Basic Knife Sharpening

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When you find that <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/honing">honing</a> alone no longer brings your knife back to a satisfying sharpness, it’s time to break out the waterstones.

PRO TIP: One of Daniel O’Malley’s favorite tips is to trace an outline of your knife onto a piece of paper when you first get it, and then again each time you sharpen. Then, periodically compare the shape of your knife to the outline so you can see how it’s changed over time. This will give you a good mental model for how sharpening affects a blade and will also help you know when you’ve depleted most of the material—that is, when it’s time for a new knife!

When to Sharpen

A sharp knife—one that zips through a sheet of paper and can <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/shave-a-friend">mow the hair right off your arm</a>—is definitely desirable. When you slice and dice with a dull blade, you’re not just settling for subpar results; you’re also setting yourself up for a potentially painful accident. But there’s more to maintaining your knives than just keeping that edge intact. Every time you sharpen, you’re removing precious material from the blade—material that, once lost, ain’t ever coming back. If you want your knives to last, you need to be mindful about why you’re removing what and never whittle off more than necessary. Whenever you’re sharpening, it’s essential to know what’s going on with your blade at every step of the way.

First and foremost, sharpening knives is about forming the burr—a microfine “wire” that forms on one side of the blade as you sharpen the other, and which you can feel with your fingertips. The burr develops as you glide your knife across the stone, moving from side to side. When the burr stretches from heel to tip on both sides of the knife, it’s time to stop that gliding and move to the next-finest stone.

We always develop the burr using a rough stone, then move on to finer stones to remove scratches and polish the blade.

The Theory

Japanese sharpening stones are categorized by the size of their grit—the bigger the number, the smaller the grit. Got that? Because, frankly, it’s a little counterintuitive. (If you’re a home improvement type, you may recognize this model from sandpaper—the finer the grit, the higher the number.)

When you’ve got an exceptionally dull knife or one that’s chipped or misshapen, you’ll need a stone with a grit of about 220. These coarse stones remove the most material from your blade, so while we need them to right a damaged knife, we don’t want to work with them any longer than is necessary.

If your knife is just dull, not damaged, you can start with a medium-grit stone—typically 1000 to 1500. The finer grit removes enough material to restore the cutting edge but not so much material that you’ll grind the blade down quickly.

A fine stone, say 3000 grit, is used for polishing a cutting edge until it’s very sharp. This strikes a very good balance between sharp and durable, but we recommend going even finer—between 6000 and 8000—if you want a beautiful polish and a long-lasting, razor-sharp edge.

Very fine stones—between 6000 and 8000 grit—will do just that: polish the blade to a mirrorlike finish and hone the cutting edge until it’s razor sharp. Bringing a blade to 8000 grit will produce a much longer-lasting edge than a 3000 (or even 4000) grit stone, though it will help to roughen the 8000 grit polish slightly with a fine <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/honing">honing</a> rod.

NOTE: The numbers system we outline here applies only to waterstones. If you’re using oil stones or other systems, the same basic principles will apply, but the corresponding grit numbers will be different.

Know Your Waterstones

We use high-quality nagura stones to produce a polishing slurry on our 3000 grit (or finer) stones that will create the perfect edge. You can also use cheaper nagura stones or dedicated cleaning stones to keep your fine-grit stones nice and clean. Rub these chalky blocks against the surface of your stones to polish them and remove dirt.

Nagura Stones

Take care of your sharpening stones, and they’ll last you a really long time. Don’t, and they won’t.

When you’re finished with a sharpening session, leave your stones out to dry completely before you store them away. To prevent cracking on the surface, keep them out of direct sunlight and cold places. Seriously, folks. Don’t leave your sharpening tools in walk-in coolers, mini fridges, garage freezers, any manner of igloo, that vodka “ice bar” thing in Vegas, or the the off-the-grid mountain cabin where you wrote your anarchist manifesto.

Store your stones carefully and slightly separated so they don’t bang into each other or rub together too much. You can wrap them in towels or microfiber, but it’s not necessary to do so.

Be Sweet to Your Stones!

Five Steps to Sharpness

Fill a plastic container with room-temperature water and let stones take a bath in there for about 10 minutes. 

Lay a kitchen towel down on your work surface and position a stone on top of it.

NOTE: Keep stones wet throughout the process by sprinkling them with water as you work—the mud that builds up on that surface acts as a helpful abrasive as you sharpen.

