How to choose a sharpening stone

The next advantage of manual sharpening is that once you master it, this skill will serve you for a lifetime and you can sharpen an unlimited number of knives with ease. In the long run, once you equip yourself with sharpening stones, the profitability of this method of sharpening is greater, because you can sharpen hundreds or even thousands of knives on one stone. From the first time you sharpen a knife on a stone, you will achieve useful results. After roughly half a year of practice, you will be absolutely satisfied with the sharpness you achieve, and as time passes, you will only get better at sharpening. This method of sharpening is easily available at any time, so let's say a professional chef can sharpen his knife every week or before the start of each shift, he does not have to plan to go to the master and wait for his knife to be sharpened.

In Japan but also in other developed parts of the world such as the USA, most users who need or want to always have a sharp knife are largely opting for the advantages of manual sharpening. After all, craft work is becoming more and more valued and fewer people are engaged in this type of work, which results in a high price for the service and an increasing number of people who master and apply this skill themselves.

In the following text, we will explain in detail how to choose the best sharpening stone according to your needs and the results you want to achieve.

The final goal of using a stone is certainly a sharp knife, but there are different types on the market and in our offer, each of which has a specific purpose and the reason why it is the best for achieving a certain goal. Since the topic of sharpening stones is a bit more extensive, we will start right away and directly..

The first question that almost automatically arises - why are there so many different granulations and how do I know which is the best for me?

The granulation of the stone tells us how coarse or fine it is. Sharpening stones are made from #140 grit which is an extremely coarse grit and goes all the way up to the rare #30000 grit which is extremely fine. In short:

• everything from #140 to #800 falls under rough stones
• from #1000 to #3000 in medium fine
• all over 3000 belong to extremely fine stones intended for polishing

Now that we know what each grit represents, the question is what grit is needed to sharpen your particular knife?

The answer to this question will depend on 2 factors.

1. Condition of your knife
• If your knife is damaged, has a broken tip or chips on the blade, you need an extra coarse stone.
• If you want to reprofile or thin the blade, you need a rough stone.
• If the knife is in good condition but completely dull, a coarser stone will save you a lot of time in sharpening, but you can also do this with a medium-fine #1000 grit stone.
• If your knife has lost its true sharpness but is not completely dull, you should sharpen it on a medium-fine stone.
• If you sharpen your knife on a medium-fine stone but would like an even higher level of sharpness, then you also need an extremely fine stone.
• If you are used to working exclusively with an absolutely sharp knife and want to maintain its sharpness at the maximum level every day, then extremely fine stones are a good choice for you.
2. The steel of your knife
• If you have a Japanese knife made of extremely hard steel (61+HRC), you can achieve its full potential on extremely fine stones.
• If you have a Japanese knife made of slightly softer steel (59-61HRC), you can achieve its full potential on a stone with a grain size of up to #3000.
• If you sharpen German knives made of higher quality steel (Zwilling, Wusthof, Windmuehlenmesser, Gude), you achieve their full potential on stones between #1000 and #2000 grit.
• If you have knives of European production made of softer steel (Dick, Acros, Sanelly) maximum. the grit on which these knives should be sharpened is #1000.
• If you have knives made of extremely soft steel (most brands not mentioned above, Chinese knives and the like) it is preferable to sharpen them on coarser grits like #500 and #800. In the hobby version, you can get by with #1000 grit with slightly more frequent sharpening.

The guidelines given above are an extremely good guide that can answer the question of which stone you need. Of course, there are isolated cases, such as hunting knives, where these rules will differ. We will cover this and many other topics gradually, so if you are one of those enthusiasts when it comes to sharpening, be sure to follow our blogs!

Should I sharpen my knives myself or take them to a professional?

Unlike the population in Europe, which has adopted machine sharpening as a generally accepted way of sharpening knives, the Japanese have a different approach. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, and it is up to you to decide which of the two best suits your needs.

