Introduction to Kitchen Knife Sharpening on Stones

1. Welcome to the Sharpening on Stones skills course!: Actually. All right. Welcome to this course. It's coming to you from Viven knife shop, Kitchen shop, Knife shop in Edina. It's Edina, Minnesota, and our shop started during the pandemic. It didn't look like this back then. It was just my garage where I was sharpening from packages moved through the mail. For people like you stuck at home with dull knives, remember, this is the pandemic. That part of the business continues to grow out of our HQ or headquarters here in Edina, we do kitchen knife, skill classes and sharpening classes, and we have fish courses coming and chicken courses and all kinds of awesome. We sharpen for our local area if you're going to drop off, and we've got a bunch of cool retail product for kitchens. That's Vivnt. What's a German guy in the middle of the Midwest doing with a French name and a heavy emphasis on Asian knives? Well, food at least in the Western world is so driven by the French VVnt comes from the root word Vivre. The joy of life, the Joi Vive would be VVntsRoot and VVntes they will live. We're a mission driven organization. Part of our sharpening efforts, a portion of that revenue goes to help improve school lunch efforts. If you want to learn more about that, we've got some blurbs on the.com and so forth. I can talk a long time about all of that, but that's not what this course is for. If you're here for our course, this is an abbreviated version of the real life course. We teach these regularly and come around and see what you're doing and help adjust as a heads up. I'm not with you right now and our team isn't either. You're getting an abbreviated, smaller version of our real life course. If you were here, we do it in 90 minutes. We talk about where our water closet is, and we'd ask you to bring your questions and your curiosity and to share tips and tricks. That can happen here, but find us. Find us on the socials, share your tips and tricks, and together, we can continue to learn. We don't know everything and we reserve the right to change how we're going about these things. What we're going to share in this course is what we found to be the simplest, most straightforward way for beginners to build confidence in being able to craft cutting edges by using stones. It's not what most find when you search sharpen a kitchen knife on stones in the Internet machines. I don't know why. The algorithm isn't necessarily about beginners or pedagogy? It's about clicks and comments and crazy. This might be crazy, but our aim is that it's effective. Welcome to the course. Thanks for coming. Find us on the social machines, and we're looking forward to your getting competence in crafting cutting edges, and then telling us about it. 2. Creating a Burr: Action. Okay. This is how most of the YouTubes shows the humans, you'll get there. This class is not about intermediate sharpening. What you want initially is just to purely create a bur. If your stone is above 400 and you're working on a stainless steel blade, that's going to take you a long time and maybe be in incomprehensible, inconceivable, you won't be able to do it. If you're working on a stains plate, that's what this one is, get a 200 or a 400 or something under 400 so that you can cut the initial oxygenation layer off of these stainless blades. Then we want to look at it. You can turn it. One of the things that's great about this particular system from Nanahon is that if you're right handed, you can turn it. You switch to left, you can turn it a little bit. It's great. We want a triangle type system. As you set up on your stone, you can set in a triangle straight to the stone, and I'll turn it sometimes, or I'll turn my hips turn my hips to the side so that I can create what is a landing and a takeoff. If this is an airplane and an airplane this way, we want to land the tip. It's a little different than an airplane. Usually airplanes. It's a tail dragger. This is a tail dragger. And the tip the plane and pick it back up. What I want you to do is look at how I went about doing that. It's not turned, so you don't have to worry about your return angle. That's what most people will create cup some convexity on the primary burr with when they're first starting out. But what I've done is I've just taken my thumb and placed it on the choo. My pinky and placed it on the spine. The three fingers hold that remain the handle, and what you want to do is fly your pinky and thumb. All of that's really intentional. I'm going to land my front wheels and then take off from the heel or the tail drag. