How to Sharpen Kitchen Knives

I promise I've had these

kitchen

knives

for about 15 years and I've never been able to

sharpen

them properly until now, so if you want to get your permanently frustrating and dull

kitchen

knives

sharp, keep watching now. I thought I'd do this video today because I'm constantly amazed that even though we all have knives, there doesn't seem to be an obvious solution to getting a really sharp finish over the years I've struggled with. away from knife

sharpen

ers like this I have tried sharpening steels and most recently bought one of these on eBay for £15 on eBay which is a Chinese knock off of the Edge Pro sharpening system and none of these sharpening systems have had success.

Look on the internet and there is a bewildering array of manual and electric sharpening systems, the manual ones are invariably cheap and rubbish and the electric ones promise so much that we've all seen those clever videos on Facebook where you get a little bucket of metal shavings like grinder. sharpens the blade, but the problem with electric sharpening systems is that you have no control over what happens to your precious and expensive knives and most of Chris's modern ones is that they remove too much of the blade, so after doing some research I came to the conclusion that to get a truly sharp knife, you basically have to sharpen it yourself and I decided on this controlled sharpening system from Lansky.

I found a couple online called knives and tools that I co-taught in the UK and they seemed to have a lot of knowledge in this field. great selection of products and I wanted to check with them that I was buying the right thing now if you were thinking I don't want to use one of these controlled sharpening systems, it's too complicated for the professionals. I will never get the finish right. Don't click yet because this is my first time using this system and you've seen from the beginning of this video how ridiculously sharp I have that knife, so be patient.

Yes, it's not as convenient as an electric system where you just run the knife through, but with something like this you get a lot more control and you'll end up with a much sharper knife than you would ever get with one of these manual or electric ones. cutting systems There are a few things I already liked about this Lance kit when it arrives, other than that it comes in its own case, which is easy to store in the drawer when you're done using it. I like the fact that it comes. with a full set of instructions on how to sharpen the knives, which is something the makeshift jackdaws I bought on eBay didn't know there are people who make fleas on the internet sometimes just holding these things in their hands and sharpening knives with them, I would recommend it.

To use a kit, you really need one of these two stands. I bought both because I wanted to know which one I thought was better, so you have this universal bracket here, so the idea is that you put it together. the stand like this and then you place your knife sharpener on the stand and then you have one of two options: you can screw it to some wood, but for me I think that option is the most appropriate if you are going to use the stand in a workshop style to screw it through a counter because you really don't want to be carpeting the bracket on a piece of wood in and out of the kitchen if I make this job as easy as possible the other option is you could get a clamp like these Axminster clamps and I bought these clamps the other day and I'm quickly falling in love with them because they have so many uses that you can map them just like that and that's it. but in my opinion, if you're going to go to all the effort, you might as well do without this bracket and buy this one, the super C clamp bracket.

The best thing about this guy is that it has two attachment points so you can mount your knife. sharpener on a horizontal surface like this or on a vertical surface like that, if you're buying your knives in your kitchen, society might want to put them on the work surface or something, so I think this is by far the best of the two. The downside is that it doesn't fit in the other stand's case, but it's certainly small so it's not a real problem. I'm just going to put some electrical tape under the stand just to protect the work surface.

I don't really care because this is granite, but in your case, if you have words or Corian or something, you also know what ratchet is there, so you just put the little clamp on top of the C-clamp so you can look at it. the rest of the kit, we now have four grades of diamond stone. I read with a Lansky diamond kit because the cheap eBay kit I got really disappointed me with how quickly the stones degrade. This basically happens when sharpening a knife. and you can see there the amount of stone that was reduced, so I brought my diamond children here.

They range from an extremely thick cut to a medium thick and thin cut. There are two things we liked when we were kids, while the cheap ones or on eBay had the rating. of the stones written on the stainless steel surface with ridiculous because obviously when you start sharpening the knife the writing came off with these stands, it's actually obviously written on the back which is a nice touch. The other thing I like is not cleaning. these things because they are diamond stones, but you can simply clean them with a little soapy water and no toothbrush.

