um very brittle to be clear he's talking there about knives on the extreme hard end of the spectrum not all japanese steel is that hard and brittle but some of it is super hard steel is less flexible therefore it's less durable a coarser finishing stone would just knock that super fine edge right off for really really hard steel you need a finer finishing stone that's what that 6000 8000 grit range is for it's for knives like these that are really for sushi chefs now between these two extremes you have basically my knife this is made by calphalon it was about 100 bucks i think when lauren bought it for me quite a few years ago and it is just an archetypal low to mid market hybrid east west knife they take elements of japanese knife smithing but really they're produced and tailored to more of the german and french market now these hybrid knives are getting super popular for a reason i think that this is the ideal all-purpose home kitchen chef knife it's the only knife that you need it's made to hold a 15 or 17 degree cutting edge cutting angle right there so it's made from steel that's a little bit between the european and japanese steel a little bit harder than normal german steel but not much not so hard that it becomes brittle and breaks off and becomes hard to work with and this of course dictates which grit of finishing stone we're gonna buy four to six thousand would be perfect you know so you can finish low for a little toothier edge or 6000 for a little finer smoother edge so i got this 4000 grit finishing stone that should work just fine with the pretty standard hybrid knives that i always use but i'm just dipping my toes into all of this people over time just find that they like certain grits for certain knives and for certain effects and they like different grits on different brands of stone or different materials of stone you got your natural synthetic or ceramic stones we're not even getting into all that today the rabbit hole has no end but when you start you need a coarse stone and a fine stone now you can get a combo stone that has one grit on this side and a different grit on this side you just flip it around to use one of the other those are cool the problem with that is that sharpening on a stone removes material from the stone just as it removes material from the knife and so if you're doing that to both sides eventually you can have a problem where it doesn't really lay flat eventually this is dished and you might get some weird angles here and then we flip it those same weird angles will be apparent in this top stone so um i'm not a huge fan of combo stones even though i have one this leads us to the third and final thing that you have to buy to get started you need a stone for sharpening your stone seriously they're called flattening stones or lapping stones lapping plates leveling plates i'm sure there's subtle and debatable shades of meaning within those terms this particular flattening tool the davis is using is called a diamond plate it's just got to be something that's bigger and harder than your stones that you use to re-level your stones so these are the three things that you need to get started a coarse stone a fine stone which could be the same stone could be a combo and then you need something to level the stone with those are the three things now let's actually do this step one is to wet your wet stone soak them in water fun fact wet with an h does not mean to make moist it's a very old anglo-saxon word that means to sharpen or more broadly to get something ready hence the expression wet the appetite wet with an h means to prime or prepare your appetite which incidentally will make your mouth w-e-t wet hence the confusion about what the two wets mean anyway all wet stones with an h need to be wet without an h but not all of them need to be soaked in advance there are splash and go stones that you only have to wet as you use them and then there are soaking stones that have to be soaked far in advance splash and go might be more convenient but they're generally more expensive and davis thinks they're bad for beginners they're harder less porous so they give you less tactile feedback as you sharpen against them that's why i went with soaking stones as you can see it is absorbing water like a sponge there pros often keep their soaking stones permanently in water they call it perma-soak though you have to change the water periodically to keep it from molding now if you're soaking a dry stone how do you know when it's ready little air bubbles will release from it and you'll hear and when that stops happening it's ready to go then you can just do this on a damp towel on the counter the towel holds the stone steady and it gives you something to wipe the knife on davis recommends using a loaf pan or something to raise the stone up higher that way your knuckles won't bang into the counter as you're working our soaked coarse stone goes on top there and you want to have a bowl of water handy so that you can keep everything wet as you work step one is to use that diamond plate to flatten the stone which was made uneven by our previous sharpening session so you want even pressure along the middle of the stone and i'm trying to keep my hand directly over the stone so i'm not curving the edges at all i will however take this and do kind of an edge bevel which is going to strengthen the edge of the stone geometrically so that ideally you don't get chips like this he's just rounding off the corners so they won't be really extreme sharp right angles one thing flattening does as well is it'll it brings up grit with which to work called mud that mud is basically the lubricant for the knife speaking of the knife you can see that davis favors a three-point grip for sharpening his dominant hand is on the handle the thumb is on the heel of the knife and his finger is out on the spine and then the blade is facing him and from here up to my elbow will stay pretty much fixed throughout the whole process and most of the motion is coming from my shoulder down to my elbow and this is how we're going to keep angle control right and then pressure on the knife comes from my left hand and i'm going to put two or three fingers depending on the knife here this hand always stays over the stone for safety reasons and this is the motion that davis uses he's pushing back and forth pushing harder on the outward stroke which is probably what your body will do naturally anyway and as he's pushing back and forth he is gradually drawing the knife perpendicularly across the stone to sharpen the entire length of the blade as he gets toward the tip he rotates the knife slightly so that he follows its natural curvature or belly he rotates it by lifting his elbow a little bit rather than twisting his wrist the wrist stays fixed to make a consistent bevel now let's talk about angles the face of the blade is at like a 15 or 20 degree angle from the stone some people use angle guides to get exactly the cutting angle they want davis recommends that even beginners just go freehand i'm sure when you get more advanced you can really control the angle of the edge that you put on this knife but if you're just starting out like me david says you really can just kind of feel for what feels natural there's a angle that just feels right that kind