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's pretty good. And you'll see as I move along here, this is an introduction to sharpening. I'm starting to get a little bit of bir towards the front and almost none in the back. So I'm going to add some different pressure back here just to grind that back section. It's starting to come. Again, if you don't get the folding of the metal is folding this way, you don't get that action to happen. Don't move on to another grit and don't move on to another side. You want for that folding to occur the full length of the blade. Now I have that happening. It's fantastic. You can There's a bunch of ways to do this. I'm just going to switch hands. Over here, again, the thumb on the choil index finger on the spine, following three around the handle, fly the thumb and pinky. Why? Because if this slips, you don't want to catch them down here. Okay. You can see that I'm taking a little bit of a stroke from the center of the stone out to the edge. Why do you think that might be? If you're running a blade and the abrasive is being pushed from the cutting edge side towards the spine, the angle that you're using in the abrasive matters a ton. Correct, proper matching, right? Angles. If you're letting the stone create a trailing edge motion. The cutting edge is the caboose, let's say, the spine is, uh good. Locomotive. The angle that you're at can be within a degree a few degrees of each other, and it'll be very forgiving to you on whether or not you're able to push the metal far enough, abraiding the metal around it to get the bur to go to the other side. So that's it. The first step is just get a Br on one side, flip it over, repeat, get the bur on the other side. 3. Creating a Burr (Part 2): One action. What is the burr? It's very tiny and you can only see it in certain light. When you're on stones, the bur ends up being smaller. Here's a knife we threw a bur with, can you see the inconsistency at that cutting edge? The bur right now is folded up and along the edge, it's inconsistent. It's not an equal bur because wherever it was chipped along the way, there's no burr that's been thrown at the point of the chip. The way to deal with that is to keep taking material towards the spine along the full cutting edge until all the chips are gone and there's a consistent bur there. Okay. 4. Creating a Burr (Part 3): Un rolling. We've got just a little burr on this large Nakiy that we've been using. Here's a steak knife. We stopped in the middle of sharpening on. You can see that there's a number of nicks and dings that while we've crafted a bur along the full cutting edge, where a Nick and ding is doesn't yet have a bur. Right now the metal is being pulled up towards the ceiling on this side. What we need to do is keep cutting material along the full fair curve of the blade until where the nicks are showing now, don't show anymore. But that's what you're doing. You're crafting just this little strip thin piece of metal by cutting a bevel on one side, cutting the bevel on the other side, that piece beyond the cutting edge is the bur. When you remove that small strip of metal or the bur, then that's what will craft your new cutting edge. If we removed it now, if we removed it now, it wouldn't get sharp wherever the nicks and dings are. It would just stay dull in those spots. There you go. 5. Creating a Burr (Part 4): Br on one side with the primary, flip it over, push it back to the other side and get a consistent bur along the full fair curve of the blade. 6. Parts of A Knife: When you're going to use a knife. We're using a modified Nkii here. It's good in a class like this to recognize the different parts. Of course, this is the handle. This is the spine, this is the cutting edge. This one doesn't have a tip or point necessarily because it's akii or leaf, roughly translates leaf, leaf cutter. But on a knife like this, we want you to stay safe, and I think you want you to stay safe. Of course, you can keep a band aid and some bleed cutlet bleed stop around. The aim will be to not cut yourself. In class, we always do two truths and a lie. What we want is at the end of class for people to share their two tips. So as you go through this, be thinking about the two tips that you would share to your friend about your knife skills class, kitchen knife sharpening skills class. But we want your lie to be. I cut myself in stone sharpening class. That's what we want your lie to be. If you're going to move these around and you're handing them to people, of course, hand them the handle first or just set them down. Note that based on the knife that you have, this back section might be thick this way and not sharp. If you're using a knife that has the heel or this portion under the choil that is more rounded then it's not sharp, if it's pointed, then it's sharp, people will get the thumb with that back heel part if we don't point out that it's sharp back there. Maybe that's the same for you. Please be safe. Don't go too fast. And we want your lie to be, I cut myself sharpening. 7. Anatomy of a Dull and Sharp Knife: Action. At the extremes, the anatomy of a dull knife is a full 90 degree angle. It's a blank. Most of the ones we find in our kitchens though are just rounded out. They used to stick down to an apex like this, but over time, they've rounded from use. This one is sharp and will slice and cut. This one will just smush and most of us, maybe there's a 3-year-old watching this, are done smushing food. You can get out a spoon and smooh your banana if you want, but when you're grabbing a kitchen knife, probably don't want to smush anymore. 