Funnily enough, they give you a bottle of polishing oil which is completely irrelevant to this kit, so you understand what that does, so let's get started. I'm going to take the guide rods out of the box a little bit, unscrew the thumb screw on the hoe and then just insert the guide rod into the sharpener and then tighten the screw. Now do this in the other three instructions now going south, that if guide rod once you've done this it's not completely level, you can just take it and bend it a little bit so that it's completely flat on the surface like it is now, now the structure is going to go into quite a bit of detail on how to fix a knife in the clamp, it's worth doing this the first time you do it, but basically all you're trying to do is leave a triangular shaped gap in the clamp, as you can see here to reflect this type of triangular shape. of your knife blade and in fact once you set up the first knife it's actually very simple to set up the next knife, then you literally loosen the screw on the front, lock the knife in position, set the next knife into position and then you just tighten it, so it really couldn't be simpler, so a couple of very quick last points, generally speaking, you want about five-eighths of the knife blade sticking out of the front of the clan, which for this particular knife is about twelve and a half thousand if it has a blade that is less than half an inch wide you literally just clamp it into the little notches on the front of the clamp like that and the last point of note is that you want the knife to be reasonably central in the clamp because that helps you with sharpening, obviously if you have a much longer knife you're going to have to position it and then keep moving it while you're sharpening, so with me, let's start first of all.

I'm going to do the old test. I always watch these knife sharpening videos. I'm going to try cutting a piece of paper with this knife. It's not very convincing. Is it a fairly dull blade? Quick test on my horrible hairy arm and again, nothing happens there. Now go here. I have four guide slots in the clamp, depending on what you're using the knife for, you have four different angles seventeen twenty-five and thirty degrees, we're going to go with the 20 degree angle here, which is commonly used angle for a lot of blades excellent cutting edge for kitchen cutlery and slicing knives.

I'm starting with the extra chunky diamond, so after all that boring theory, this is really fun. Insert the diamond into the guide, so I'm starting with the base of a knife. I'm just pushing the sharpener against the base like this. You see some people do that, that is not recommended. The instructions say to always sharpen the blade by working in these types of two inch sections. You really see what this is doing to the blade and the tip. I generally use sharpening stones instead of these fixed angle ones. The tip is the most difficult area to get any type of blade, but you can really see how the house is already refining that tip.

I see a lot of people saying you want to do it. This six to ten times, but my blade has gotten so poorly sharpened over the years that I'm going to do this a little longer to focus on redefining the angle of this knife that's been sharp for so long. I'll look at the next big feature of this clown that, through my old life, I hone in on. If I want to sharpen the other side of the knife then I have to take it out of the clamp, turn it over and pick it all up again which was a huge pain, all I have to do with this is literally turn it over and put it back on on the clamp back on the guide and that's it, now they say that if while you're doing this, the house starts to go. very gently overnight, this means the stone is clogged with metal shavings, so again for this diamond house, oh, we get soap and water with an old toothbrush and we just give it a little brush if you do this, Make sure Before storing the hoenn, you give it a very good drying, so I think they may rust if you don't dry them properly.

Now the other thing as you go along, you can find when I started doing this, my knife. I was moving around in the cloud a bit, so what I did was reduce the angle of the clamp. I must have set it up a little wrong and now it's incredibly firm. Additional course passage. I'm not going to go back to the beginning of the course and do the exact same thing again. What this guide does is keep the start angle consistent with each sharpening so that you end up with a nice, consistent angle for the blade. I have to tell you guys.

I am not an expert knife sharpener. You see a lot of these videos on YouTube from outdoor hunting specialists. We are using this for their hunting knives. I ask you to help me show you how to make your kitchen knives, period one and period. two I want to show you that even someone like me, who has never used this kit before, can achieve a really professional finish because that is probably what is deterring you from buying it. Could you think wow? Do you know this guy is a professional outdoor adventurer? whatever it is he's been sharpening knives all his life.

