Hey there guys welcome back ricky here
Alright, so a lot of folks have been asking me about knife sharpening recently
Now I think with my channel doing lots of Japanese knife reviews
It would be appropriate to do a video; a tutorial on how to sharpen a Gyuto knife
And today we are sharpening this knife right here. It's a Masumoto KS, It's a Gyuto profile
It really comes down to about two techniques that I use
There's the push and pull technique and what we call the Crescent of full stroke technique
And so for this Matsumoto ksv view that it's very straight profile
We're gonna use the push and pull technique on a knife such as a Kramer or some of the other knives that we have
Which have a very pronounced belly will use a crescent profile
Next is the grip
Now a lot of people don't realize this but depending on which side of the knife you're sharpening, your grip will actually change slightly
So the very first thing is we're gonna move our middle finger up to the choil of the knife or the neck of the knife
So once your middle finger is planted on the Choil
You bring your thumb over to the cutting edge you want to bring your thumb as close to the cutting edge as possible?
but not putting your thumb on the cutting edge and lots of folks actually miss this part of the sharpening process because without having your
Thumb on the heel. You actually will have a very dull heel when you're done with sharpening
Once your thumb is planted you're going to wrap your index finger over to the spine
By keeping your wrist and fingers relaxed. You'll have the most control of the knife during sharpening
Now we are ready to sharpen, but wait a minute you're asking
What is the proper sharpening angle now?
if you guys want my clear answer on sharper angles watch the video that I will leave links in the video description or
Break here on the card somewhere
it basically there's a pretty fair comparison of different sharpening angles and why you shouldn't sharpen at 10 degrees versus 20 degrees and
I don't want to get into details in this video, but you can watch that video
It'll give you a pretty clear explanation of how
Sharpener angles work and what my thoughts are and what is the best sharpener angle for me? It's about 15 or 17 degrees
But I'm gonna show you guys how to find the factory angle
All you have to do is get the knife onto the stone you start at roughly a 20 degree angle and you drag the knife
at a really slow pace towards the bottom of the stone and you actually will lean the spine very
Very slowly towards the stone and once the knife slips
that's when you actually know that you've hit a
Shoulder of the knife and you actually want to back off just a degree or so. That's actually the sharpening angle from the factory
You're going by feel as opposed to trying to predetermine an angle and by not trying to change the angle at which you're sharpening you
Actually will get an edge a lot faster and you actually will find a burr a lot faster as well
It is always a good habit to form a sharpening process
So for me that process is going from tip to heel and so for me whenever I go from tip to heel
That is what I call one pass
Now with the free hand you want to place your fingers as close to the cutting edge as possible
Without actually getting on the cutting edge
I typically like to keep it about a half an inch from the cutting edge
That way I actually have enough adequate pressure on the cutting edge and starting at the tip
I simply go in a few strokes after three or four strokes
I simply remove the knife about an inch or so and I walk my fingers down the knife and the reason you walk your fingers
Down as you're sharpening is that you want your fingers over the middle of the stone?
If you're sharpening close to the center or the heel of your knife and you have your fingers on the knife's tip and you're pressing
down the knife watch it grind against the corners of the stone which ruins our cutting edge and
You have to start the process all over again
Lots of people who are new to sharpton will place their freehand fingers on the spine and that really can throw your balance
completely off
So I don't recommend that if you really want to learn how to walk your fingers down the knife
Simply watch the fingers up and down the knife
with a knife on the stone that gives you a little bit of muscle memory and that's something that you can do to kind of
ease yourself into the shopping process
The other thing you can do is actually simply taking your knife and fingers off the stone
You place a knife down place your fingers on the knife and this starts the sharpening process there
That way you aren't going to risk cutting yourself very easily and it actually will give you much more confidence in the long run
So as the name of the technique suggests this is pushing and pulling you literally out putting the knife
Onto the cutting stone and you're pushing up and pulling it towards you now in terms of applying pressure
Here's the other debate that you'll always hear about is when to apply pressure
I Personally always apply pressure and an edge trailing stroke meaning I only apply pressure
When the edge is being trailed and the cutting edge is pointing towards me
I apply when I push up or away from me when it's time to sharpen the left side of the knife
The cutting edge is facing away from me. I applied when I pulled towards me
So now how do you know when you've sharpened the right side of the knife enough?