8. Dulling of Knives: Action. Ok. This is dull, this is sharp. It's not binary, it's going to be sharp and then it's going to be dull. This is a continuum. It shifts from sharp to dull over time. And that shift happens as you use the tool. As the tool lands, if you land a little bit to one side, then it pushes the metal up on the other side. The blade will start to arc to one side, you can just force that. If you were here, you would be able to feel the metal in the cutting edge rolling to this side right now. We use hones and straps and frankly, you can use Stones this way after you build the muscle memory, to be able to take what was bent and straighten it back out. You're going to use a hone or strap or a stone. To do two things. The first is to take that metal that's bent and straighten it back out. The second is to add the teeth bugs know how to use to get into your peppers and your tomatoes to that bevel or that cutting edge. Adding seration all of the kitchen knives are serrated knives like your bread knife is if they're well serviced. You can't see the teeth in all of them, but they all have teeth at that microscopic level that do the cutting for you. So why would you use a hone or strap as you're using your knife? It starts to bend, it's dulling. We'll look at it here. You're going to create a sharp edge. You're going to use your knife and that metal is going to bend to a side. You see it dulling. It's not dull yet. This one over here would be dull. Then use a hone or a strap to straighten the metal back out and to add texture, you see those little teeth on the side of the blades. 9. What’s on the Cutting Edge?: Section. Two sections remain in this course. One is what's on a cutting edge? Then one is, how do we craft that edge or those shapes with these stones? What's on a cutting edge and then sharpening on stones. I think it's really important given the feedback that I've heard from persons and the number of ways that we've taught this course to first do some drawing and to conceptually understand the shapes that you're looking to make with these stones and then move to accomplishing those shapes. What we want is to not pay attention when you're just getting started to what the differences 14-17 degrees. If you could learn to lock your wrist in the first few minutes and hours of sharpening, then that starts to matter. In our experience, the vast majority of us can't. So what we're going to do is talk first about what's on a cutting edge and then talk about sharpening on stones that are introductions. Over time, you can build more skill and use different approaches. But. Welcome to the course. 10. Knife Shapes: Action. Just briefly some shapes. This would be what the blank is in terms of thickness all the way through the blade before someone crafts that initial cutting edge. They grind this down flat and then add a primary bevel. That primary bevel is just removing material on both sides. Of the blade. Then the burr is this little piece. This little piece of metal that turns over and you push that to both sides and you can blend the chins where two angles come together and push the bur around and if you get more advanced, you can add a secondary to deber, you can use your pant leg, a leather strap. Something like this will pull that little metal. You see the burs on that side right now. It'll pull the metal off of the edge and debur it giving you a solid cutting edge. And then when you get advanced, you can talk about thinning the blade, adding specific grid patterns to the blade. Right now, this would be a very toothy edge because we're at 400. You get to decide how many other stones you use, 200,000, 3,000, 6,000, 8,000, 10,000. To craft the edge that you're looking for in terms of smoothness. And then at the end in the more advanced stuff, you can come back and add some grid or texture to that primary pebble. But that's what's happening. You go from a blank to something that's ground to a knife shape to a primary pebble, to a bur to blending, and then you can choose to decide to add your secondary or just skip it and D Debrs just removing that piece of metal that's curled at the end. 11. Kinds of Stones: All right, if you're going to go and drive a car, you got to get a license. But then you have to pick a car, and cash can sometimes drive, what car you're going to drive. Effectiveness can sometimes drive What car you going to drive. Little cars do bad on really gravelly roads in the mountains, let's say. You want a truck then. How does that relate to stone sharpening? Well, stones aren't created equal. There's a bunch of different kinds. In general, you'll have water stones, and oil oil based stones. We touchy oil stuff. We're just going to go on the water side. Typically, you can have what are think of a pot with a slurry that goes in a kiln, makes it hard, but not necessarily a ceramic. In order to get a ceramic state, you have to get the material to a centering level, and those end up being harder. They cut in different ways. One of the differences these might cost the same amount. But you get the perception would be 2 stones here and only one here. The trick is, when you go up in quality and stones, it gets easier. These cut quite a bit better than these on most materials. If you're just going to get started, I can recognize the desire to not spend too much money. You get an entry level set of stones. Bear in mind that as you get better at