So true. I am the opposite for holding the angle. I look at the the blade reflection to gauge the angle consistency. I guess we flip the knives. It is just that I flip along the short axis? and you flip along the long axis?
I flip like this:
You probably flip yours this way.
Thanks for sharing your knife collection. I am pretty sure all of your knives are double bevel.
I hand sharpen or hone knives using a collection of stones, flattening plates to get the stones “true” and steels for touch up. When I started shaving with a straight razor, my expectations for “sharp” went up. Before I do a do a more intensive sharpening, I use a Goniometer, the Catra Hobbygoni to see what the blade’s angles are. Then, sharpening wedges help me get the correct angle, taking into account the bevel of the knife.
Tomato and fish knives are kept razor sharp because they are not used for chopping or cutting hard things, like winter squash. I start with the finest stone first, to see if it will work. This may be a 4,000-6,000 grit Norton water stone or a surgical black Arkansas oil stone. If an edge won’t hone, I’ll drop to a faster cutting stone, like a 1,000 grit.
I love the Black Arkansas stone because it’ll create keen edge and the stone is so hard, it doesn’t deform or “saddle” like the water stones. With water stones, eventually you’ll need a flattening plate to grind the surface flat again. Not a big deal.
Of course, if you want an insanely sharp edge, you need a leather strop! That’s not a durable edge, but the polish helps get better results in the Hobbigoni goniometer, since it measures using a laser’s beam, reflected off the edge and onto a semicircular measurement screen.
Knife nerds! Kinda odd enjoying sharpening.
How one uses a knife and the cutting boards used plays a big part in how long a knife stays sharp. Excess pressure and a bamboo cutting board are about the worst culprits. Unlike hardwoods, bamboo is loaded with hard silicates. Strangely, I had a friend who worked at Food & Drug and they found wood cutting boards to harbor less bacteria than plastics. I say strangely because most health dept. regs. want commercial kitchens to use plastic cutting boards for “sanitary” reasons.
Wait til you use a glass cutting board.
Never heard about the CATRA Hobbigoni. Fascinating. How accurate are you in achieving a chosen angle?
Ray
drrayeye,
Usually, the hobbigoni presents a blurred or curved light blotch on the “protractor” screen. It’s not hard to find the center, which is the total angle. Now, one needs to take into account the shape of the knife’s cross section. Most have an angled “spine”. I use a couple, different tools to help get the angle correct. There’s a lot of information on the wedgek site, where I got a set of wedge-shaped angle guides, which strap to the stones or honing rods. You subtract the knife’s bevel from the total angle when using wedge type guides. The final edge is more acute and is accomplished by honing. Rather than using a steel, I’ll use a fine grained stone for that on initial sharpening, and different rods for touch ups. On this page, you can see the DMT guide.
Which comes in handy, especially if you’ve been drinking too much coffee! Even though the DMT guide has a limited number of angles, I add or lower either the stone or gliding surface height with cardboard, paper, boards, whatever to get the angle set correctly.
So, it’s fairly easy to get an accurate angle. You can eyeball it to some extent, but magnification might be necessary to get a better view.
I picked up a Japanese-European hybrid chef knife, which is excellent for a knife under $100. I haven’t sharpened it in awhile, but it has asymmetric angles, which was surprising. It cuts like a Japanese knife but has the wider/taller blade of a chef’s knife, so you don’t bang your knuckles when chopping or slicing.
Unlike knives, when one sharpens a straight razor, you lay the razor flat on the stone; the back spine is the angle guide.
Chem., the first time I saw a glass cutting board, I couldn’t believe it! Yikes! That’s like using the bottom of a cast iron pan for a cutting board. Plus, I’m sure they’ll shatter at some point. Better to have a board that yields to the edge than have the edge ruined.
This article made it seem like bamboo boards are okay. I should probably stop using mine.
Excerpt:
The best boards are made from hard, tight-grained wood — specifically, anything that falls between 900-1,500 on the Janka scale (which ranks wood by its hardness). A few popular examples are maple, walnut, cherry, and bamboo boards.
Bamboo cutting boards are technically not wood, but a hard grass. It’s actually harder than many varieties of wood but is high in silica, which makes it resistant to water and scratches.
bmorecupcake, the article’s excerpt illustrates the downside of bamboo; if it resists scratching, it’s harder on a knife edge. However, if I’m doing hard chopping, tough vegetables, I’ll use a bamboo board with a knife that’s made for chopping and easy to sharpen, like an Asian cleaver. Some bamboo boards are pretty enough to serve on.
