Guide on Using a Sharpening Steel

Sharpening

One of the favorite knife sharpeners would be sharpening steels. Unlike the whetstone, it does not require the reshaping of the blade, but instead, it smoothens out any roughness without thinning parts of the blade. Read on to learn how to use sharpening steels.

Using your dominant hand, grip on to the sharpener’s handle pointing downwards. The tip of it should be resting on the cutting board. With your other hand, you will hold on to the knife so that the knife’s blade closest to the handle is placed across the steel. Then, the motion you will be doing is a pull towards you from the part closest to the handle, to the tip of the blade ceramic sharpening rod.

There is an ideal angle that you will need to put the knife and sharpener at to get your knife well-sharpened. Try to tilt the knife 22 1/2 degree angle from the sharpener. For estimation, you can estimate half of 90 degrees, which makes 45 degrees, and then half of that half, which make 22 1/2 degrees angle. What you will need to do is to gently pull the blade towards your direction. Make sure you get the whole length of the blade covered. This should be repeated 10 times. Then, do this to the other side of the knife’s blade, with the right angle, and also repeat the step 10 times.

Some things you should note when using sharpening steels is that your knife’s blade and the steel should be about the same length. The allowed difference in length for shorter steels is 10 inches, and no more, so that you do not end up slipping the knife as you move it along the sharpener. After sharpening the knife, make sure you have the blade rinsed and wiped clean so that there will be no leftover residue on the blade, which will be problematic if they end up in your food.

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