I been into knives since I was a kid. I went through many knives and damaged so many before I finally figure out how to sharpen. I used so many tools (except Lansky). My recent one is shaped/sized just like a standard sharpening stone but made out of some kind of diamond cut material.

The thing is while it works really well, and I get fairly decent results from it I can NEVER achieve factory sharpness. Perfect example: Spydero and Benchmade from the factory is crazy sharp. I sliced my fingers with next to no pressure on the blade.

How sharp do you really get your knives?
How much time do you spend on it?
How did you learn?
What tools?

Etc.!!!

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Getting the correct angle between the blade and the stone is the tricky bit. I haven't mastered it, so abandoned my whetstone and got a sharpener with 3 sets of ceramic discs of varying coarseness. The discs rotate in a little tray of water, and guides keep the blade at the correct angle to the grindwheels. It was a little bit of a defeat, having to use this instead of a traditional stone, but my blades have never been sharper. The manufacturer of the sharpener, Mino, recommends 15 strokes per set of grindwheels to get the blade super sharp. Works for me.

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I am so surprised no one else commented.

Jesse,
I was so sure you would have some insight on this as well.

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Sorry mate. Knife sharpening has come a long way. I've been using a simple Smith's kit for a while, but there's quite a few good kits that allow you to set an angle and hold it. Then it just becomes a matter of doing a few strokes on each side back and forth until it becomes sharp. Otherwise you're looking at something that is almost more an art than a skill. I include putting a convex edge on a blade in that category. :P I'm more worried about quick consistent results so I use a kit that makes it almost impossible to mess up. You've pretty much got your pick of kits that set angles anywhere from about $30-200. If you want something more esoteric involving japanese wetstones or freezing the blade, you'll have to ask someone else, sorry. Here's a few links that might help:

Here's the cheap one that I've been using.

http://smithsproducts.com/products/prod ... d=34&cid=4

Here's how to understand grits

http://blogs.popularwoodworking.com/edi ... Grits.aspx

Here's a basic guide to sharpening.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.kniv ... 02fb?pli=1

Another guide

http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showt ... 6367/tp/5/

I just reread a friend's post about sharpening and it's phenomenal, but it's on a favorite forum of mine that's private so posting the link wouldn't help you. He has pictures of his entire collection of sharpening items which ran to about 40 items including various stones, pastes, rods, and setups. He's definitely more the...skill/art type. Good luck.

To add just a tiny bit, I try to keep my knife razor sharp. I've been told before to use a knife as an extension of my body, but there's quite a few moves with a knife that do not require the power generation that a punch or a kick would...if the knife is sharp enough. Instead of moving our intersecting zones of reach more deeply together to land a power blow, I can more often focus on barely grazing their zone, cutting, and moving out. This allows quite a bit more focus on deceptive footwork.

Knife sharpening is pretty interesting, once you get into it.
I mostly use a water stone with two different sides (1000/6000). After hours and hours of trying and using lots of different blade shapes I now can get all of my knifes razor sharp, but mostly I sharpen them to a good usable sharpness. To slice a tomatoe with just the blades weight is a good measure imo.
The key is practice, practice and then some more practice.

Faust

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roll with the punches

I use a mora type of knife for in the bush, Scandinavian grind, it's a flat grind. It's very easy to sharpen and a good bevel for carving wood since that's 90% of what a bush knife is for. I do have a fancy Japanese whetstone that was a gift, but I also just use sand paper. You can get a knife shaving sharp easily and cheaply with just some sand paper, a ceramic tile that cost a few cents, and a leather belt for stropping.

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“It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”
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I guess I could Google this but I figure ask since you mentioned it. I know stropping is commonly used for straight-razors before and after shaving. Can you use a normal knife on those belts? If yes, would you get a better result? Why do they call it stropping?

Hey I admit I could have Google this but what fun would that be?

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Links to help others for I was wrong assuming others knew of these places:
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It's a final very fine finishing step to put almost an edge on an edge. If you're slicing meat, you don't need it. If you're shaving hair, it's very nice to have.

Well, I know the leather or canvas strap used to polish the blade is called a strop, though there are paddles also used for this purpose. Beyond that, Google. Since a razor blade is so thin, leather, canvas, even newspaper (a guy on YouTube says you can strop your razor blade with newspaper) can be used to re-align the edge of the blade. For a kitchen knife with a thicker blade, a steel serves the same purpose. I suppose you could strop a kitchen knife, but it may take many passes over the leather.

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