How to sharpen a knife so that it cuts hair easily. How to sharpen a hunting knife and at what angle

A knife is an essential kitchen attribute. Without it, it is impossible to imagine the process of preparing many dishes. Knives with sharply sharpened blades allow you to easily cut ham and meat, bread, sausage, cheese, fruits and vegetables. In order for the knives to always remain sharp, they must be sharpened periodically. Then with their help it will be possible to chop vegetables or cut them. You need to know how to sharpen knives correctly, otherwise there is a risk of spoiling, or even completely breaking the blade.

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Important nuances

Each respectable owner has his own way of sharpening blades. However, there are a number of certain rules that must be followed. It is important to take into account such nuances as the shape of the blade, the type of steel from which it is made, etc. A certain angle of inclination must be observed when working with an abrasive surface.

To understand how to properly sharpen knives, you need to pay attention to the taper angle of the blade. The blade is placed strictly parallel to the abrasive surface, with the use of which the sharpening itself takes place. If there are bevels at the point, you will have to tilt the blade so that the eyeliner is located exactly on the stone. If the angle of inclination is chosen correctly, the resistance will be minimal. In this case, free “sliding” of the blade over the surface of the stone is ensured, due to which the irregularities are ground off and the upper layer of metal is removed. If you managed to choose the right position, do not rush to change it by tilting, turning and rearranging the blade to a new place.

Move perpendicular to the cutting edge. Tightly grasping the handle of the knife, move your hand in the direction away from you - towards you. The smaller the angle of inclination you choose, the sharper the blade will eventually become. However, such a knife will become dull very quickly. An example of this would be ordinary kitchen knife sharpeners. When working with them, too thick a layer is ground off the surface of the blade, so the knife, during active use, will become dull again in a few days, and in the future it will become completely unusable. After all, frequent sharpening thins the blade, removing a large layer of metal makes its edges brittle and pliable.

whetstone

In order to put knives in order at home, you can use a special grindstone. It is quite convenient to sharpen a knife with a bar, but it is best to entrust this business to the male sex. You will have to make some effort to evenly sharpen the blade along the entire length. As a bar, natural or artificial stone can be used. Stones may be different size grains, hard and not very.

Bars with the highest hardness are diamond-coated. They can be easily found in the market or in the respective stores. Such products are somewhat more expensive than others, but the quality of their work is much higher.

To begin with, it is better to choose stones with a large grain size. When the main work is done, finishing is carried out using fine-grained grindstone. Fake diamond may have a different grain size on each side.

Basic rules on how to sharpen a knife:

before starting work, the knife blade must be moistened with water so that the chips can be removed more easily and the product retains its qualities;
bars are wetted or sprinkled with water;
the bar is placed on a flat, hard surface (you can put a damp cloth under the bottom to prevent slipping);
sharpening is performed at a preselected angle of inclination;
using abrasive paste and fine-grained stone, finishing is carried out. This is necessary to give the blade even more sharpness.

Sharpening a knife using a stone is a laborious and lengthy process, especially if the blade is very dull. You will have to be patient and do the work with diligence, otherwise the result will not please you for long. IN severe cases you can not do without a coarse-grained or medium-grained bar. If you only need to slightly correct the situation, you can sharpen the knife with musat or a fine-grained stone.

What is musat for sharpening?

Kitchen knives small size, used for preparing some types of desserts, peeling fruits and other simple manipulations, can be easily put in order using musat.

Musat is a solid rod made of high-strength materials with a reliable handle. As a material for its manufacture can be used: metal with notches, materials with diamond or ceramic coating. Terms of use:

strong pressure on the blade during sharpening is not allowed;
when working, you will have to hold both the knife itself and the musat in your hands, using the handle;
the blade is held along the musat on each side, at an angle of 20 degrees;
musat can be held by directing the rod both up and down;
blade movements are made in an arc.

In order to bring the knives into proper condition, it will take a lot of effort and skill. It is better not to trust the process to a beginner.

Sharpeners for knives and their types
You can sharpen blades at home using special devices. One of them is a knife sharpener. They are of several types:

mechanical;
electrical.

