Best honing and sharpening solution for my knives?

[vonshu]

Hello there! I currently have a stainless steel Tojiro DP gyuto and then a CCK 1303 carbon steel cleaver coming in the mail soon. I'd like to get the best tools possible for sharpening and maintenance/honing of these two knives. I also have a cheap Victorinox, but not as worried about that one. I have a 1000 grit King waterstone and one of those cheap, grooved steel honing rods that I have been using. I think it's time for a change though, with the soon arrival of my new knife, and also have some questions since I've never used a carbon steel knife before.

Mainly I'm wondering if I should get a ceramic rod, as I've heard the grooved steel ones can be pretty damaging to your knives with regular use. I've heard good things about the Satori 10.5 inch black ceramic rod, and it isn't as expensive as the similar Mac brand one. I was also considering skipping the rod altogether and getting a leather strop device. I am just now learning about leather stropping, and I'm not sure if the rod or the leather strop is better for general honing and maintenance. Can someone recommend a good starter piece for stropping? Should I get a rod and a strop, or is just one or the other sufficient?

Finally, I was just wondering if I can still get by with just a 1000 grit waterstone? I'd prefer to keep my kitchen pretty lean, as I already have a lot of stuff in there and not a lot of space to store additional things. Do I need to get an additional finer grit (2000? 4000?) or can I get by with just the 1000?

If it helps answer my questions, I'm currently an avid home cook (use to be professional for several years) and frequently cook meals and use my knives 1-3 times pretty much every day. I like my knives sharp, but don't necessarily need them crazy sharp at all times. Thanks for any advice!

 

[Wowbagger]

Hang in there. You'll get some help. I'm just bumping this to the top for you.

 

[OldNavy]

I would add a coarse stone either a 400 or 600 Chosera, The CCk is super thin & comes crazy sharp
it would benefit from a stone in the 4 to 5 k region. The Suehiro Rika 5K is widely recommended.
For home use you really do not need anything finer.

 

[bgentry]

I don't have any of the knives you have. I only have one Japanese style blade which is AEB-L at roughly 60 HRC (according to the specs). That's similar to your Tojiro DP in terms of hardness. A "steel" for honing blades is generally 58 - 59 HRC as far as I have read. Which means it's not hard enough to work a hard blade like your Tojiro. I wouldn't use it on that blade.

I use a ceramic stick some myself. A gigantic one I bought many years ago (1" in diameter). It's ok. It helps in between sharpenings, especially if you use it often. But lately I've been avoiding it and just going back to the stones every few weeks instead. Maybe I should try using the stick more often. <shrug>

I've found leather strops to be essentially useless for maintenance. Strops loaded with diamond compound would be a different story. But regular strops with regular compound seem fairly useless to me other than as a finishing step in a full sharpening process. Even then I don't really use them much.

Finally on stones, I would tend to side with Murray Carter, that you need at least 2 stones for regular use. One that is ~1000 and one that is ~6000. OldNavy is EXTREMELY experienced with Japanese cutlery and sharpening it. I'm certain his advice is good. Jason B is also very expert at those two topics; you would be smart to listen to either of those gentlemen.

Brian.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Decent honing steels from reputable mfrs (a lot of them European) are hardened into above-60 HRC, as a decent metal-working file would be. There's also some abrasion benefit from the chromium plating on them (chrome oxide at the surface), also hard enough to abrade fairly hard cutlery steels not containing many harder carbides. Even so, I woudn't necessarily use one on harder cutlery above HRC 60 or so. A ceramic would likely be better for those, if 'steeling' them at all. Regular honing steels usually do much better on blades in more typically-hardened stainless steel in the mid-high 50s HRC range, which benefit from edge realignment by steeling, and not just by abrasion (sharpening) of the edge.

The cheaper honing 'steels' in inexpensive block sets may not be as good, or as hard. They'll probably work OK on the low-alloy stainless knives with which they're bundled (don't need much to 'steel' those), but I wouldn't expect much more out of them.

A lot of damage done to kitchen knives, by steeling, is due to over-reliance on steeling alone, over a long period of time, without resetting the proper edge profile on the blade using a stone. The blades develop some recurve in them due to excessive steeling with the rod, so parts of the edge eventually won't land squarely (or at all) on a cutting board when chopping or slicing, resulting in incomplete cut through the food.