this, moving into a full system like the nanohon system can help you want to do this more. It's really hard to get good at something you practice once or twice a year. Doing this often makes you better and you'll be able to use your stones, whatever you buy to flip into the nanohon system because you can buy the plate and the sticky back. To adhere to any stone that then sticks on the stage. Now, the stage can just be set anywhere. They can go in these ponds and there's a bridge. But this stage provides a lot of opportunity to set your fingers on the side. I rises, it lifts the stone higher than most others, and it's our preferred method. Ceramic stones, non ceramic, more expensive cuts obviously differently, can work, gets you started, but bear in mind you might get frustrated. A 12. Ceramic Stones: Actually. Oh, when you have a stone that is ceramic, you can call them splash and go. You can just toss some water on them. You can use a little bottle. You can have water in a bowl and lift it on there. You can squirt. I'm not a big squirt fan. Maybe you like the squirt bottle. So these are great. You don't have to wait six, 12, 15 minutes for the stone to stop bubbling. This one, I've soaked already, and this one is dry. So you can get a sense of what's happening here. And when you soak them, they change a little color. That water, you want to keep adding some water because it'll create a slurry that's helping you cut. It's mixing the stone with the water and the bits of metal that are coming off the knife to create some cut action. So if you're running one of these, soak it. If you're running one of these, splash it. In both cases, what you're going to want to do is flatten the stone. Look, I said I didn't like those things. And then that's the one I went to move to right away. See how that works? This one's going to soak up water a lot faster than that one because it already has a bunch of water in it. What you want to do is flatten these things. You can use a pencil. You can use a pen. Oh, look at that. That's pretty. And the game is, can you get the stone flat? I might just stain it. Oh, no, it'll come off. You want this stone flat because the blade edge that you're going to cut will mirror the shape of the stone. If this is divoted at the microscopic level, you're going to end up creating divots in your knife to mirror that. Get it flat. Then just help yourself out and chamfer. I think I'm saying that wrong. Create a little bevel on the side so that those crisp edges of the stone aren't digging your cutting edge as well. Anyway, that's the game. You're gonna want to soak them, get some water involved, and flatten them before you start using a knife on them at all. 13. Sharpening on Stones: Act. Okay, we took a little break, and in the process, we check that out. Oh. We had a customer bring this in, and we've been working this blade. It's a usuba. So it's a single bevel blade, but it's chipped pretty aggressively. Way to deal with this one is to sharpen from the primary bevel all the way back to this chine. And what's happening to our stone is that it's getting very, very dished or cupped. And you can see that work on the edge here, one side's thick, one side's thin. And we've talked about needing to find ways to flatten these things cause otherwise, you're just going to dish. You're going to dish it out? You'll mirror, there we go. The shape of the stone into the bottom of the knife. So if I set this one on here right now, it will cut significantly more on the edges than in the middle because this is cupped or dished right now. So one of the things you do. Oh, my goodness. There. Look at it. I just gouged that out. Where it's turning white is flat, and this is all dish. The nanahon system lets you flip these around so you can run this. You can run this this way. And if your stone gets to this point, you might actually do a couple passes on the top of a cinder block. Sounds crazy, but stop here and take a look. I'm not a fan of these because of that. There it is. That's where it's cupping or dishing. So you're gonna pick that shape up. If you're sharpening here, I can't fit my fingernail under on the sides, but I can in the middle. So if you're trying to go for something flat, this got dished because we were working the center. And we didn't flatten in the middle, did it? I'm spinning it around because I want to use the grit on the other side. And again, you could take this whole thing. It's getting close and run it on top of a cinder block. Or these come in different grits, these lapping plates can be coarse or fine. You'd want to use a coarse one on lower grit stones and a fine one on the high grit, say, 10,000, 30,000. Wow. Starting to stick 'cause there's so much grit there. You might be at Hey if this is an $8 stone we probably put $10 of abrass into getting this knife started to where it is right now. So it's not only the time. It goes into sharpening a knife. But the cost of your abrasive kind of like making knives. The abrasive costs are regularly prohibitive. Alright. Now, we would have spent more time flattening while we're using this stone, it wouldn't have taken this long button. Keep your stones flat so that your bebles are. 14. Different Ways to