Whetstone Sharpening Mistakes that Most Beginners Make

[Music] you finally picked up your first whetstone watch 15 different sharpening videos started sharpening and have dreams of finally showing that smug paper who's boss except when you go to slice it happens again the paper rips and it feels like your knife is worse off than before unfortunately this is a pretty common tale for most first-time and beginning freehand sharpeners so what I want to do in this video is actually identify four pretty common mistakes that a lot of people are going to make when they start out on wet stones and I'm gonna give you a technique for each one of those to help remedy the situation my hope is that by the end of this video you'll be able to show off your brand-new screamingly sharp edges [Music] so for this demo video I'll be using the Shapton ceramic Whetstone's and this like $15 bargain gyuto knife that is great for learning and practice sharpening also any time that I mentioned an article or book like this one all this stuff is going to be listed down in the description below so you guys can feel free to check it out if it helps you out but with that being said let's start with mistake number one and that is using an inconsistent angle while sharpening so consistency as a beginner is one of the hardest things to do because you have no muscle memory or feel for if you're getting the right angle or how much metal you're actually removing and to remedy that it's actually quite easy all you have to do is use the magic marker or sharpie marker trick this is something that I picked up from an edge in the kitchen by Chad Ward and it's easily my number one tip for beginners take your knife tilt it under the light and you should be able to see the edge glint differently on your knife before you start sharpening fill that edge in and slightly above it with a sharpie marker now as you sharpen you'll be able to see where the marker is wiped away by the sharpening stone and this is where you are going to be removing the metal with this incredibly handy chart from Japanese knife imports we can make adjustments based on the feedback take a look at your knife and identify where Sharpie has or has not been removed for example you can see here I was holding my angle too high that means I need to lower it to match that edge when I make my adjustment you can now see that it looks correct like the photo at the bottom of the chart and you can dry up your knife and fill it in with Sharpie as many times as you want throughout this sharpening process and then to get it all off all you need to do is use some nail polish remover or acetone and it will literally just wipe right off mistake number two is using the incorrect amount of pressure so using the right amount of pressure is directly related to number one because if I'm really pushing down on this stone it's gonna be hard to maintain that angle and alternatively if I'm all loosey-goosey and not using hardly any pressure this thing's gonna be sliding and chaining angles all over the place so the question is how much pressure do we actually need to use master bladesmith Bob Kramer has said to use four to six pounds of pressure for a normal sharp knife or up to eight pounds for a really dull one how do you actually check you just grab a scale take your knife out just like you are going on a stone and press down and look at the scale get a feel for what four to six pounds of pressure feels like and then do the same with up to eight pounds immediately transfer that pressure Q to the stone while sharpening to help build that muscle memory on to the next one mistake number three is starting on the wrong wet stone in general for Japanese whetstone so it's going to be low grit medium grit and high grit stone low grit stone abrades metal much faster and fine grit does so very slowly and hardly abrade any metal at all however most sharpening czar going to start on your medium grit wet stones which most people are gonna categorize as kind of 800 up to 2,000 grit and if you need just a single stone the 1000 grit stone is going to be the one to get but how do we actually identify which stone we should start on depending on what is the sharpness of our knife so if the knife you want to sharpen has some microchips in it or maybe it hasn't been sharpened in a couple years or ever that edge may be so dull that it's going to need a low grit to help make a new edge however if it's just normal wear and tear maybe that knife hasn't been sharpened in a year or so medium grit will work fine in most cases however if it's a knife that is already fairly sharp but might need a touch-up a high grit whetstone may be all that it needs for example this higher end guy i sharpened about six to eight weeks ago it's still plenty sharp and cuts through paper fine but it doesn't dig into my fingernail or past the tomato slice test however if I just take a few strokes on both side with a fine grit whetstone I've got that edge back in screaming shape so in summary evaluate the knife and pick your stone accordingly but in most cases you're probably just gonna start on your medium grit whetstone mistake number four is switching stones too soon so when you start sharpening a lot of people get really excited to move up to these high grit wet stones where you can really polish up the edge make it look nice and shiny and a lot of beginners think that this is actually where the knife's edge gets sharp I mean it's exactly what I thought when I started but that's not really the case at all so if the knife's edge is not sharp after using the 1,000 grit stone or lower grit stone it's not going to get exponentially sharper when you move to that 5,000 higher grit stone as you can see you can get a screamingly sharp edge on just a 1,000 grit stone let me repeat that you can get a sharp working edge only using a 1,000 grit stone the reason why is simple 320 and 1,000 grit stones are removing enough metal to actually set the primary cutting edge on the night.the 5000 grit and above stones are really just polishing or cleaning up the edge that was set it's going to remove some micro serrations and make it look shiny but you aren't effectively changing the angle of the edge with your higher grit stones here is my stone progression for a normal knife sharpening I start my knife out on the 1,000 grit stone and then I make strokes on one side up and down to establish a burr we're just going to be a raised lip of metal that curls over to one side once I have a burr up and down on one side completely along the length of the knife I just flip the knife over and repeat that process which will flip the burr to the other side once there I flip the knife over and perform a number of strapping strokes on the same stone to effectively cut off the burr then I perform a cut test this could be with paper the fingernail test or slice a tomato I make sure it cuts like this on the 1,000 grit stone before I even think about moving to the fine grit stones to polish up that edge and one more thing that I would like to add don't get discouraged or worry about messing up your knife when you were starting out it's pretty hard to do irreparable harm to the blade so go slow be consistent get the feedback from the sharpie marker and everything will be okay well hopefully some of these tips help you guys out in your whetstone sharpening journey this is by no means a fully exhaustive list of tips on whetstone sharpening but it's definitely some of the bigger keys that are going to help you get a sharper knife there's a bunch of opinions and different methods on how you can actually sharpen your knife but at the end of the day I just want to help you get a sharper knife in the kitchen because behind salting your food I think it's one of the most important things for a cook to do I mean it makes cooking easier because you can chop faster it makes it safer because you have more control over your knife because you need to use less pressure to actually cut through things and let's be honest it's a hell of a lot of fun to cut through Tomatoes like butter but that is gonna wrap it up for me let me know which tips helped you guys out down in the comments below subscribe if you're new and if you enjoyed and I will catch you in the next one peace

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 3,485,721

Rating: 4.9066286 out of 5

Keywords: Cook with E, whetstone sharpening, whetstones, whetstone sharpening mistakes, guide to whetstones, whetstone, shapton stones, shapton 1000, chef knife sharpening, how to sharpen a knife, knife sharpening mistakes, beginner mistakes, how to sharpen on whetstones, guide to knife sharpening, whetstone cutlery, sharpening with bob kramer, how to sharpen a knife on a whetstone, knife sharpening

Id: tahaaHxhbsA

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020