The first type is the most conservative. Mechanical sharpeners were widely used in Soviet times. They are practical, durable and easy to use. The sharpening angle has already been determined here, so you are insured against the grossest mistakes that can lead to damage to the blade.

Mechanical sharpeners very compact, but it will take a lot of sweat to sharpen several blades with their help. All work will have to be done manually. The mechanical device is equipped with built-in abrasive discs, between which you should pull the knife blade several times. At this moment, the blade is sharpened from several sides at once, which speeds up and simplifies the process. By adjusting the degree of pressure, you determine the sharpness of sharpening.

Electric sharpeners– new generation devices. In order to do a significant amount of work, you absolutely do not have to do anything other than place the knives in the device. Sharpening is done in automatic mode without direct human intervention. The process itself will take a minimum of time. Perhaps the only drawback electrical devices- their big size and weight. Need to allocate space in advance kitchen table to accommodate an electric sharpener.

Although each model has its own own instruction and an instruction manual, the principle of operation is the same for all. The blade should be lowered into the groove, where it is pulled through the discs moving in automatic mode. The disc is made of abrasive material that sharpens the blade in the same way as a bar. The angle of impact has already been determined and set by the manufacturer, so you will not make gross mistakes and do not spoil the knives.

Features of sharpening ceramic knives

Ceramic knives are incredibly popular with modern housewives. On sale you can even find whole sets of such knives, of various sizes and shapes. No matter how attractive and convenient they are, sooner or later the blade of a ceramic knife will become dull and will have to be sharpened. Although there is an opposite opinion about the need for such manipulations.

Many manufacturers claim that their products remain sharp even after years of use. In part, this is just a marketing ploy, and information about the “eternally sharp” ceramic knife is more of a fantasy. In most cases, after 4-5 months of active use, the blade begins to become dull and no longer copes with its duties so well.

How to sharpen a ceramic knife? The answer to this question is known only to an experienced specialist who has spent more than one year working in the workshop.

Trying to sharpen a ceramic knife using the methods described above is not worth it. If you use a bar, mechanical or electric sharpener, there is a risk of breaking the blade. Musat is completely powerless here, it is better to use it for working with soft metals.

Sharpening of ceramic products is carried out using diamond discs and pastes. For this you need grinding machines, which are available only in large factories and specialized workshops. Such work requires skill, certain knowledge and experience. It is better to take a set of ceramic knives to the workshop than to make vain attempts to sharpen the blade with your own hands or use an electric sharpener.

Determining the sharpness of a blade

Before you start sharpening, as well as after finishing work, you need to assess the condition of the blade. So, we determine the need to sharpen the knife or evaluate the result of the sharpening. You need to sharpen knives using a bar, musat or sharpener until the blades become evenly sharp.

In no case should you check the sharpness of the blade by running your finger over it. For these purposes, you can use a much safer and in a simple way method.

Method 1

You can try to cut a sheet of ordinary paper with a knife, placing it on weight. If the blade is moderately sharp, the sheet will be cut without any difficulty, and the edges of the pieces will remain smooth, as if cut with scissors. A dull blade will only crush the paper or tear it into two pieces with ugly jagged edges.

Method 2

You will need a fresh ripe vegetable. Ideally, it should be a tomato. The knife is placed with the blade on the flesh and pulled out without exerting pressure. If the tomato is ripe and the knife is sharp, the blade will easily enter the pulp, cutting it.

Method 3

Raise the knife, placing it with the tip of the blade towards the light source. If you find glare, the work was done poorly. The presence of glare indicates blunt areas that have not been sharpened with a bar or mechanical sharpener.

Method 4

You will need an ordinary thread. It should be fixed in a vertical position, and then try to cut it with a knife blade. A sharp blade will cut the thread in a fraction of a second without any difficulty. If you have to make an effort, you need to pay attention to the quality of sharpening.

Security measures

Working with a blade is always a risk of injury. Therefore, it does not perform any manipulations if you are in a hurry and you have free time on this moment not enough. Start sharpening knives only after proper preparation. If a beam is used for these purposes, pay attention to the reliability of its fixation, if desired, lay a wet towel under them. Securely fix the mechanical sharpener on the table surface to avoid accidental movement, which will lead to blade breakage. Be careful when working with electrical appliances.