Use Hones: 21 action. All right as your knife dulls, it's bending over, and you've got to use a hone to push that metal. This might seem really normal, but there's some specific things that are happening. Let's talk through those. The directors of photography on TV shows want you to go really fast. And look. Most of us haven't mastered multi axis, not look honing. So don't start there. We call this at least level three. It's advanced. If you get chosen to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, they're not going to let you up on the mound until you prove it in practice that you can throw that far accurately. So we would suggest don't mimic the chefs. Level two might be to set the hone down and to set the blade to the side of it and run this way. You'll see a lot of this, you'll see a lot of people saying, it has to be equal. Not necessarily. As you're using the knife, right handed people will push the metal again to what side? The left side. You want to straighten it out on the left side first and then be equal. Be equal, but at the end, if this is number three, and this is intermediate, what's the easy easy way to accomplish this? It's to set it down. And when you set this down either on the counter at just a slight lift, onto something else, you can shift from a compression Stroke, This is compressing the cutting edge. There's force on the outside of the cutting edge being pushed towards the spine. That is going to require you holding the edge and the angle more accurately to get good results. If you lay this down, you can let and watch that happen. The cutting edge trails the motion and the spine leads. If you're trying to accomplish this with a handhold that you use when you're cutting food, you're going to have a really hard time because that's usually a hammer, and this is hard to do. If you approach this more like you're going to butter bread or you're going to put some jam on bread and spread it, you're going to pick the knife up. Usually on the side, you'll add some pressure with either your thumb or your index finger and you can start with a tip slide to the heel. Start with a tip and slide to the heel. These motions, like buttering bread are fairly easy to replicate consistently, and the pressure is created in a trailing motion, which becomes way more gracious. You can get much better results from your honing and strapping behaviors after a knife has bent a little bit. There it is. It's bent. I can feel it. I did you hear that? I felt it and maybe you will too. You're going to get good results without the risk of damage in the same way as if you're compressing the edge. There you go. Two different kinds of hones are dominant, metal or ceramic. Most of us think we should mimic the experts. Don't do that. Set these things down and let the edge trail like your buttering bread for your first entre entree into using homes. You will go from staring at the back of these in your knife block for decades, hoping to not use them wrong to enjoying and wanting to use these because they can create performance for you. Happy cooking guys. 15. Hones: Action. Okay, let's talk about different ways to use the hones and the misconceptions that everybody sees on video, cooking videos. There are two typical approaches to a hone or any abrasive. One is that you're going to have some kind of an abrasive presented to the side of the metal and you're going to scrape it digging little trenches in the side of the metal. That would be this one because there's a texture on the outside of the steel. This ceramic *** works in a very different way. Some of the metal gets left behind. You see that happening. That's because as the metal is presented to the hone, some of it gets pushed down into the voids of the ceramic and then worn off. So hones come in two different ways. One is going to scrape the outside, and one is going to smooth out the scrapes. In both cases, hones can be used to both push metal and add texture. When you have a smoother ceramic stone or rod, you would use this more for smooth edges. Things like fish, sushi are going to perform better here. But if you're in meats and vegetables, getting something with some texture creation properties is what you're looking for with homes. 16. Strops: Action. Okay, so the hones are really, really common. They're long. They fall off the end. They roll. They're intimidating. They create a high point load. So you're putting all that pressure on to millimeterh, maybe less of the blade edge. They don't create texture on high Rockwell hardness is like metalsm metalism metal. Some of it's soft. Probably wouldn't want to get on a bridge made of metal like this. Because it's so soft, you can bend this thing. Wow. This is like a $6 knife. As a tip, use one of these when you're starting. Because it's easier to create a bevel or a burr on a softer metal. Anyway, hones have their place, but they're pretty hard to get to work well, especially when you're starting out. So you can get a strop. You might hone in on an idea on your conference call over here more often than you are really, really good at using this. A strap is flat. This one's made of leather, and it will push metal. It does a pretty good job of just pushing metal