Yes, I probably should have stated that they are sharpening rods, but the line between sharpening rods and honing rods is quite blurred.
When do you actually remove metal and when do you only align the top part of the edge without removing metal ?
I would argue that even the softer honing steel also remove a microscopic amount of metal from the edge.
I own many knives, as I’m somewhat of a knife collector - so I sharpen most of my knives on my 7 Naniwa Pro whetstones - I usually use a combo of either 400/1000/3000 or 800/2000/5000 grit when sharpening my knives, but because I own two identical Kramer Meiji 20 cm chefs knives I decided to try to only sharpen one of them using my rods and nothing else, and much to my surprise it stays extremely sharp for now more than 5 years, in fact I think I bought it in 2018, so it’s closing in on 7 years of weekly use and it has stayed extremely sharp. I do hone it with 3-4 different rods each and every time before I use the knife, and this routine has made the knife stay super sharp for all these years now.
I think a polished steel is a honing rod and anything else with any roughness to its surface has moved into the realm of sharpening. However, i think a steel with very slight ridging, applied quite lightly, is moving into the realm of honing. So for me the distinction is based on what each is capable of doing. A smooth steel really cannot sharpen, but even the least aggressive rod with ridges or anything else that is the least bit rough can sharpen, especially if the user applies pressure. Even removing the most minuscule bit of metal adds up over the years.
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BarneyGrubble
(Aficionado of Beethoven, and Latina singers)
564
Weekly use is pretty light, though. My workhorse is a pretty pedestrian Victorino Fibrox 8" Chef’s, and I hit it with a steel every single time I use it, and I use it daily. I think I actually put it to the stone about every 8-9 months, which may not be all that different, usage-wise, from your Kramer Meiji.
I should say all knives need some kind of sharpening solutions to make them sustainable. However, the more refined the knife is, the sharpening solutions also narrow a little. It is fine to sharpen a cheap $5 knife on a concrete block, but it will be wasteful to do the same to a higher end knife.
So what I was trying to say is that no need to worry about getting an expensive knife right away until the sharpening solution is planned.