of feels like you're shaving little bits of sand off of the stone which i suppose you literally are doing if it seems like you're getting that shaving feeling you're basically gonna reproduce the bevel angle that the knife had previously do it feels right and you can only go so wrong there is another kind of angle to consider though and that is the angle of the length of the blade relative to the stone he's got that at like 45 degrees again that's kind of what the arm does naturally and that's good 45 degrees is right looks like side one of the knife is about done we'll check to see how we're doing here to see if we've raised that bur at all and we in fact have and it's pretty consistent all the way down now he'll wipe the knife and re-wet the stone you'll feel the instinct to do that too when things get too dry the knife just does not move smoothly across the stone you'll want to wet it when it's time when we're wetting we're also removing some of what's called the swarf which is the the steel that's abraded from the knife now look there he's rotated the handle of the knife in his hand so the blade is now pointed away from him before it was pointed toward him he's using the same three-point grip it's time to sharpen the other side of the edge and look he has changed the angle the length of the blade is now perpendicular to the stone it's 90 degrees as opposed to the 45 that he did on the first side we do a 45 angle here and basically 90 degree angle here and that theoretically creates teeth like this that are more beneficial from for cutting that might seem kind of hard to remember but again like ergonomically i think this is kind of just what happens naturally you got the blade pointed towards you and you just kind of hold it at like a 45 you point the blade away and then the handle just naturally kind of goes to a 90 degree angle like that it's just what comes natural and it works it's the same basic motion back and forth gradually drawing the length of the blade over the stone and now the burr is no longer on this side it's now coming back to this side so we know that we're making progress here and that we've got basically two edges that have come together more or less at a point and so we've got a piece of steel that's flipping back and forth so now davis is going to repeat the whole process a couple more times for progressively fewer passes and with progressively lighter pressure and that's going to reduce the width of the burr that we've created so that we can kind of preface that before we move to a finer stone so we have to do less work on that fine stone but of course whatever davis does he is sure to flip the knife around and do about the same thing to the opposite side as well got to keep things symmetrical because we are sharpening a double bevel knife right now some people use a little circular motion instead of the long strokes back and forth some people do other motions what davis is showing us is a traditional japanese method but it's certainly not the only viable one time now to switch over to the finishing stone the finer grit stone that's what that one is there and the first thing we do with that is to use that diamond plate the flattening stone to get everything even from our last sharpening session i recommend buying the largest stones that you can find because surface area is important and mass is important and the height of the stone is basically the life of the stone so the the thicker a stone is the longer it will last you it's the same exact process as we did on the coarse stone he's just using a little bit less pressure this time which again i find is what my body wants to do naturally with the finer stones he'll stop every now and then and feel for the burr or rather he's feeling for the absence of a burr when the burr is gone the knife is sharpened and the last thing he'll do is strop the blade a stropping motion is the same thing but it's a one-way trip pushing or pulling opposite the direction of the edge one way swipes and you are stropping away from the part of the knife that cuts stropping hones the blade or gets those little micro teeth standing upright it's the same thing that you can use a honing steel to do in between sharpenings though depending on how rough and how hard the honing steel is it might actually remove some material too there is no need to use a honing steel immediately after you have stropped the blade on your fine grit stone it is ready it is honed clean it off and that knife is sharp af and if there is any dullness or snag in the edge we'll see it in that cut because it'll be kind of a tear and those look pretty clean to me so we're not endorsing any particular products here there are some notes in the description describing in general terms what kinds of gear you need to acquire wherever you're going to acquire them and then there's just kind of a bare bones write up step by step of davis's basic sharpening technique and look i'm still all about my pull through sharpener but you can't deny this is better look under the microscope see that nasty scratch pattern there that's from my pull through sharpener where it looks beautiful and polished that's what davis did on the stones and as an added bonus that diamond plate you can use that to fix major structural flaws in the knife like huge chips or the dull point where i dropped this knife in the street about a year ago perceptive viewers have noticed that he's just using a rough diamond plate to cut a whole new point of the blade there that tip is almost as nice as this last one if you're going to get into stones davis says buy one of these a sink bridge these are adjustable brackets that hold the stone over the sink then you've got your water right there to keep the stone wet and all the mess is contained in the stink that you can then just wash down when you're done davis normally does the whole process right there in the sink it's like building your entire website in squarespace everything that you need is right there at your fingertips you don't even need a credit card at first you just need a dream a store that you want to open a job that you're trying to get a blog you want to start you select one of these beautiful mobile-friendly templates and start customizing it with your own pictures and your words for free and i can't think of anything that you might need that you can't then grab from squarespace you got your e-commerce tools for taking people's orders and their money you get your scheduling tools for taking their appointments you got members only areas where you can rope content off for people who pay you it's all here in the squarespace sync and squarespace hosts the site for you and can even register your custom domain when you're ready to pay for that domain or to pay to take your site live you can support this channel and save yourself 10 percent by using my link and code in the description squarespace.com ragusa now go get your nose to the grindstone isn't it nice when you can use an idiom literally well i guess that isn't totally literal this would be the literal version you could do that too no judgment here

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,816,499

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Id: KY8jvFqpZ_o

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021