that's bending back straight. In this case, we've applied an emulsion. You can buy these from us. It has a mixture of diamond resin that gets stuck or adhered to the edge so that it can or just diamond slurry, let's say, I can hash the side of a cutting edge to create the teeth that you're looking for. We've gone down the path and partnered with Nanohone to create this truer. Their diamond resins are wonderful this painstick factor allows home cooks and Pro Cooks to get really good results on soft metals. Most of the German European metals are going to be around 58 Rockwell and works really well in this dark green. These are available from us on the webpage. This one is let's say 25 microns, maybe 7,000 grit. This one is three microns or 7,000 grit on the three microns side, 700 grit on this side. And we have found that people get much better results when they move to a strop these are a little big. They're kind of thick. They look like you might have attached it to a bike and drug it through a playground. These are small. They don't roll. They can be used flat, and we're big, big fans of these. After you learn to keep your knives sharp, you can get them sharpened and then keep them sharp. Using tools like this reduces the amount of time you need to spend on the actual stones sharpening. So consider a strap and all the more, consider a diamond resin strap if you're looking for great performance in an easy, approachable fashion. 17. Kinds of Stones: Whoa, a lot. That was a lot on honing and strapping. We took a little break and came back to it. We're going to move now to sharpening on stones. The stones can be of a bunch of different kinds. We talked about the water or splash versions or the oil versions early on. These are ceramics. We're going to work on these. And what you want to do initially when you're working on a stone or otherwise is take a look at the profile of your blade. You want to assess it. Are there any chips Are there any nicks or dings on little pairing knives? They can have bent tips or clipped tips. You want to make that assessment because before you sharpen, you want to repair and restore. You're going to repair any of the chip nicks and dings and you want to restore the fair curve of that blade before you add bevels to the sides. We like to assess what's going on, identify those things. Here's a tricky one. Lo down from the heel and see if your blade does this. The cheaper stuff will typically move a little bit. If it's a thin blade, or one that's not very strong, it'll bend, even when you're not planning on it bending. If it's bent, you're going to feel it when you get to the stone, but you want to assess it, make a plan given the blade that you have, what geometry is on the side. This is just a pure flat grind down to this chine. I'm just going to add a primary bevel to it on both sides. That's my plan and then the game is execute and we'll move on to that in the next video. 18. Go fast: Action. Misconception number seven of stone sharpening is that you got to go really fast. You can go fast after you build the skills to hold an eye, to understand what's going on, and to do that consistently. Then you'll build fast later. When you're starting, the aim is consistent repetition. 19. Equal on both sides: Misconception number 17 of sharpening on stones is that you have to sharpen you have to move across the stone from the tip to the heel all the time for every pass, and it has to be equal on one side to the other. When you use knives, they go dull where they contact the board. And so you want to create some uniformity. Before you start making the whole stroke. They don't necessarily need to be equal on both sides because right handed people push metal to the right side? No, right handed people push metal to the left side, left handed people push metal to the right side of the blade, and you want to line that up before you start the sharpening. 20. Edge has to go first: Okay, misconception number 27, the edge has to go first, and by that, we mean as it's moving, the edge is making contact first. And that's not necessarily true. If you're pulling from the spine side to the edge side, you're elongating that cutting edge. Whereas if you're leading with the cutting edge, you're compressing the cutting edge. It matters a whole lot more what specific angle is used when the cutting edge is being compressed, it's much more gracious, especially for beginners to allow the cutting edge to trail the motion. 21. Start with the heel: Alright, sharpening misconception number 37, you got to start at the heel first and pull or the heel first. Yeah, you don't necessarily need to do that. You can start where the knife has dulled. So on a slicer, it's usually up in front. Same is true on big German chef knives. That rocker portion goes dull first unless the user has overused the heel, then you want to start at the heel or the user has pulled that heel through any of those carbide or spinning circle sharpeners and used more force at the back. Then there'll be a reverse bow or a divot and you want to repair that first. 