I like what he's doing, but I will never buy one of these. I won't get the same results. Well, let me tell you, this is literally the first time I've started using this house. I know if you can see that, but this is starting to look pretty impressive. I'm getting really excited about the results of this experiment and now I'm going to move on from the course to the middle diamond you got by starting from the base, working in kind. two inches. I'm just putting a reasonable amount of pressure. It's a lot of fun to sharpen.

A lot of pressure. I'm almost letting the diamonds do the work. Now I have a tip of that blade that had a very dull edge. I had tried it before and it's already starting to look like it has a professional finish again. I changed it. I love how easy it is to do that. On this knife sharpener it says that you should always work from the base forward. When you get the tip, I find that it's actually quite a bit. It's hard to move it that way, which probably meant doing it. I mean, again, you have to break the rules and I, so I'm going in the opposite direction on the tip and now I'm going to file it under the file on how to play the piano. the background, I think it's my daughter walking up the stairs, okay, oh, this is lovely.

Now let's get down to business. I can really feel the difference with these phones, it's like I'm doing the final refinements to the blade once the knives are sharpened properly the first time we use them. You see a lot of people on the Internet suggesting that you do this six to ten times on each side, so yes, don't forget that this might seem like a pretty complicated long winter, which I'm going to do today, but once you've done this in all. your knives one time next time you just need to go one two three four five six one two three four five six and then you can turn it over and do the same thing on the back so it will probably take you 15 20 minutes to do all your knife collection.

I'm doing a lot more because this is the first time these nights I've had a proper sharpening which might give a bit of a clean up as fine sharpening is likely to clog more. faster than the rough ones hear that noise now it sounds like we're really finishing up with this house okay, we've finished this stage of the process, you can see the new sheet there at a 20 degree angle. that we have created now, let's try the paper test which is quite impressive, right? But now let's go one step further when I was talking to knives and tools about purchasing this product and checking with them that they are better foods. or I want to buy, the guys on the phone said: have you heard of strop?

I was thinking, well,no I haven't done anything about it so they recommended I buy strop and they sent me this pocket strop, these drops have leather on the front is on the back, if you want to give a really sharp finish to your knife when you're done sharpening it like I just did, even though you can't really feel them, there will be microscopic girls, girls, microscopic burners left on the edge of the knife. and what these leather straps do is remove or align those burrs. Now you don't just use the leather alone, you apply a scouring pad and a compound.

Again I have to hit with knives and tools. I have the fine one here and the course or you can get a diamond spray compound in a bottle. Most enthusiasts use the diamond spray, but while that kind of forty-nine pounds. For a small spray bottle these dropper compounds are only six quid a pack so as I'm a bit of a dabbler at this I thought I'd give them up given the price difference and we get on well so what you've got to do you've got to do it. cover your strap with the compound now I thought this is cool, this is called a pocket strap, it's good if you stop traveling if you're out and about in the wilderness and want something in your backpack just to increase the sharpness of your blades if they break while you work, but for us kids and kitchens, I wanted something that was a little bigger than this, so yesterday I started making my own paddle brush.

Now you can see here in the video how I started doing it. This pallet weighs between 43 and 50 pounds online, so it's a pretty expensive kit, which is basically why I decided to make my own from a 3x1 piece of wood, which is very easy to make, no you got it. to put this on, put this shaped handle like I did, you can literally get a wooden board, but a piece of leather. Some people even use their old belts. Not everyone is a belt for this, but I have a great friend. from a day job running a company that makes custom furniture out of cowhide with metal, makes stair railings, and also appears in George Clark's incredible spaces for a ridiculously amazing shot that he converted into a mobile home.

I called him on the phone and said: do you have any? Whatever leather is out there isn't necessary and no manufacturer like David tends to have much leather surface so you kindly sent me on. I cut the skin that I used to make this delivery, what I would tell you is if you believe. about making one of these and look around your area to see if you can find any manufacturers that use leather, they will surely have surplus leather that they could give you or sell it, buy it cheap so let's move on and I. I'm going to show you how to reload one of these pallets with the compound.

