I think both are sharpening the knife. However, the pushing stroke is where most of the grinding/metal removal happens, as most of us can push harder. I know many knife sharpeners like to finish with a few pull strokes.
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For all, I forgot to tell you that I have given my friend a waterstone (an used one I have), so she will do a test drive to see if she will like. Originally, I recommended the Spyderco as a possible option.
Thank you! Much as I thought.
Thanks for that. Iāll fish out my stone this weekend and see how I get on.
For me the problem with these angle guides is that you have to sharpen the knife in portions equalling the width of the angle guide and only going straight up and down.
I personally far prefer free hand sharpening where you sharpen almost the entire blade in one long smooth stroke.
Do I have the talent and steady enough hand to sharpen precisely at 15-16Ā° angle or 19-20Ā° angle (depending on the knife brand) ?
No !
Is maintaining this acute precise angle very important to have a very very very sharp kitchen knife ?
No !
People exaggerate wildly how important a precise angle is during sharpening.
Itās the same with honing.
Do chefs like Gordon Ramsay and others with 25+ Years of experience as a chef have the talent to hone a knife in the air doing quick honing motions while talking to the camera at acute precise angles ?
No !
Do you need to have very acute precise sharpening angles to sharpen kitchen knives to be very very very sharp for daily kitchen tasks ?
No !
You can perhaps feel it, if you sharpen straight razors for your shaves, but even still there people tend to over exaggerate how important this sharpening angle is in my view.
Of course sharpening angle is a key factor in getting your knife sharp, when sharpening on whetstones and honing on ceramic rods, but people tend to wildly exaggerate how important holding the knife at a precise angle really is.
Iām telling you - once I have sharpened my kitchen knives, whether they are Japanese or German knives, I can cut through thin paper like going through hot butter and without any tugging or ripping.
When you can cut like this, the knife is very very very sharp.
Perhaps if you look through a microscope to inspect the blade, I might have an angle of 16 instead of 14 on certain parts of the blade that Iām sharpening, and this can in the long run lead to an imperfect blade geometry, but so far after many years of free hand sharpening my knives, they all are in pristine condition and very very sharp.
Thatās enough for me.
If you worry about scratching the blade during free hand sharpening, just do like I do - I put on masking tape to protect the top 80% of the blade. You can then also see how well you have guided the blade during sharpening by looking at the marks you have left on the masking tape.
Unless youāre using very coarse stones with grid 600 and down to 200, holding the knife at the correct angle will feel very natural to most people, unless you have reduced feeling in your hands.
Same when you hone a knife on a ceramic honing rod - you can feel the correct angle, when you hold the rod straight up and hone the knife in a motion going from top of the rod to the bottom of the rod.
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I feel the same way, but the masking tape seems like an unneeded step. My knives are beloved tools, but a scratch with no effect on performance is no worse than forgetting for a few minutes that Iād just sliced a lemon, leaving a few black spots.
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Lest we forget, thereās also age to be taken into account. As we get older, both vision and manual dexterity can suffer. As my dad (a lifelong butcher and packing plant owner) passed 80, his sharpening skills declined rapidly. Iām sure mine are not as good now as they were in my 20s.
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Yeah, not too worried about an incidental scratch, but that said Iāve never scratched mine from sharpening. I have gotten some scratches here and there by being clumsy - set one next to the sink to wash later, then end up moving a dish into it and knocking it into the sink with the dirty silverware. No carbon steel knives, though, so no worries about cutting lemons. 
Sort of wonder how people hone. I probably do it āwrongā because I first push the knife out away from the handle, then flip it over at the tip, and push it back toward me/the honeās handle on the same side of the honing steel as that first pass. (using the word āpushā in both cases to distinguish what Iām doing with the blade edge - itās a push/slice motion rather than a pull/drag motion from the reference frame of the edge.)
Mostly what I see people instruct is to always go from handle to tip on both sides of the knife edge, simply taking the knife from one side of the steel to the other. Most of them also say to do a push/slice motion, but Iāve seen others saying a pull/drag motion is better.
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I think of it likes sports. At the very beginning, your physical attributions are the best (vision, hand control, flexibilityā¦etc). However, you donāt have the good skills, knowledge nor experience. As you age, you gain more experience and knowledge, but you start losing some physical abilities. This pretty much applies to all things in life to be honest.
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This is right in most things. But once (if ever) you have the skills and experience, itās a glide ratio, not powered flight. Emotional maturity may be an exception.
Your approach sounds fine to me. I think the keys to effective honing are a smooth steel that is longer than the blade, a good angle, light touch, and frequency. It freaks me out to see people doing the hone a la Gordon with a heavily ridged steel and too much pressure. That is not honing. It is poor sharpening.
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I used to think Gordon does it to look cool, but I now start to think he really does it in daily life. I suppose it is fine if it works for him. However, it would be a bad idea for a beginner to try to mimic this.
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You were right the first time. It may just be a bad habit. See if you can find instances of him steeling knives before first use.
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I do it like Bob Kramer does in this video.
He mentions the first two ways that you see many chefs and butchers use, but then quickly goes to the third way - his preferred way and also the way I do it.
Link to video:
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I use the same method. I think the stability provides for greater consistency. Nice little video.
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Stability is good.
If you want a laugh, go back and closely rewatch Bob when he demonstrates the other two methods. Not only ISNāT the angle the āmatchbookā one, the angles are not the same at all.
If THIS guy canāt hold a constant angle freehanding it with a moving blade on a moving steel, no one can.
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I see more and more butchers and fishmongers shifting from the traditional sharpening/honing rods to crossed rods devices more or less like this one:
Do Onions have any experience with these devices? Any advice?
A little. An advantage of this method is (relative) ease of mantaining a fixed cutting bevel angle on both sides.
A disadantage is that wear always happens at exactly the same place on the rods.
