Whether you’re a culinary whiz or especially outdoorsy, your knives probably endure a fair amount of wear. Not only is a dull blade a challenge to cut with, it can be dangerous: having to work harder to slice through whatever you’re cutting means you’re more likely to cut yourself. Fortunately, it’s easy to hone and grind a knife yourself with traditional sharpening tools like a whetstone or a honing rod, or with less traditional tools like a mousepad, sandpaper, or even a coffee mug. Let us learn how to use a whetstone today!
1. Using a Whetstone
①Apply honing oil or water to your stone, if appropriate. Check your manufacturer's guidelines to see if your sharpening stone needs to be lubricated, and with what. Depending on what type of sharpening stone you’re using, it may need to be lubricated with oil or water, or with nothing at all. Cover the whole stone with the lubricant and keep it wet while you sharpen your knife.
· Lubrication will make it easier for the blade to pass over the stone, as well as keep the steel shavings (the by-product of sharpening) from clogging the stone's pores.
· If you don’t have honing oil, you can use mineral oil, vegetable oil, or window cleaner as a substitute.
②Determine what angle to sharpen your knife. Sharpen your knife at the same angle it was previously sharpened at. To find out the angle of your blade, ask the manufacturer of your knife or inquire at a knowledgeable knife shop to determine what angle is appropriate for your knife. If you have to make a gut decision, choose an angle of 10° - 30° per side.
· Shallower angles make a sharper edge that doesn't last as long; steeper angles are more durable, so 15° - 20° is a good compromise between the two.
· Sharpening at a different angle will take significantly more time and may take a few goes before any rough angles are smoothed out.
③Draw the blade across the rough side of the stone. Drag with the blade edge toward the stone, rather than away, as if you might shave off the top layer of the stone.Apply only light pressure here, beginning with the base of the knife (also called the heel) and ending at the tip, and make sure to maintain your 20° angle.
· Dragging the knife this way will help your blade to maintain a symmetrical edge and allow a burr to form on the stone and prolong the stone's life.
· In general, whetstones have different grits on either side. Check the grit on your stone, or the packaging that came with the stone, to identify which side is which.
· To estimate a 20° angle, use an angle guide.
④Repeat this motion about 20 times on each side of your blade. Alternating between sides of your blade is important to ensure you sharpen the blade evenly. Draw the blade against the stone 10 times on each side, then 5 times, then 3 times, then alternate single strokes back and forth 6 times. Stop when you’ve raised a burr on the knife’s edge—a feature that steel will naturally form when one bevel is ground until it meets another.
· You can test to see if a burr has formed by applying your fingernail—carefully!—to the edge of the blade.
· 20 times per knife edge is a rough estimate: if your knife just needs a touch-up, you may need to grind it fewer times. But if your knife is really dull, you may need to grind longer.
⑤Flip the stone over, and repeat the previous 2 steps to polish the edge. Turn the stone over to the softer side, and then, applying softer pressure, draw the blade across as if you’re trying to slice into it. As you did with the coarse side of the stone, alternate between sides of the blade about 20 times. Your goal is to smooth over and eliminate the burrs created by sharpening the knife over the coarser grit. This transforms the blade from a ground edge into a finer, honed edge.
· The rough grit side of the stone is used to grind the steel down, while the fine grit side is used to sharpen or hone the knife.
⑥Further polish or strop the edge to the desired sharpness, if you want. Strop the blade by dragging the blade across a substrate—such as leather, paper, wood, or even the stone you’ve been using—in the opposite direction, you’d drag it to slice (i.e., in the opposite direction you’ve been grinding it). This will help smooth out some of the burrs left by grinding.
· Stropping will make the edge better suited for "push cutting" (cutting directly into materials, pushing straight down without sliding the blade across the object) but may impair slicing ability: without the microscopic serrations left by grinding with a stone, the blade tends to not bite into things like tomato skins.