After successful sharpening, be sure to wash the knives with laundry soap or special tool for dishes. There should be no chips, paste or oil on the surface of the blade. The ingestion of these elements in food is highly undesirable.

Please note that a sharpened knife is extremely sharp. Any careless movement made by a familiar kitchen attribute during washing or during further operation will lead to injury. Such products should be stored out of the reach of children. It is also better to warn households that once a blunt knife, with which it was hardly possible to cut bread, can now easily cope with cutting hard foods, chopping vegetables, butchering meat, or any other manipulations.

Many articles have been written about knife sharpening, and usually these are entire studies on the topic of steels, stones, ingenious designs that should give the steel plate absolutely fantastic qualities. You can talk endlessly about the sharpness of a knife, and two specialists can have completely different opinions about the methodology and practice of sharpening knives.

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Some believe that the process of sharpening knives can be universal, others think that each individual knife needs its own, special ritual. But in any case, the principle of reasonable sufficiency must be respected.

If a knife is a cult object, and its function is to impress friends and acquaintances with incredible sharpness (say, to cut a hair thrown onto a blade), then this is one thing. If you need a practical knife that performs the task assigned to it for a long time and reliably, this is a completely different story.

Sharpening knives has its own secrets and approaches, but before you do this, you need to answer the questions why you need this knife, how and where you will use it.

Once upon a time, a penknife in a boy's pocket was considered the norm, and sharpening a knife was not something sacred.

I sharpened it on any whetstone to an acceptable state - and okay. The quality of steel on consumer knives left much to be desired, and razor sharpness the blade seemed to be something unattainable. But times are changing.

Folding knives are now a rarity in the pockets of boys, more and more often they are found in the pockets of adult men. The quality and price of knives have grown significantly, their sharpening to razor sharpness has become possible.

But is she needed? The fact is that in the process of work, the razor sharpness disappears, turning into a normal working sharpness, which lasts for quite a long time. At the same time, the transition from cutting soft raw materials (for example, brisket) to dense ones (raw smoked sausage) will be painless, while when switching from cutting dense raw materials to soft ones, the knife will seem blunt.

Thus, for yourself, you must learn to determine the parameter of sufficient sharpness of the blade, remembering that in each case it will be different depending on what you are going to cut. You must know exactly when it is enough to spend time, effort, and sometimes nerves on sharpening a knife. The sharpness of removing shavings from the hair has no other meaning than the planing of the hair (of course, if it is not a knife for a microtome - an apparatus for histological sections).

So, sharpening a knife is not a thoughtless act. Every movement must be meaningful. You need to clearly understand what happens on the microns of the cutting edge when performing a particular movement. The choice of sharpening options is huge, universal algorithm does not exist. After all, knives are different, and steel, and the geometry of the blades, and the degree of wear, and the mode of operation, and the quality of raw materials, and experience, and skills in working with a knife.

At the same time, the same knife model made of the same steel, when performing the same work in the same volume, will behave differently in different hands. I work as a grinder at a meat processing plant.

Nomenclature hand knives not so great. Deboners and cutters receive the same model of knife, but for some the knife works for a week before the next arrival for sharpening, while others are able to blunt the knife to the state of a ruler before lunch.

Of course, hunters use a knife much less, but some ideas that are suitable for deboners can be useful for them too. It always surprises me when some hunters are outraged that when cutting an elk carcass, you need to sharpen the knife.

But this is completely normal: not every steel is able to hold sharpening for so long that it is enough for a complete cutting of the carcass. In addition, it is razor sharpening that dulls faster and is the reason for repeated sharpening.

Ask yourself how much time you are willing to spend sharpening your knife. No, if you love this process and for you it is akin to meditation, this question disappears by itself. I have between 50 and 90 knives a day at work, and most of them are large trimming knives (the blade is about 20 cm long). It takes a little time for each knife, about three minutes.

Professional butcher knives are approximately 2.5 mm thick (from 2.3 to 2.8 mm, but no thicker than 3 mm). You can't do much with a thick heavy knife. A thick blade gets stuck in cold meat/fat. If the balance is strongly accentuated on the blade (and even frankly chopping), then the knife is poorly controlled and causes premature hand fatigue.