When it comes to service sharpening, most crafters use machines that spin abrasives to remove the steel resulting in a sharper knife. Service sharpening using Japanese techniques like the one available in our shop is very, very rare in the world, but we'll talk more about that later. In most cases, the mentioned machines operate at a high number of revolutions, which impairs human work, but is also almost impossible for precise control. The lathe, for example, rotates at more than 3000 revolutions per minute, which is difficult for the human brain to process and often results in removing too much steel from the knife, changing its shape, appearance and degrading its performance. Therefore, the lifespan of your knife is significantly shortened, and if the craftsman is not the best at his job, you will often get a knife with worse performance than when you brought it to him. There is another problem here. Namely, many sharpening machines used by sharpeners do not have any cooling system, which leads to overheating of the blade, loosening of the hardness of the steel and permanent damage to the knife. Although this kind of knife feels sharp at first touch, the relaxed steel does not have the ability to hold its sharpness and protrudes the first time it is used. We will take the opportunity to hedge here, and say that there are rare craftsmen who know exactly what they are doing and use adequate machines to achieve adequate sharpening results. Unfortunately, there are fewer of them over time. The advantages of machine sharpening are definitely speed and price. A skilled craftsman sometimes needs less than a minute to sharpen a knife, which means that he can sharpen between 30 and 60 knives in an hour. Do the rest of the math yourself, but it's clear to you where the extremely affordable price of this type of sharpening comes from

On the other hand, sharpening a knife by hand on a stone is significantly more difficult to master, information is more difficult to access and there are a lot of factors that can go wrong. The biggest challenge is mastering the muscle memory that will allow you to repeat the same movement over and over without a single change in angle or pressure. This is the key to success when hand sharpening on a stone. Some experienced knife makers and sharpeners from Japan state that sharpening and sharpening knives can be learned throughout your life, and there will always be more to learn. The next thing that is important to emphasize when it comes to stone sharpening, if you don't know exactly when and why you are doing something, it can take you up to an hour to sharpen just 1 knife. Another, relatively speaking, disadvantage of this method of sharpening is that if you want a professional to sharpen the knife for you on a stone, the price is up to several times more expensive compared to machine sharpening. However, this method also has a lot of advantages that make it more and more popular. By sharpening manually on a stone, you protect your knife and you can get the maximum potential out of it. Knives that are sharpened in this way are usually inherited. Furthermore, during the entire service life of the knife, its shape and appearance will hardly change at all. The next advantage of manual sharpening is that once you master it, this skill will serve you for a lifetime and you can sharpen an unlimited number of knives with ease. In the long run, once you equip yourself with sharpening stones, the profitability of this method of sharpening is greater, because you can sharpen hundreds or even thousands of knives on one stone. From the first time you sharpen a knife on a stone, you will achieve useful results. After roughly half a year of practice, you will be absolutely satisfied with the sharpness you achieve, and as time passes, you will only get better at sharpening. This method of sharpening is easily available at any time, so let's say a professional chef can sharpen his knife every week or before the start of each shift, he does not have to plan to go to the master and wait for his knife to be sharpened.

In Japan but also in other developed parts of the world such as the USA, most users who need or want to always have a sharp knife are largely opting for the advantages of manual sharpening. After all, craft work is becoming more and more valued and fewer people are engaged in this type of work, which results in a high price for the service and an increasing number of people who master and apply this skill themselves.

The next division that needs to be made and broken down is why we say that some stones are excellent hobby sharpening stones and some are professional stones.

Hobby stones are made so that you can sharpen a knife on it without any problems, however, if you are a professional sharpener or sharpen a lot of knives, you will experience several aggravating circumstances during work.

Hobby stones work the steel a bit slower and therefore you need more time to sharpen the knife. The materials used to make these stones are of good quality, but not of the highest quality, and this is the reason for its reduced speed. So yes, you can sharpen any knife on this stone, and yes, it will take you a bit longer to get the results you want compared to professional stones.

As an unwritten rule, hobby stones are always softer than professional stones, which means that you will have to level the surface of the stone more often. This is often not a big problem, as you don't sharpen many knives on these stones, but if you were to use it for something like that, you would definitely need to sharpen it more regularly.

Hobby stones also come with a slightly more affordable price tag. Often, these stones are made of two parts, or have two sides. One is a rougher stone while the other is a finer stone and so, technically, you get two stones for one price. This is one of the main factors that make people choose hobby stones. In home conditions, knives are not sharpened that often and it is difficult to justify the purchase of more expensive, professional stones.

Professional stones, on the other hand, are specially made to withstand extreme use, i.e. to easily process both hard and soft steels in large quantities. Companies from Japan that produce these stones use extremely high-quality raw materials such as special binders, strictly controlled abrasive grains with high hardness and particularly sharp edges, as well as precisely controlled pressure in the mold and narrowly defined firing temperature. All this results in a superior product.

