cwilson...



What I do...



What I do is take out my sharpening stone and place a little oil on it,,,now some very good knife makers say NEVER use oil,,,,but they also say that if you have already used oil on a stone, that you are stuck to keep useing it.



I add the oil to the top of the stone, then I place one edge of the knife into the normal position as if I were about to sharpen it by drawing it accross the stone,,,



BUT I DONT!!!!

You dont try to sharpen it at first,,,,what we do is rub kinda hard on just this one side of the knife,,DONT turn it over,,,just rub and rub the blade against the stone,,,



'What you are trying to do is true up the whole cutting edge on one side at one time,,,around and round I rub the blade,,,



Now when you think that the cutting edge on this one side is trued up and even, Then I start to feel the other side of the cutting edge with my fingers,,



This is where the term "Burr" come into play as the most important part of sharpening a knife...



I am feeling for a bit of extra steel that our grinding one edge against the stone has rubbed off so that it sticks over the cutting edge .



You feel for this "Burr" or "wire",, we keep grinding the same side of the knife edge untill you feel a burr running down the whole side of the cutting edge on the other side...



when you got a burr the full length, THEN FLIP the blade over and start rubbing this new side edge..



keep rubbing around and round and round,,,back and forth up and down, round and round,,,untill you are about sure that you have evened up this side all over,,,then start feeling for the Burr just like you did before...It Will Be There!



once you have got a good full length burr on this 2nd side,



Believe it or not, you have actually finished most of the hard work of sharpening you knife....now all you are going to do is rub off the burr...



The Burr is actually a very small amount of steel that will flip back and forth , and we need to carefully use the stone to rub it off the knife, WITHOUT starting a 2nd Burr behind it.



To get rid of the burr,,,we do the standard sharpening stroke-flip-stroke-flip thing... we carefully feel for the burr after every few flips of the blade,,,, Now the burr will start to get thinner, and you will notice that it flips to the other side as you flip back and forth the blade on the stone...



You will sudeenly notice that the burr has fallen off in places,,now we are just very carefull to work the sections of the blade where the burr hangs on still to the edge untill all the burr is gone.



Now a few soft strokes just to even the edge a bit more and to make the edge look cool...and you are done.....





UNLESS you knife sharpening system can raise a burr, its a waiste of time,,,,,



While such systems might work in the short term, they will not help keep the blade even, and soon you blade is wavy like a flag blowing in the wind,,,,,



When we grind one side at a time, we are making that whole side even,,so that no part sticks down or out past the rest of the knife on that side....



I think that "V" sharpeners will not work for long,,,they work fine with a new knife, but they dont even the side up,,,they only follow the ups and downs that are already on the knife,,,soon you knife will look like a saw...