As practice has shown, a hanging sheet of plain A4 paper is a good and convenient indicator of the quality of sharpening a knife for meat. Checking the sharpness on the sheet, you need to determine the nature of the cut. The best results for meat are obtained by a knife that feeds (vertically) is easy, and the stroke (horizontal movement) is rough.

If the knife slips through the sheet, like skates on ice, then the cut will be soapy and not one movement, but two or three will be spent on cutting off a piece of meat (that is, two or three times more time and effort). That's the difference between the work of a microsaw and just a smooth, clean edge of a knife that will shave the hair with a rebound, but will not cut.

IN living conditions the speed of sharpening one knife in three minutes is unattainable. In production, a machine with an abrasive belt (grain size 120) is used on rubber wheel and obligatory constant wetting of the tape (the pump drives water in a circle), as well as petal fabric polishing wheel under abrasive paste to remove the edge burr (in the technical documentation it is referred to as burr). Interestingly, the direction of belt rotation and polishing comes from the operator.

I wasn't wrong. Indeed, for sharpening (reaching the edge burr), an abrasive for metal with a grain size of 120 is used. Yes, in the process of work it is crushed and becomes closer to 140-180. If the abrasive is worn down to about 200 grit, then after removing the burr there is a high risk of a soap cut.

In fact, the knife becomes sharp after proper removal of the edge burr. You can remove it on a soft circle with abrasive paste, alternately holding one and the other side of the knife until the burr disappears.

Practice has shown that after that it will not be superfluous 4-6 times (2-3 times in each direction) easily, without pressure, to draw in the same circle at a slightly greater angle than when removing the burr. The sharpness of the knife and the durability of the edge are increased.

At home, you can also sharpen a knife well. Naturally, sharpening a knife to the state of shaving hair will not work if you only have a bar for sharpening and straightening braids. You will come out on a burr, but you won’t be able to remove it well and correctly.

For sharpening at home, I really liked the 20-centimeter double-sided diamond bars of Russian production: an abrasive of medium grit and a fine one (I don’t remember the numbers of diamond abrasives now). Diamonds must be moistened with water to prevent premature wear and steel clogging.

I like diamond abrasives because of their predictable performance, stable grain size, and the fact that they work on any steel, including steels with high wear resistance.

Finishing sharpening (deburring) can be done on a piece of leather fixed with glue on plywood. If this is done beautifully and accurately, then you can use such a device for a long time and with pleasure. The skin must be treated with an abrasive paste.

The diamond paste showed itself very well, which works cleanly and actively, removing the edge burr even from knives made of high-speed steels, leading to a very good cut. For domestic, hunting and fishing tasks, it is enough to apply it to the skin once.

There is no universal algorithm and universal angle. I briefly described a simple and fast way bringing the knife to a state of good sharpness at home. The corners are more difficult. The more inexperienced the knife operator, the blunter the sharpening angle of his knife (look at what angles the knives from the counter are sharpened to and smile).

Someone knows how to work a week with one knife, correcting it on the wrong side ceramic tiles, and to someone, except for a chisel, you should not give anything in your hands. The so-called clean corners are not. All the same, a small lens is obtained on the edge. But you should not be afraid. When sharpening by hand, it is generally inevitable.

And for deboners, this is even preferable: the knife goes less into the bone than with a clean, even approach and excessive sharpness of the edge.

In the fields, I take a folding double-ended diamond sharpener that opens like a butterfly knife and a couple of small alumino-ceramic rods. Aceramic abrasives are good, but not on all steels. For knives made of high speed steels, I would not recommend them. With such a sharpener, it is quite possible to fix the knife or even sharpen it without any problems.

I don't use sharpeners like Lansky and Spyderco. Of course, such tools give the work "professionalism", but for me, as a person who constantly works with sharpening knives, this is useless. How practical tool They don't justify their price in my opinion.

Hardware stores sell two carbide blades with a sharp edge that remove chips from the cutting edge of the knife, but, in my opinion, this is heresy, which I don’t even want to consider, real barbarism in relation to the knife. If you want, use it, the knife is yours. Ditch one faster, buy a new one faster.

Musats are a separate conversation (musat is a metal, ceramic or other tool, of circular cross section for pointing and straightening knives). They certainly have the right to be for knives with a steel hardness of 56-58 HRC, sharpened at a small angle.