Wet Stones

Position stone in your <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopaff.asp?affid=1&id=91905">stone holder</a>. 

Establish an angle by setting a matchbook down flat against your stone, then positioning your blade against it. This will give you an angle of about 12 to 15 degrees.

You should hold the handle of your knife firmly in your dominant hand. Spread the fingers on your opposite hand across the blade in order to achieve even pressure. You’ll want to exert about four to six pounds of pressure on the knife as you work—you can use a kitchen scale to check your pressure. 

Glide your knife across the stone. If you’re just starting out, you may want to practice by gliding the knife five or six times on one side, then switching to the other side. What you’re working toward is a smooth technique in which you move the knife in one direction across the stone, switch sides, and then move it back in the other direction on the other side. Once you feel that the thin wire—the burr—runs all the way across the length of the knife (it will widen slightly as it approaches the <a href="/guides-tools/know-your-knife">bolster</a>), it’s time to move on to a finer stone.

Form the Burr

It’s important to spread your fingers out across the blade so you’re applying pressure evenly and don’t wind up with a blade with no belly. (Don’t know what we mean by belly? Check out our <a href="/guides-tools/know-your-knife">knife vocab guide</a>.

Gotta Splay to Play

Draw the knife across the stone, from corner to opposite corner, using the entire surface to shape up that blade. Watch the videos below for guidance as you get going.

The Path Across the Stone

Start your stroke with the heel of the knife just barely on the stone, and sweep across and up, pulling the heel toward your dominant hand and finishing with the tip as the last point of contact on the stone.

Points of Contact

Move to the <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopaff.asp?affid=1&id=91905">1000 grit stone</a>. 

Here, our goal is to polish up the geometry (shape, basically) of the blade that we created with the coarser stone and remove any scratches formed during the initial sharpening. 

Wet the surface of the stone.

Using the same technique you used with the coarser stone, glide the knife across the stone.

Remove Scratches and Polish

Move on to the <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopaff.asp?affid=1&id=91905">3000/8000 grit combination stone</a>. 

Wet the surface. 

Determine which side of the combination stone to use based on your desired result: 

Use the 3000 grit side of the stone to remove scratches from rougher stones and to further refine the edge. Finishing at 3000 grit creates an aggressive edge that is well suited to cutting rope and opening cardboard boxes.

Use the 8000 grit side to create a high-performance razor edge with the slightest bite.

Use a <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopaff.asp?affid=1&id=91905">nagura stone</a> on the 3000 grit and 8000 grit stones (or any stone 3000 grit and above) to build up a slurry on the surface of the stone, which is necessary for awesome keenness.

Then, using the same technique as above, put the final polish on the edge you established with the first stone. 

When your knife is good and polished, remove the remaining material from the surface by rubbing it with a cleaning stone.

Finalize That Edge

Finish the process by <a href="/guides-tools/honing">honing your knife</a> with a fine ceramic hone. 

Six times on each side of the edge should do the trick. 

Well, what are you waiting for? Go slice something, stat.
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Learn how to properly hone your knives so that they’ll work better and last longer.

How to Hone a Knife

Hone for Bite

Knives are a cook’s most precious possession—absolutely essential to producing perfect pieces of sashimi, <a href="/guides-tools/tips-tricks-how-to-mince-a-shallot">finely minced shallots</a>, and everything in between. Here at ChefSteps, we rely heavily on <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopexd.asp?id=91905">Japanese waterstones</a> to keep our slicing tools shipshape over the long haul. Find them intimidating? Let’s change that right now. With a little knowledge and practice, you can easily master DIY sharpening with these bomb little blocks. Like most things worth doing, learning the technique takes a little practice, and a little practical knowledge too. Before you begin, read through this section to get your head around the basic concepts. Once you’ve procured <a href="http://www.epicedge.com/shopexd.asp?id=91905">a sharpening kit</a>, we suggest you begin practicing on your rustiest old blades or head to a thrift store and stock up on a few cheapies to sacrifice to the stone. Soon enough, you’ll be forming burrs with the best of ’em. Then you can offer up your services next time you need a favor from a friend or just want an excuse to enjoy one of life’s more relaxing rituals—a great way to shave off some stress at the end of a rough day.NOTE: The video above is an older video, which we made before we paired up with Daniel O’Malley. We still think it’s a great video, but it goes into slightly more detail than a beginner might need. If you’ve never sharpened your knife, we recommend that you watch the video for reference, then follow the steps and looping videos below.