Knife Sharpening 101 – How to Sharpen a Knife

Knife sharpening is an important skill in the kitchen, on the fishing boat and in the outdoors. A sharp knife is a safe knife because when using a dull knife, greater force is required to make the same cuts and this increase in force can cause the knife to bind and slip. When processing fish, a sharp knife yields the cleanest cuts and ensures the maximum amount of meat is cut from fillets. This article includes a number of excellent videos prepared by experts showing key points of the knife sharpening process.

To put together this article I reviewed a lot of the available knife sharpening videos on YouTube and I found several specific videos that are well prepared with good explanations. There are a lot of videos and most are 15 minutes long so you can decide how much time you want to spend watching videos and may want to watch some and then come back again to watch others in the series. There is a lot of interesting information to learn from Richard Blaine.

Knife Materials and Grind Types

In this video we learn about different knife edge styles. Many fishing knives are sharpened in a 50/50 manner, while knives like Japanese sushi knives may have a 20/80 blade edge alignments.

Knife Sharpening Strokes

This video shows one method to sharpen knives on sharpening stone. I found it particularly interesting to note that even the producer identifies that there are many ways to sharpen a knife. I also found the explanation for how to find the knife grind angle by raising the blade angle until it sticks to be useful.

This video shows another method the using the Japanese wet stone.

Knife Sharpeners

The sharpening stone is the primary tool used in knife sharpening. Japanese water stones, Arkansas stones, ceramic stones, and diamond embedded stones all have places in the professional knife sharpening market. Diamond stones are perhaps the easiest to use first they are made to be very precise, and the diamonds are very strong so they do not wear down. In the following video Richard Blaine explains the tools that he recommends for knife sharpening. These stones are manufactured by DMT.

For more information on DMT Sharpeners check out:
Link: DMT Sharpeners

How to Maintain a Sharpening Stone

Lots of people use sharpening stones and they may wear down with time. The information in this video is useful to even out the stone to ensure optimum sharpening performance.

Knife Sharpening Steel

This video goes through different types of sharpening steels. I found it interesting to learn that the sharpening steel primarily realigns the knife with the exception of diamond steels which can remove material and sharpen the knife.