You need to be able to use them, the main thing is not to apply excessive force.

Professionals with light movements on the musat are able to maintain the edge of the knife in a state of working sharpness all day long. A person without skills and understanding of what his hands are doing will quickly wrap and break off with excessive force. cutting edge knife along the entire length, so I recommend learning the intricacies of using the musat before you start sharpening the knife.

What do you want to say in conclusion? A knife, like any tool, must always be sharpened and serviceable, but the sharpening procedure itself should not be elevated to a cult.

Sharpen knives correctly is a very valuable ability. Any hostess will confirm that a poorly sharpened knife can significantly complicate any cooking process. In fact, sharpening knives is not difficult, the main thing is to choose The right way, with which you can sharpen them. Our article will help you choose this method, as well as tell you how to properly sharpen kitchen, Japanese, ceramic, hunting and any other knives at home.

Block or whetstone

In order to properly sharpen knives with a bar or grindstone, you need to stock up on two copies at once, one of which must be coarse-grained structure, and second - fine-grained. Immediately before sharpening, thoroughly moisten the blade of the knife clean water, tilt it 20 degrees, after which it is necessary to fix a bar or whetstone of coarse structure on a table or any other flat surface. A bar or whetstone should also be moistened with water, and only after that you can start sharpening the knife. This should be done until burrs form on the blade, which can then be easily smoothed out with a bar of fine-grained structure. It is necessary to sharpen knives with a bar or whetstone on both sides, after which they should be washed in clean water.

On the machine

To properly sharpen a knife on a special grinder or, as it is also called, on an electric grinder, you should have some knowledge and skills. Sharpening knives on an electric grinder is not at all an easy task, because if you do it wrong, you can completely ruin the knife, after which no sharpening will help. It should also be remembered that when the disks are rubbed against the blade, they tend to heat up. Not every material is able to withstand high temperature sharpening.

To properly sharpen the knife on the machine, you should do it on the side surface of the grinding wheel. The blade of the knife should be rotated 25-30 degrees, and it should be sharpened until burrs appear on the blade. They will need to be carefully removed and slightly straighten the knife blade with a fine-grained whetstone.

Electric knife sharpener

The electric knife sharpener is the most convenient way How to sharpen a knife at home. Most often, she has two modes: directly sharpening, as well as polishing. All you have to do to sharpen a knife is insert it into a special hole and wait a while while the electric knife sharpener does everything for you.

Musatom

Sharpening knives with musat is quite difficult. More often musat is used to grind a knife sharpened in some other way. To properly sharpen a knife, it is necessary to choose ceramic musat or with the addition of diamond chips. Next, you just need to run the blade over the musat several times, achieving desired result, then wash both devices and put them on the table.

sandpaper

To properly sharpen a knife with sandpaper, it is necessary to put it on a flat surface, and holding one free hand edge of the sandpaper, take the knife in the second hand and start sharpening it with sliding movements. Do not wet the sandpaper or blade with water. But you will need double-sided tape if you want to fix the sandpaper on a flat surface.

How to sharpen different types of knives

Any sharpening method will work for kitchen knives, as long as the knives are not ceramic. The main thing at the same time is to sharpen correctly, following all the recommendations from our article.

Knives ice drill should only be sharpened with a whetstone. It can be of any shape, however, it should be understood that its surfaces must be flat. You need to sharpen ice drill knives as follows:: Place the whetstone on a level surface so that it does not wobble or slip into different sides. After that, pick up a drill knife, attach it to the grindstone and make a few circular motions. So you remove the burrs and prepare the knife for sharpening. Next, grab the blunt part of the drill knife and start sharpening it, rotating it in different directions. You only need to sharpen the outer part of the ice drill knife, otherwise there is a possibility to completely ruin the device.

Knives for meat grinders can be sharpened with a whetstone. To do this, it must be installed on a flat surface, moisten the upper part a little, and then put a knife on it, which should be sharpened. Now start gently rotating the meat grinder knife in different directions, sharpening only outside knife. During sharpening, the bar should be moistened regularly, which will ensure more efficient sharpening.

