Whetstone Sharpening Mistakes that Most Beginners Make

you finally picked up your first

whetstone

, you watch 15 different

sharpening

videos, you started

sharpening

and you dream of finally showing off that smug paper whose boss, except when you go to cut, it happens again, the paper tears and it feels like your knife is worse than before. a pretty common story for

most

novice and novice sharpeners, so what I want to do in this video is identify four pretty common

mistakes

that a lot of people will

make

when they start with wet stones and I'm going to give you a technique for each of them to help remedy the situation.

I hope that at the end of this video you can show off your new incredibly sharp edges abroad. I will be using the shapton ceramic wet stones and This is a 15 offer gaiuto knife that is great for learning and practicing sharpening, also whenever I mention an article or book like this all of this will be listed in the description below so you can Check it out if it helps you but with that being said let's start with mistake number one and that is using an inconsistent angle while sharpening so consistency as a beginner is one of the hardest things to do because you have no muscle memory or feel if you are getting the correct angle or how much metal you are actually removing and remedying that is pretty easy, all you have to do is use the magic marker or the Sharpie marker trick.

This is something I picked up from a ledge in the kitchen by Chad. Ward, and it's easily my number one tip for

beginners

. Take your knife, tilt it under the light and you should be able to see the edge shine differently on your knife if, before you start sharpening it, you fill in that edge and slightly above it with a sharp marker. As you sharpen, you will be able to see where the

whetstone

erases the marker and this is where you will remove the metal with this incredibly useful board from Japanese Knife Imports. We can

make

adjustments based on feedback.

Take a look at your knife and identify where the Sharpie has or hasn't been removed, for example, you can see here. I was keeping my angle too high, which means I need to lower it to match that edge when I make my adjustment, now you can see it. It looks correct like the photo at the bottom of the board and you can dry your knife and refill it with Sharpie as many times as you want during this sharpening process and then to remove it all all you need to do is use a nail. nail polish remover or acetone and it will literally just clean mistake number two is using the wrong amount of pressure so using the right amount of pressure is directly related to number one because if I'm really pressing down on this stone, it's going to be hard to maintain that angle and Alternatively, if I'm relaxed and using hardly any pressure, this thing will slide and change angles all over the place, so the question is how much pressure do we really need to use Master Knifemaker Bob.

Kramer has said to use four to six pounds of pressure for a normally sharp knife or up to eight pounds for a really dull one. Get off and look at the scale, get a feel for what four to six pounds of pressure feels like and then do the same with up to eight pounds, immediately transfer that pressure signal to the stone as you sharpen to help develop that muscle memory for the following. Mistake number three is starting with the wrong whetstone, generally for Japanese wet stones there will be low grit, medium grit and high grit. Stone logert Stone wears metal much faster and fine grit does so very slowly and barely wears down any metal except

most

sharp ones.

We're going to start with medium grit wet stones, which most people will classify as 800 to 2000 grit and if you need just one stone, the 1000 grit stone is the one you'll get, but how do we actually do that? Identify which stone we should start with depending on the edge of our knife, so if the knife you want to sharpen has some micro chips or maybe hasn't been sharpened in a couple of years or ever, that edge may be very dull. You will need a low grit to help make a new edge; However, if it's just normal wear and tear, maybe that knife hasn't been sharpened in about a year.

Medium grit will work fine in most cases, however, if it is a knife it is. It's already pretty sharp, but could use a touch up. A high grit wet stone may be all you need, for example this high end type I sharpened about six or eight weeks ago, it's still pretty sharp and cuts paper well, but it doesn't. Dig into my nail or dust the tomato slice; However, if I just take a few strokes on both sides with a fine grit whetstone, I get that screaming edge, so in short, I evaluate the knife and choose the stone accordingly, but for the most part In these cases, you'll probably just start with your medium-grit wet stone.

Mistake number four is changing stones too early, so when you start sharpening, a lot of people get really excited about moving on to these high grit wet stones, where you can really polish. The cutting edge makes it look nice and shiny and many

beginners

think that this is where the edge of the knife is sharpened. I mean, it's exactly what I thought when I started, but that's not the case at all, so if the edge of the knife isn't sharp after using the 1000 grit stone or the lower grit stone, it won't become exponentially sharper. sharp when you move up to that top 5000 grit stone, as you can see you can get a tremendously sharp edge with just a 1000 grit stone, let me repeat that you can get a sharp working edge just by using a 1000 grit stone, the reason why which is simple, 320 and 1000 grit stones remove enough metal to actually set the main cutting edge on the knife, 5000 grit stones and above are really just polishing or cleaning the edge that was set, it will remove some micro serrations and it will make it look shiny, but you are not effectively changing the angle of the edge with your higher grit stones.

Here is my stone progression for a normal knife sharpening. I start my knife with the 1000 grit stone and then make strokes on one side up and down to set a burr which will be a raised lip of metal that curves to the side once I have a burr up and down on one side completely along the length of the knife. I simply flip the knife over and repeat the process which will turn the burr to the other side once there. I turn the knife over and perform several strapping strokes on the same stone to effectively cut the burr and then perform a test cut.

It could be a paper fingernail test or slicing a tomato. I make sure to cut like this on the 1000 grit stone before I even think about moving on to the fine grit stones to polish that edge and one more thing I would like to add don't be discouraged or worry about messing up your knife when you started, It is quite difficult to cause irreparable damage to the blade, so go slow, be consistent, get the answer from the Sharpie marker and everything will be fine, I hope some of these tips help you. You guys on your wet honing journey.

This is by no means a completely exhaustive list of wet stone sharpening tips, but they are definitely some of the most important keys that will help you get a sharper knife. There are many different opinions and methods. about how you can sharpen your knife, but at the end of the day I just want to help you get a sharper knife in the kitchen because behind salting your food, I think it's one of the most important things a cook should do, I'm serious . It makes cooking easier because you can shop faster It makes it safer because you have more control over your knife because you need to use less pressure to cut things and let's be honest, it's a lot of fun to cut tomatoes like butter but that's it for me, let me Find out what tips helped you in the comments below, subscribe if you're new and liked it and I'll see you in the next one.