If one uses bamboo with a very sharp knife, the key is to use minimal downward force. The silicates are capable of dulling, but need force to do so. Excess force can also bend the edge, something which happens on a microscopic level even with proper technique; this is where honing steels come in handy.
There are two, large bamboo groves on the property. In addition to providing tasty shoots, we cut poles for the large garden. I use a hack saw or a reciprocating saw with a blade made to cut metal. Those blades get dull surprisingly quickly.
Cherry and Walnut, especially Black Walnut are softer and kinder to blades, but they get chewed up by the knife. Those woods are also more stable, holding their shape over time better than maple. In climates like Virginia, this is a concern because the humidity is extremely high during the warm months and a wood stove dries out the air during the winter. All my maple boards have cracks that resulted from these swings in humidity, even with mineral oil coatings.
When I’m processing very hot peppers, a plastic board gets used exclusively. That’s because it can be harshly cleaned and bleached to remove the capsaicin residue. I had a friend who cut hot peppers on a wooden board, cleaned it and cut melon on it; his daughter started crying when she ate some melon, and then he realized, the capsaicin was very hard to remove.
One important factor that was not mentioned in the article is that bamboo wants to be round tubes, not flat slabs. In order to make them into cutting boards, a lamination process using pressure and glues/epoxies must be used. The resins used to bind the bamboo together need to be hard enough to keep the bamboo ‘in-line’, and are probably more damaging to your knives than the bamboo itself.
Thanks for pointing this out. It’s the same up here in Maryland. My olive wood boards are all cracked and even my super thick tamarind board is starting to warp. I don’t treat them as well as I used to, but still give them beeswax and mineral oil coatings at least quarterly. I never thought about the humidity affecting the boards, but I need just look outside at our deck that was “repaired” last year to understand how bad it can be.
Has knife sharpening made anyone else see junk mail in a positive light? It’s free cutting paper!
I live in SOCAL with two small hardwood cutting boards that haven’t cracked or warped, with minimal care, but use exclusively with vegetables, and keep dry. I have a larger poly board that I use with meats and/or vegetables over the sink.
Ray
I have a couple nice guitars, and have hygrometers to keep track of the humidity, so I can make adjustments in/out of the instruments’ cases. I’ve seen rates as high as 85% RH, with the AC on! Conversely, with the wood stove, it can drop to 15 % RH. The outdoor humidity is routinely 95-100% during the late spring-summer. Everything gets saturated with dew and fog, even when there has not been rain for awhile. It’s like going from rainforest to desert.
The glue in bamboo cutting boards does not need to overpower the natural curve of the tubes; that gets taken care of with heat and planing. Only the outer, harder layer of bamboo is used. It can be ironed or bent into shape. I’d be very surprised if the resins and glues were harder or more abrasive than the bamboo. I use a samurai sword to clear vines and cut back the temperate jungle here. The sword is held together with two bamboo pins (mekugi) !
This knife maker seems to sharpen trailing on one side and leading on the other side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAoCx4xqonQ
(His first knife sharpening video was quite different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c57wWcg8rs)
Yes, this is very similar to the way I sharpen. I do leave the knife edge in contact with the stone on both forward and backward strokes, but I apply pressure when the motion is edge-leading and relieve pressure when it’s edge-trailing. This helps me maintain the sharpening angle the entire time, even though I’m not grinding metal in both directions. 
(I haven’t gone back to watch his first video yet.)
What a wonderful idea!
I do this twice per year for two different Food Banks, and it includes about 275 miles of pickup/drop-off driving. I figure it’s something I can do for them that they need, and then they can spend their money on providing more food to people.
Yeah, but twice per year for how many of your knives? I also do about 2-3 times (say 4 months) sharpening per year, but I have like 4 main knives I rotate, so effectively each knife only used for only a month.
I feel you have more than one main kitchen knife.
True, while I have one knife I usually grab, I do have others that I also enjoy using. I try to use as light downward force as possible and only use maple cutting boards/butcher block. I sharpen my own knives like you, about two or three times per year.
In a somewhat related question, are you still using that round wood tree section cutting board? Do you still like it?
Wow, you asked the question at the perfect timing. Yes, I still like it, and I was still using it about 2 days ago. However, I am in the process to grind down/sand down the two sides and then re-season it later. It will take me a long time to sand it down though. I have done so for one session, but I will do so with another session.
See, the wood block is being sanded down now.
I’m impressed! Great use of your skills.
Ray