Professional stones have a special composition, i.e. ratio of abrasive material to binder. As we said, both components are of high quality and in that special relationship they give the best results. For example, on Naniwa Pro, Naniwa Diamond, Shapton or Atoma stones, you can sharpen even the finest blade made of extremely hard steel, and immediately after it you take and sharpen the knife you bought at the flea market. You can do all this very easily and quickly, which are key factors for successful, professional sharpening.

Professional stones are also harder and often made with Splash&Go technology. This leads to the advantage that it does not have to be soaked in water before use, it is enough to just wet it and it is ready to work. Also, its hardness allows it to hold its shape longer and therefore does not need frequent sharpening, which again ultimately means that these stones can sharpen more knives over their lifetime than hobby stones.

Before you think: "then why aren't only stones like this produced when they are so good", we will tell you that its production process is not at all simple, but requires extensive scientific knowledge as well as a very advanced technological process to make these stones work properly.

Both products have their target consumers. Someone simply needs a sharp knife at home to easily chop onions and prepare lunch, while others sharpen large quantities of knives like professional chefs who have dozens of knives in their kitchen.

Certainly, if you professionally engage in service sharpening of knives and charge for that service, it is in your interest to have a tool that will do the job well, quickly and that will make the process easier for you.

Why would I buy a Japanese stone when stones from European manufacturers are more affordable?

We will answer this question briefly, because the answer is quite clear. Japanese stones are incomparably better quality than European ones. Clearly, if you want to get the job done right, you need the right tools. For example, you cannot sharpen most Japanese knives or any knife made of extremely hard steel (61+ HRC) on European stones. If you put it on paper, one quality Japanese stone is as effective as 5 of the same ones produced in Europe, and the difference in price is often insignificant, especially when you consider the time you will save working on Japanese stone.

The level of sharpness you want to achieve.

There are different levels of sharpness that are appropriate for different tasks and suit individuals differently. We will try to explain in this part how to achieve the desired level of sharpness without confusing you.

You can achieve sharpness on any stone. You can sharpen the knife on coarse, medium or fine stone, and technically, you can also sharpen it on a brick or the back of a plate. The real questions are what are you aiming for, what kind of sharpness suits you best, and how to achieve it.

Sharpening can also be seen as scratching the edge of a knife. The rougher the scratches, the more aggressive the edge will be, but it will give us a lower quality cut. The finer the scratches on the blade, the higher the level of sharpness, it becomes less aggressive but of better quality. If you polish the blade to the point where there are no scratches at all, the sharpness becomes extreme but extremely difficult to maintain and easy to lose. Each of the above has its own application, i.e. the tasks it performs better than others.

Everything we say further refers to higher quality steels that have a high level of hardness (60+HRC).

If you want your blade to be aggressive, to "bite" into the material you are trying to cut, then you should sharpen your knife on coarser grit stones like #400, #500 or #800. This sharpness is useful for outdoor knives, if you have to cut rope, wire, some harder material. Also, it is good for preparing sawdust for kindling in the forest and similar activities. In general, this sharpness does not have many uses in the kitchen except for extremely poor quality knives.

If you want your blade to have a significant bite, but still have some kind of finesse in the cut, then a #1000 grit stone is a good choice for you. A knife sharpened to this stage is extremely good for slicing foods that have skin on them like tomatoes, eggplant, filleting fish or slicing through the skin of meat. Most users of our sharpening service find this level of sharpness desirable. The main advantage of this type of sharpness is its durability.

If you want your knife to slide easily on the cutting board, without sticking into it, for example when chopping herbs, the sharpness that can be achieved at granulations around #3000 is for you. This blade has a well-balanced ratio between aggressiveness and smoothness of cut. It is very good for quickly chopping vegetables, as well as achieving a high-quality cut on proteins. Extremely easy to maintain.

If you are preparing sushi and other similar food where the quality of the cut directly affects it, we recommend that you sharpen the knife on grits between #6000 and #8000. At this stage, the blade itself is highly polished and leaves a very clean cut on the food without damaging its fibers resulting in a better taste. This sharpness is adequate for cutting larger pieces of meat and boneless fish. This level of sharpness requires daily sharpening on a fine stone.

If you sharpen the blade at #10,000 grit and higher, you get a surgically sharp blade. This sharpness is also poorly represented in kitchens, but is widely used in razors, carving tools and other blades that require extreme blade performance.

It is important to note that most of the stones on the blade leave a wire that needs to be removed with an adequate ceiling technique on a leather ceiling or stone, more on this in one of the next blogs.