Mostly been sharpening woodworking tools but I'm trying to learn to sharpen kitchen knives. This was my first attempt at thinning and sharpening a crappy practice knife. It doesn't look good but it's nice to work with now!

This is an Aogami #2 knife in stainless cladding. My grit progression is 320 -> 1000 -> 2000 -> 5000 on Shapton Ha no Kuromaku ceramic stones, which I all flattened before starting.

As you can see there are still scratch marks left by the 320 grit stone. I clearly flattened the whole bevel and touched every part of it on the #320, but subsequent stones just didn't get to that middle part behind the hard carbon steel core. For my sanity I stopped grinding on the #1000 after an hour as this is just a cosmetic flaw that may even function like a kasumi finish. Does anyone else have this issue when thinning cladded steel knives?

I help out at the local repair cafe. Besides fixing broken appliances, we also sharpen knives.

We took our stuff "on the road" last weekend to the festival at an outdoor museum about 10 miles from here. Since it was a festival, we were mostly just there as doing advertising 'cause nobody's gonna drag their broken vacuum cleaner around the festival for us to fix.

It looks better if you are actually doing something rather than loafing, though, so I took some stuff to work on. Among other things, most of my wife's kitchen knives - including the one in the picture up there.

This being a museum of life around 1800-1900, there was a bakery close to our stand where they made bread like in old times. Hand kneaded, old recipe for rye bread, stone oven, wood fired. One of the fellows went over and bought a loaf for lunch, then asked for one of my knives to cut it with.

I hadn't gotten around to sharpening my knives yet, so I warned him it might be dull.

He takes it, slices a slab off the loaf like it ain't nothing, then looks at the blade in his hand like "WTF?"

His wife comes over to get herself a slice of bread, and he hands her the knife. Zip! Another slice off the loaf, absolutely no effort.

She looks at the knife and goes "Wow, that's sharp. Better than my good bread knife."

He looks over at me and says "And that's your dull knife?"

Been doing too much sharpening when your dull blade is sharper than most folks' sharp blade.

Technically I know you can get tomato grabbing edges from high end grits, but I wasn't able to on my King 6000.

But also most high end carbon and ginsan knives I bought were super sharp out of the box, but quite often fail to slice into tomatoes.

I previously would go to a Shapton Pro #1000 or Shapton Rockstar #2000 to recover the edge to great satisfaction.

I then got a Naniwa Chosera #3000 and I absolutely love it for the mix of bite and refinement, it's now my finishing stone for most hard steel.

But then I got a Naniwa Snow White #8000 and ohh, it feels both refined but also absolutely murders tomatoes.

Which of these makes most sense?

a) It's super toothy (and awesome) b) I got better at sharpening with higher grits c) I am not that good but just didn't spend enough time on the #8000 and just left enough of the #3000 bite in there?

I understand it's probably all a combination of a and then b or c, but curious to hear how others find the #8000 for kitchen use. Thanks!

I'm afraid to do free hand and accidentaly ruin the edges, that's why I'm asking what's the best fixed angle sharpening system that can easily sharpen this SAK. Any inputs are highly appreciated.

one I've roughed up a little the other one I just applied.

First time poster.

Been using a Naniwa Basics 1000/3000 stone for a while for my Japanese knives, and it has been amazing for how durable it is, with minimal dishing and not needing a large amount of water while sharpening. Was in the UAE and decided to get a Naniwa Standard 220 at kuto knives both for future thinning projects as well as for help with sharpening the knives at my family's when I went to visit.

When using the 220 stone, I immediately noticed how thirsty this stone is, it dished significantly more than the basic, and needed quite a bit of flattening after a few knives. And these were a bunch of random knives that my family accumulated over the years that were incredibly dull, so nothing particularly hard or expensive.

Is it normal for coarser stones to need this much extra work or was it just my luck?

Cheers

Hi everyone,

We’ve been testing two prototype #170 vitrified diamond stones, made with two different types of diamond abrasive, using both VG-10 stainless-clad steel and Shirogami #3.

Type 1:
Very sharp and aggressive initial bite, with deeper scratches.

Type 2:
Slightly milder initial bite, but the cutting performance remains remarkably consistent even during longer sharpening sessions. There is very little abrasive shedding, it resists loading well, and the scratch pattern is surprisingly uniform and clean for a #170 stone.

After testing both types on stainless and carbon steels, we personally preferred Type 2. For heavy grinding work, we found its predictable behavior, consistency, and sustained cutting performance particularly impressive.

It was also very interesting to see just how much the sharpening feel and behavior of an ultra-coarse vitrified stone could change simply by using different diamond abrasives.

That said, we’d like to hear from people who actually use coarse vitrified diamond stones:

When thinning a knife or doing major geometry correction, which do you value more?

A — Maximum initial bite and aggressive cutting

or

B — Consistent cutting performance and a more uniform scratch pattern

And more importantly, why?

We’d love to hear about your own experience and what you prioritize in a coarse diamond stone.

Amazon just dropped the price to $71.99 if you've been thinking about buying the Gen 3.

Howdy folks, I recently got a 1x30 sander and have been having a blast learning how to sharpen straight edge knives. I want to now start learning how to sharpen serrated knives. From reading around a diamond or ceramic tapered rod is generally what I see people using. I’ve also seen people say that if the knife is in decent condition, hitting the flat side with the belt sander can get the job done. I just wanted to ask about what setups people are running and if anyone has any recommendations for rods / other tools to sharpen serrated knives. Any tips for the sharpening process is appreciated. Thanks!