Knife Sharpening?

Japanese and western knives have different bevels? You know, I'd never given it any thought. More information, please?

Matilda,

There's lots of info on the web!

As many Japanese culinary knives tend to be chisel ground they are often sharper than a typical double beveled Western culinary knife. (A chisel grind has only a single edge angle. If a double bevel has the same edge angle as a chisel grind, it still has two edges and thus has twice the included angle.) Knives which are chisel ground come in left and right handed varieties, depending upon which side is ground.

Japanese and western knives have different bevels? You know, I'd never given it any thought. More information, please?

Going off quick memory, Western style knives are between 18 and 25 degrees and Japanese can be 13 to 15 degrees...either single or double sided. That lower bevel angel is akin to a razor blade, therefore the perceived sharpness of Japanese blades is markedly higher than their Western counterparts. Problem is that care is needed to keep it sharp and not damaged. Ala a good WOODEN cutting board and never, ever putting it in the sink or dishwasher.

Japanese and western knives have different bevels? You know, I'd never given it any thought. More information, please?

Going off quick memory, Western style knives are between 18 and 25 degrees and Japanese can be 13 to 15 degrees...either single or double sided. That lower bevel angel is akin to a razor blade, therefore the perceived sharpness of Japanese blades is markedly higher than their Western counterparts. Problem is that care is needed to keep it sharp and not damaged. Ala a good WOODEN cutting board and never, ever putting it in the sink or dishwasher.

People put their knives in the sink or dishwasher?? Egad! {shudder} For my part, I regularly use a steel and sharpen periodically using a 4-stage Wüsthof sharpener. Even more occasionally (like ever few years) I'll take 'em in to our local kitchen supplies outfitter to have 'em ground down to get back to that state of fear-inspiring sharpness.

Mark Lipton

I have found an interesting aid to sharpening with my ceramic Spyderco Sharpmaker: a 20x stereo microscope. You can really see the edge (or lack thereof, on a dull blade), see the burr curling if you sharpen only on one side, etc. I found it most helpful when doing the coarse sharpening, because I could see that I still needed to grind away more material to get the edge from each side to meet. On the knives that had not been sharpened for a while, I needed to do 120 strokes per side to get back to a solid coarse grit edge. The finer grit stones can't refine an edge that's not there to begin with!

Walt