This is the first time we've done this, so for all those struggling and giri out there, go easy on me, so I still recommend warming up the leather and the strop and compound before applying it to the strop. I have a BB gun here that I used to relieve the pain of peeling, but how to drive for the exact same job now I'm just going to cover it over the leather now that because I have to heat that up, that actually happens very easily. I heated the compound a little too much. I have a little bit of excess which actually doesn't happen quite easily, I just want to put on a thin even layer. of the compound in the leather strop.

I wonder why the course compound didn't work as well because actually for the course compound you need the rough side of the leather. I'm going to try it now, yes that worked. In fact, I go a little easier. I can see why people prefer diamond compound spray. Anyway, now I have my palettes loose with the fine and the thick and I was going to take my knife trying to keep the same angle that I was taking before and I'm just very lightly stroking the knife across the strop. Now I'm going to use the fine side of the pedal strop, so it's a lot easier to do this on one side of the blade and the other with your right hand, which is a much easier motion. for me, i just want to do that with my left hand, yeah that works better.

You have to be a little careful when you stop because from what I've seen it's a bit like sharpening, well you're still sharpening the blade so you don't want to undo the good work you've done with your initial sharpening on the lansky right that doesn't feel very sharp, so we're almost done, let's see how it works in practice, so try it on paper. Look at that guys, that's amazing and this is literally the first time I've sharpened a knife properly like this before I go, we have one more test to see a lot of people to see if they can shave their hairs off. their arms and say here we go.

I'm sure you don't want to see my hairy arm, but it's worth doing because this is the true test of whether this knife is now completely sharp. look at those guys, this is basically a razor lol. I'm not going to do too much because I want to retain some of that off my arm, but look at it absolutely smooth as you want on the hairs that are gone, so for those of you who have made it this far, thank you for sitting down to watch this. It's been a bit of a long video, so how do we summarize it?

I was greatly impressed with the Lansky system. Someone who had never sharpened a knife with this system before and achieved a very sharp edge. I think it speaks for itself if I have one. criticism and this is an inevitable criticism of a system like this, the knife featured in today's video was a fairly short knife compared to a longer carving knife like this one, which I made a little later that day. I had a bit of difficulty partly because the blade was so beat up after all the years of abuse it has had, but also because the sharpening system needs to be reset at three different points on the blade, you could really get away with two to be sure. to get the controlled angle right on the other side of the blade. length of the blade, so it's a bit of a pain, but you know it's worth the time to do it if you want to get a really sharp knife.

I guess the other downside to this system is just over a hundred pounds for the sharpening system itself. the diamond purchasing system is cheap and it is not a diamond system but this system costs just over a hundred pounds and the clamp featured in today's video is obviously not cheap but I would tell you it is an investment for the future knives. that you bought are probably very expensive anyway, so you won't want to use one of these cheap manual or electric sharpening systems that you can find on the market and which are invariably designed for cheaper quality steel knives, not anyway. will want to use those systems on your expensive knives is because you watched today's video, you still think well, it's not really for me, it's too complicated, there is a chef's choice sharpening system that I found this morning on the internet when I was doing research a bit last minute.

That's not cheap either, £149, but compared to some of the other electric sharpening systems I've seen, it doesn't give you the ability to sharpen at different angles and it also has a sharpening stone, but I would. I tell you to give this system a gift because with practice you will only become more and more skilled at using it when you sharpen all your knives once, it will be much easier the next time because you can simply apply the medium or fine sharpening. To resharpen your knives, you may or may not decide to bother with a pedal like this.

The Lansky system produces such a good edge. If you think this is going too far, you can get away without it. That's all. I really hope you found today's video useful as the links to the sharpening system and all the other tools I have referred to in today's video are in the description at the end of the video. Click the Like button if you like. I enjoyed this video and if you are new to my channel I would love for you to subscribe, you can do so by clicking the link here.