Hunting the knife is usually sharpened by hand using a whetstone. In this case, it is desirable to immediately determine the degree of inclination of the blade during sharpening, as this will affect the final result. The optimal slope for sharpening a hunting knife is about 15-20 degrees. In this case, the grindstone must be installed on a flat surface and pre-moistened with any oil. Then you need to take in both hands hunting knife and attach it to the surface of the emery stone, then forcefully draw the blade cross-to-cross. For each side, you need to make about ten movements to perfectly sharpen a hunting knife at home.

Japanese knives are of special quality and durability, so they need to be sharpened in a suitable way. In order to sharpen a Japanese knife by hand, a Japanese knife designed for this purpose is ideal. water stone. It looks like a grindstone and has a double coloring: on the one hand, the water stone has White color, and on the other - dark brown or orange. Before sharpening a Japanese knife with a water stone, it (the stone) should be lowered into the water for a few minutes. When the stone does not emit bubbles, you can start sharpening. First you need to sharpen a Japanese knife on a coarse brown surface, and then polish it with a white one.

Ceramic knives can only be sharpened with a sharpening machine, and then provided that there is diamond-coated nozzle. At the same time, it is desirable to have minimal skills in working with this tool, otherwise it is possible to permanently damage the ceramic knife. To properly sharpen a ceramic knife using a sharpening machine, you need to lean the blade against a diamond-coated abrasive wheel, tilt the blade 25 degrees and turn on the machine. Be careful: the smaller the angle of inclination, the sharper the sharpening will be.

Grafting The knife should only be sharpened on one side. This is done as follows: turn the knife so that its blade is directed in your direction, and then begin to sharpen the upper section of the knife, gradually going down. Adjust the blade angle so that the blade is about most at the end. It is necessary to sharpen the grafting knife with a bar and a whetstone, the surface of which should be regularly moistened with water.

Disk skinning knives, like hand planer knives, can only be sharpened with a grinder. It is best to give such knives to professionals who will sharpen circular knives or hand planer knives as they should. It is better not to sharpen such knives on your own, especially if you do not have any skills when working with a grinding machine.

If our tips did not help you sharpen your knife correctly and efficiently at home, then we advise you to watch a video guide for sharpening knives, as well as read a book or any other educational literature on this topic. Sharpening knives is not an easy task, therefore it requires at least minimal knowledge.

A bar manually (with a video without SMS and registration) and understand why do it at all. Professionals, of course, are aware of this topic, but for them, there may be helpful information. Or it will be an occasion to update your knowledge in order to "keep in good shape."

If you have to put in more and more effort to cut, then this is an occasion to think about sharpening your knife. Because using a blunt weapon is dangerous. It can slip off at any moment, and believe that in order to cause a serious injury to you or standing next to the sharpness of the blade will be enough for a person.

Preparing for sharpening. What needs to be done before then?

The blade of a knife, upon closer inspection, looks like a saw, and the more often the teeth are located in it and the smoother the transition between them, the easier it is to use the tool. A dull knife loses these teeth, they wear out, bend and crumble.
There are many ways to sharpen a knife using mechanical and electric sharpeners, as well as special machines with grinding wheels. But sharpeners do not give an ideal result, and easel sharpening requires considerable knowledge and skills. Therefore, we will consider how to properly sharpen knives with a bar, in step by step guide For independent work V at home. This method will give you two main advantages: considerable money savings and excellent results.

The first thing to do is to determine the degree of damage to the blade. It is very easy to do this. Place it at an angle to a beam of bright light. This method instantly reveals all the chips and bumps that you need to eliminate. They will look like dots or lines on the blade. If the boundary between the planes is uniform, sharply defined, without transitions, then the instrument is in excellent condition.
After that, the knife should be washed in water with the addition of soap. This is done to facilitate subsequent work. The knife will become easier to slide on the whetstone, and it will be easier for you to maintain the required angle between the planes of the blade and the blade.

Choosing the right bar

The main tool in the subsequent work will be a whetstone. To get the perfect result, you will need several stones of different grits. The minimum number is two, but if you need a razor sharpness of the blade, brought to perfection, then you can use up to five whetstones.

There are two types of bars. The first ones are artificial, used for primary metal processing, made of the following materials.

