Your Kitchen Knife Sharpening Option and Suggestion

I don’t see the angle this is designed to maintain described in either the Amazon description or on the packaging. Knife edges vary anywhere from 20° to less than 15°. If you don’t know the edge angle of your knives, contact the manufacturer.

As for the angle of this helper device, you can measure it using a smart phone app that uses the sensors to measure the angle of the phone placed along the knife edge when mounted in the helper device. If it is not within a degree or two of your knife’s actual edge angle you should find something else.

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Thank you! Do you know how I would search for such a device? Is there a key word?

My phones are Android… and I have used an app named “SmartTools”. If you’re on iOS maybe just search the App Store for “angle measurement”.

I’m android. I’ll try smart tools. That could be quite helpful!

But I am hoping this won’t distract me from sharpening at least one knife.

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To be honest, such device has no true angle because it is more about setting a “height” at your knife spine. So depending on the width of your knife blade, the angle changes.

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Of course! Thank you. The length of the knife seems relevant too. I have had to move the guide or change the angle.

But it does make me a bit more confident, so there’s that.

For a given knife, the Naniwa blade guide will help make the sharpening consistent, and it will move along your knife. There are these fix angle chips, which help check your knife angle.

Amazon.com: Wedgek AGM Angle Wedges for Sharpening Knives 10 to 20 degrees, Blue : Tools & Home Improvement
The downside is that they do not move with your knives, they are set at the end of a sharpening stone, so you can check once awhile.
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I have this set of angle wedges. They are better than nothing. But no one should kid themselves–once the blade moves away from the wedge, it’s still freehanding. At the far end of the stone, no one should bet the farm on knowing the difference between, e.g., 15 and 17 degrees.

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Agree. The hope is to at least not deviate too much for too long.



I’ve never used a wedge or other device but this makes sense. I’ve been sharpening knives since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, freehand. I think most people, if they just were patient with it, would get the hang of keeping a (fairly) consistent angle and get good results in time.

I can’t see up close well anymore so I just kind of rock the edge around on the stone until it feels like I have the bevel flat against the stone flat, and it goes well from there.

FWIW, y’all here at H.O. (in the many knife threads) brought me back to frequent use of a honing steel again, and I only now sharpen about once per 6-8 months on my most used (every day, often a couple times per day) knives.

An evil little devil sitting on my shoulder suggested to me that this might make me eventually forget how to sharpen due to disuse of the skill… but hopefully it’s more like bike-riding than rocket science.

Consistent angle is important, but it does not have to be perfect. Small variation of the angle will yield something close to compound bevel or a small convex edge at the tip.

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Thanks. I think that hollow edge type in particular would give the home sharpener (me) some problems!

Or, I’d probably just grind it into a regular V edge over a few sharpening sessions, not really knowing what I was doing.

Do you have a feel for, say, mass market knives like Zwiling or Wusthof - how many of that type have an edge other than standard V-edge? And are the other varieties like the convex edge or hollow edge very common?

I do understand from reading here in the past that some or even a lot of Japanese knives have the chisel edge (maybe more specialty sushi knives, but I got the impression it was fairly widespread).

P.S. Sorry, I’m on US East coast, so I’m heading to bed for now. See y’all tomorrow.

The Kiwi knives (beloved by many as the great-cheap knives) are hollow grind. Here is a photo I took. The top knife is a Kiwi knife. Not sure if you can see the hollow grind.

I believe many of the German knives like Zwilling and Wusthof has a compound bevel. Here is a statement from a Wusthof knife:
“Our unique compound angle is not seen in many knives. This angle tapers from the spine of the knife to the edge to allow for a sturdy”

While Global knife has a convex grind. Here is a statement from Global website.
" * The blade is constructed of a single piece of steel, with a unique convex edge for unsurpassed performance."
(https://www.globalcutleryusa.com/classic-g-2)

Yes, many traditional Japanese knives have a chisel like blade grind. The “flat” side is not entire flat, but slightly hollow out. Here is a schematic diagram.
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Here is a photo I found on internet
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:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I was feeling confident for a minute.

JK

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Ha. Seriously though, the Naniwa knife guide should help. No reason to dislike it (unless you dislike it)

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Just found this. Wusthof claims this wedge/guide can slide along with sharpening stone. Unfortunately, I haven’t able to find a video to it in action


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I feel so dumb asking this, but when using a stone is the sharpening achieved by pushing the blade edge over the stone (i,e like a “shaving” stroke), or by drawing the edge backwards away over the stone? It never seems clear in a video!

Both have worked fine for me. I used to sharpen microtome blades on a slate (I think it was slate) lab table top and mostly did those by drawing rather than pushing (and sometimes for a really quick polish a swirly motion).

I’m more likely to develop a bit of a thin wire-like curled burr at the edge by drawing (curling upward toward the other side of the edge, I mean), especially if the knife has been let to get really dull, but a few forward strokes or just flipping to the other side will fix that.

I’ve seen vids posted here of guys who claim one is better or the other is better. Generally if you see someone looking like they’re both pushing and drawing, for those guys the push stroke is usually with pressure but the draw stroke is low- or no-pressure.

Here’s a pretty quick chat about it and that seems to cover the basics well enough. I don’t usually do one section at a time as he does early on, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing so.

Thanks much for the helpful info. For Wusthof and their “unique” compound angle it almost sounds less like what the literature you show as a compound bevel, but rather as if the compound aspect of it might be related to the fact that they have a normal taper at the edge, combined with “while it also tapers from the bolster to the tip to give the knife strength as well as flexibility”. But I’m not sure. They might also be talking about the compound bevel.

OK, here’s a dirty little secret: all these diagrams showing different edges are single-point cross sections. The chances that all such cross sections along a blade’s length are uniform are practically nil. A curved edge and freehanding make it virtually impossible.

It’s better IMO to accept this and focus on obtaining an edge that is sharp enough to do what you want.

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