well
You have to find the burr and the way to find the burr is you simply run horizontally from the spine to the cutting edge
Of the knife very slowly. Imagine yourself running your fingers over a certain of hair on a glass table that is essentially
What a burr should feel like, it should feel very fine
It should not be very aggressive
And if you have that developed from the tip to the heel of the knife, you are ready to move on
So now it's time to sharpen the other side of the knife. Well, your grip now has to be adjusted
So the technique that I use to find the grip for the other side of the knife is a first place my index finger on
the heel of the knife first once I have that I simply wrap my
Pinky ring and middle finger first and then gently put my thumb on the spine of the knife now by doing it that way
You will have a really nice secure grip not to find the factory sharpening angle
You do the exact same thing as the other side you take any section of the knife
put it onto the stone at
Roughly 20 degrees or so and drag it towards you and lean the spine of the knife down
The moment you feel a slip you back off
That's your sharpen angle and you stop the process all over again
Now since we're sharpening the left side of the knife the burr will appear on the right side of the knife
You simply run your fingers from the spine
To the cutting edge and a very gentle slow motion
If you can detect that burr from the heel to the tip of the knife, you're good to go now
There are many methods you can use to deburr a knife
You can use a cork from a wine bottle if I'm using a piece of wood
I use the ingrained side of my strop. That actually does pretty well. I'm using a spare piece of leather from a previous project
That's laying around. It's very thick. It's about four millimeters or five millimeters thick. This is an extremely thick piece of leather
So I'm not afraid that knife watch it cut through it. It removes the burrvery cleanly from the knife
There's also deburring on the stone
And essentially what you do is you go back to the stone and do the exact same sharpen technique as we're before
But very short so instead of doing four to five strokes per section
you do one to two sources per session and I'll do one or two passes on each side and I'll go back and forth and
then ending with a really quick one or two passes for the entire length of the knife by doing it that way most likely your
bird will be gone and removed off the knife completely and for those who want to go on to a five thousand six thousand or
Higher polishing stone you simply repeat the process that I'm showing you now on your polishing stone
You simply find the same angle at which you sharpen your knife at and you do a single strokes from tip to heel
so the key is going very light strokes and go very evenly smooth strokes and you simply go back and forth on each side of
The knife repeating maybe ten pairs or 20 pairs of pulls that is dropping on the wet stone
These are strops that I have made and used for myself in the studio for those who are interested
I would leave a link in the video's description
You can find these drops at my E store and you're basically doing exactly what the stone is doing
But leathers tend to kind of pull off
more micro materials from the cutting edge a little bit better than a whetstone could and
So that's really the main benefit of going to a leather strop
You definitely don't have to and so this drop here is loaded with nine thousand grit compound
I personally like to go about ten strokes per side that to me is usually sufficient if you want to go a little bit longer
That's okay as well. Whether you've done those last 20 pulls on your sharpening whetstone a polishing whetstone or leather strop you're done
So for pure entertainment, I want to see how sharp is knife
Got now, according to edge on up anything below 200 is considered razor sharp
so I 145 the amount of force it took in grams to cut this filament is
very good
So that is actually just as good as a factory sharpened edge that their KS are sharpened at so I'm very personally satisfied that I can
Achieve this edge on a single whetstone and leather strop
Now if you want to see tutorials on other knife shapes such as the Kramer of chef's knives yanagiba
the drug infusion nakiri or even something as that the Middleton chef's knives now with the exception of the yanagiba
and the Dirac and not Curie. All those other knives are chefs knives, but they have very non-traditional profiles
And so if you guys want to see tutorials on those give the video a thumbs up. Let me know in the comments
what other knives you guys want to see and I'll do my best to put those videos together for you and one last thing it's
Always a good idea to wash your knife after a sharpening session now, even if you didn't use compound
It's a good habit to get into
This is especially important for those who actually use strop and compound because sometimes you may have something that is slightly
Not kosher to eat. So you definitely want to avoid that wash it with soaking water. You should be good to go
I will leave a link to all the items used in today's video in the video's description so you can check them out on your
Own time and for those who want to see daily and weekly updates of my life and channel at the very bottom of the video
Description there are social media links or thank you for being here and I'll catch you in the next video
This is what one shun looks like
Check that out, very
Nice how many knives that are in like that right? There's by a couple thousand knives just in that section along I'll give this
Look at this
Yaks all super goes these things are like 200 $300
We come me. They were here. There's a three or four dozen. I'm just sitting right here
Artisan su two box artisan su 2 box the right there
That's probably a hundred you know over by at least 100 the Miyabi artisans right there