Synthetic gems(diamond, sapphire, etc.):

borazone;
silicon carbide;
elbor;
and others.

The second is natural. They are used for finishing knife sharpening:

diamond;
pomegranate;
corundum;
Japanese water stones

It is clear that natural whetstones cost decent money, but if you want to get a really good result, you will have to fork out a little.
An important parameter is the choice of the size suitable for the work of the bar. At a minimum, it should be the same length as the knife with which you will have to work. And ideally - one and a half to two times more. At the same time, the width of the stone does not matter and is selected based on personal preferences. Although if you take a wider donkey, then even an inexperienced beginner will find it easier to work on it.
Before starting, it is necessary to soak the bar in water (artificial) or oil (natural). The liquid will nourish, close the pores in it, reduce subsequent pollution and make your work easier.

Correct sharpening angle

How to sharpen kitchen knife bar? Keep it at the right angle. It is this parameter that will subsequently determine the length of the blade's service life and the frequency of its sharpening. The larger the angle you get, the higher the resistance of the metal external influence, which means that it is necessary to update its sharpness less often. Sharp corner gives ease of cutting, but due to the thinness of the metal obtained in this place, it is erased faster.

The determining factor will be the purpose of the knife:

japanese cooking blades sharpened at an angle of 10-20 degrees;
fillet knives and professional chefs require an angle of 25 degrees;
household knives - 30 degrees;
hunting blades are processed at an inclination of 35-40 degrees.

You will need not only to determine the angle of inclination, but also to maintain it during the entire work.

Advice! To find and endure required amount degrees it is good to use a sheet of paper folded several times. It is a fast, cheap and accurate meter.

If, after reading the article, you still have questions about how to properly sharpen knives with a bar, the video attached to it will completely clarify them. It clearly shows the entire sequence of actions, which means that it will be easier for you to repeat them, gaining your own experience.

In the kitchen, hunting or in any other business, sharp knives are always needed. With the help of such tools, it is not only easy and pleasant to do something, but the result is beautiful. There are many mechanical and electrical appliances with which sharpening knives at home does not present any difficulties. However, all of them are rather intended for women.

The real male owner will definitely use the good old method of manually straightening the blade. This process is even more painstaking and longer, but the result will be completely different.

About steel

How high-quality sharpening will turn out will depend not only on skill, grinding materials, but also on steel. Its optimum hardness varies from 45 to 60 HRC. With a knife made of softer material, the cutting edge will be easily wrinkled, and with a harder one, it will crumble and become dull. You can determine the quality of steel yourself, but this will require a new file. If, with light pressure, it will slide along the edge, and with strong pressure, it will slightly cling, then the hardness of the material is “correct”.

Sharpening flat knives

The initial operation is performed with a bar with large grains. They are treated on both sides of the cutting edge of the blade until a burr appears along its contour - a thin strip of "extra" metal, which is bent in both directions. Then sharpening knives at home continues with a finer-grained bar. With its help, traces of the impact of the previous donkey are completely removed, not paying attention to the burr. The bar with the finest grain should “take up” its removal. The burr is ground on both sides in such a way as to give the cutting edge of the blade an angle of 23 - 45 °. It is this method of sharpening that allows the blade not to become dull for quite a long time. Final fine-tuning The knife is made of slate and leather.

Universal knives, as you know, do not exist. Based on this, the sharpening angle of each knife will depend on its purpose. For example, if it is supposed to be used only for cutting cheese, bread, sausages, and the worker - for enough soft materials(leather, paper, etc.), then the sharpening angles of these tools can be made minimal. If the knife is intended for cutting bony meat, or other hard materials, then its sharpening angle should be approximately 30-45 °. It should be noted that correct sharpening knives at home for non-professionals can present some difficulties, therefore, novice “grinders” are advised to use a simple device to form an edge at the desired angle. For its manufacture, you will need from which to make a wedge. Its length should exceed the height by 2.5 times. The resulting wedge-shaped device is installed on the touchstone, a knife is pressed against it from above, and then it is necessary to move the wedge with the knife along the blade forward. This method will automatically provide the required angle of sharpening the edge. In this case, a blade with a wide chamfer will receive a cutting edge at an angle of 25-30 °, and with a narrow one - 30-45 °.