22. Sharpen Pendicular: Misconception number 47, when sharpening on stones, you have to do this in a perpendicular way. Not true. It's actually more of an intermediate or advanced skill to be able to push the tip a little bit and return. It takes quite a while and dexterity in both of your hands, your dominant and non dominant hand to do well at that. You can start at the tip and an airplane would land on a runway and take off. You can land with your tip and take off with your heel not to run off the edges. And these long consistent strokes are way easier for people learning to master before turning to any of these kind of smaller quick strokes. 23. No need to repair and restore: Action. Misconception number 57, sharpening is to sharpen. Have to repair or restore first, and we don't agree with that. If you've got a chip or you've got a reverse bow or the tip is snapped off, you're going to want to repair that first, and then take a look at the fair curve of the knife, determine whether you like it. Does the handle turn down? Would you like it to land and stay higher? Those are some of those questions that you ask when you're restoring the fair curve on a blade for performance. After you decide those things, then you can move on to sharpening. Sharpening goes last. But 24. Use any stone you want: Action. Misconception number 67 sharpening on stones. You can use any stone you want. Maybe. You want to be using a two or 400 stone on a stainless as your first stone so that you can cut. You can cut that oxidized, hard exterior surface of that cutting edge before you move on to the thousand 2000 3,000. You'll be there for a very long time. I 10,000 2000 or 3,000 is where you start on a stainless knife. 25. Cutting Edges Need To Be Super Polished: Action. Misconception number 87, all of the cutting edges for your stone sharpening need to be super glossy, mir polish. Those smooth, smooth, m, mmm, smooth edges that you can see yourself in, they're okay. For cutting in a kitchen, you want the bugs have teeth to get into the fruits and vegetables, your knife to have teeth to get in fruits and vegetables. As you move to six, 810000 grit stones, those teeth get worn down. They become smaller and ripe tomatoes, ripe peppers, those kinds of things will resist even very sharp blades. 26. No Need To Service The Stone: Misconception number 77 of stone sharpening is that you can just use these things. Just use them. Keep using them. Keep using them. Keep using them without needing to service it. No. Well, you can. But whatever the shape is of this stone, also the shape of the bevel will be cut into the kitchen knife. If you've got a divot or a dent through this section and you slide through this, you will create that reciprocal shape from the stone into the knife. What do you do about it? These can seem excessive. You get a lapping plate. This one flattening stone. Lots of words for these is not quite as strong as you might want for a sintered stone, but some of these kiln stones are much more desirable to use with these plates. When you move into center stones, they cut way better, but you're going to need tools, other tooling lapping plates to be able to use to flatten these things. You got to flat if you want Your cutting edge to have a bunch of divots in it, don't flatten. 27. Slow Down: Actually. Okay, there will be tendencies to want to match the speed you see others doing this. Quick reminder. Slow is better. These are roads in Costa Rica they get dumped on with rain and the potholes are crazy. Ruins your suspension. You go too fast on this and mess up the return, turn down and rip the bur off, start over. If your burs not there throughout the staging of um, Grit increases or decreases, depending upon which measure you're using. You rip the bur off, you got to start over. Slow. When you're learning, slow is better. 28. Summary: Action. All right, we learned what's on a cutting edge. We learned about keeping our knives sharper longer with hones strops and the truer. We learned some entry level tip to heel strokes on a tail dragging airplane. Then along the way, you got a few tips and tricks for your Bago tricks. Thanks for joining us for intro to kitchen knife sharpening. This is the best way, again, that we know how to approach this given the many, many humans that we help in our store learn the intro to sharpening. We reserve the right to change our position on this stuff. It's what we know is working best now, and these certainly aren't the advanced or intermediate techniques. So keep that in mind. As you're learning, please reach out, let us know how things go and check on us at our store vivron.com, we'll get you to a bunch of different stuff that we're up to kitchen knives from around the world, classes and sharpening and happy cooking out there. Craft some good edges for yourself. 29. Merci!: Action. A j Dui today. Everything is sharp. Messy. Thank you. Maybe that'll be true in your house. If you're here with us, we typically ask you to share two truths and a lie. We tell you we're going to do this at the beginning and we want your lie to be that you cut yourself in knife sharpening class. We hope that's not true. If you'd like, add a couple. One or two different comments either here or other where, find us on the socials for things that you've learned, stuff that you'd like to add and edit and have fun out there.