Whats the proper way of sharpening knives I already have a whetstone now what?

Answer 1

There are several ways of sharpening blades. The most important question is whether you have straight edged or serrated edged knives. Your choice on the serated sharpeners is rather limited. Straight edge has a huge variance. Ceramic sticks, diamond dust stones, Arkansas stones, dry stones and finally a leather strop for putting the finishing touches to make a true razor's edge. The one trick is maintain the same angle on the blade as you sharpen/stop. 10-13 degrees on the average blade, unless you have an usually thick hafted blade. In that case, follow the natural line of the steel. If you use a wet stone, make sure to use honing oil. It wont load up and gives a much finer sharpen. I hope this helps you.

Answer 2

Knife sharpening is certainly a useful skill to master. It is not too difficult to learn. There are a lot of "how to" resources on the internet where you can get the information you seek. I could try to describe the process with works, but nothing beats some illustrations to help you along. As you know, this format is limited to words. Therefore, I would like to give you a link to a site that you will find very useful. It is kind of basic, but is well written and the illustrations are pretty good.

http://www.cutlery.com/sharpb.shtml

By the way, I found this site by doing a Yahoo! search. You can do the same search and find a lot more information. Simply type "how to sharpen a knife" in the Yahoo! search box, and you will be rewarded with over a million results. Don't worry, you will find all you need to know by checking out just the first page or two of results.

Good luck learning to sharpen your knives.

Answer 3

If you are just going to use the stone with no oil, place the stone on a non-slip surface. Place the blade on the stone using the angle that would be the same as if you had a nickle (laying down) under the top side of the blade. Pretend you are slicing off a thin piece of the stone with the blade by pushing it forward. Do this on both sides of the blade until it meets your needs. I use a sharpening steel after the stone to remove burrs.

Answer 4

I always used a steel to sharpen my knives for work so I'm guessing this should help. Try holding the knife at a 45 degree angle on one side going one direction and then exactly the same on the other.