What's the easiest way to sharpen a knife?

I think kitchen knives are sharpened easiest on traditional bench stones.

Check out Burrfection's YouTube channel. He gives good instructions and does a lot of stone and knife reviews. Including budget stones, most of which are actually pretty good.

Once you've got the technique down, sharpening in this manner is just as fast as using one of those awful counter top electric sharpenenrs, but yields a much, much better edge.
 
I would suggest avoiding those pull-through V-groove sharpeners, especially those with metal, and get either a Spyderco Sharpmaker or a Lansky 4-rod turnbox for less than $15. Both use ceramic rods.

Yes practice first on an expendable knife but they're pretty idiot proof.

By the way the best and easiest way to clean and maintain them is the Mister Clean Magic Eraser.
 
The "easiest" way to do it, same as the easiest way to take care of a pool or yard, is pay someone else to do the work ☺

For standard kitchen knives, buy some standard water stones in the various grits; 600, 1000, 4000, however fine/sharp you want to get em, and as others mentioned, practice on some cheap flea market blades to get your angles right.

Next, buy a decent fine ceramic rod to keep 'em sharp; mac black is good, i have a messermeister.... touch 'em up regularly and they won't need resharpened near as much.
 
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Thin bladed kitchen knife are easy to put an edge on. The bottom of a soup bowl or coffee mug will work fine, as will a brick or paving stone on the patio. When I was stationed in Italy, I saw all the house wives come out at about 4 in the afternoon and sharpen their kitchen knife on the stone steps before making preparations for dinner. My landlord, a nice Italian lady said she learned from her mother, wjho learned form her mother and so on. Her old carbon steel butcher knife slice right right through the lamb she was making for dinner.

When helping make dinner over my sister in laws, I use a coffee mug to touch up whatever knife I'm using. Diane is a great SIL, but doesn't believe in sharp knives.



I'd say go to Home Depot or Lowes, and get a Norton economy stone and practice some freehand on a not so good knife. Once you learn freehand, you can sharpen anywhere on just about anything. And come over to the sharpening sub-forum. Lots of good people with good info there. But most of all, don't over think it. Knife sharpening is NOT rocket science, and it's easier than you think. There are some people who like to make it out to be more complex than it is, because they want to sell you needless stuff that will get money out of your pocket and into theirs. Avoid the whiz bang gizmos.
 
get ya a 8 dollar rod or stone from academy trust me its no where near as hard as ppl think if you want something more nooby a lot of places have the lanskey crockstick it works really good I usually just hold the rods with my hand tho it works better
 
The large majority of typical stainless kitchen knives, of the type found & purchased in inexpensive block sets at Walmart & many department stores, usually don't have edge grinds amenable to the best slicing performance. Almost without exception, I've felt it necessary to thin the edge grinds on such knives, before they've finally turned into real good users in the kitchen. The added benefit to doing so, is that once they've finally been thinned to good cutting geometry, the subsequent touchup maintenance becomes a LOT easier on most any of the devices, stones and other tools mentioned previously. So, long story short, some effort is usally required up front, usually only once per knife, after which most any means can be used to make resharpening easy.

Some brands of relatively inexpensive or mid-priced kitchen cutlery, like Victorinox for example, come straight from the factory with great geometry and hair-popping edges. Those ones are a pure joy to use and sharpen up, when necessary.


David
 
Get Norton economy stone,thats all you need,yes,most knives out of factory dont have grinds thin enough that can be sharpened with ease and to the fullest potential of knife.I put most of my knives on belt sander when theyre brand new.Later on they can be easily sharpened or touched up on any stone or even coffee mug.If the grind is too thick it can take hours,LOL,Id sugest get a Victorinox or F.Dick butcher or kitchen knife and practice on that.Crappy knives need to be thinned out first,then set the bevel!
 
sandraTEx said:
I want to know the best way for sharpening a kitchen knife. Experts give me suggestion, please.
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Benchstone, freehand. An inexpensive hardware store combination stone will do fine. Practice on cheapies and you'll come up to a reasonable speed quickly enough - DO NOT LEARN ON A KNIFE YOU VALUE.

Here's a couple for technique:



You can also smear the mud from a water or oilstone on the edge of a cutting board and use similar to the copy paper in the first video. Start the second video at 7 minutes to skip the product-specific monologue.
 
ps.you can also sharpen on sandpaper(silicone carbide),almost any grit.The burr is the key,and there is a lot of info on it online,practice is the key!!!Heavy handed,I also like your method of sharpening,(washboard),what I currently use and find fastest is small beltsander,and refine it fast on norton stone,my dmt folding sharpener,or couple strokes on sharpmaker,and get same results on all of them.I recommend getting flat ground softer steel butcher knife to learn on.
 
hehe, a sharpening expert doesn't ask how to sharpen, an olympian doesn't use a textile company name as a username, y'all are being spammed
 
Hmm, bucketstove has a point, but....

I'll just say that everyone so far is WRONG! And, at the same time, everyone is absolutely correct!! You see how there are several different opinions on "what is the easiest way to sharpen"? It's called preference. There is no EASIEST way! There is only the easiest way for each INDIVIDUAL. People excel at different things. For instance, I am paralyzed in my left arm/hand. So obviously the bench stones certainly aren't easiest for me! I recommend going for what interests you. I can tell you that the system you put the time & effort into, is going to be the easiest.... FOR YOU.

I'm surprised no one said this already.
 
sandraTEx said:
I want to know the best way for sharpening a kitchen knife. Experts give me suggestion, please.
Click to expand...

Sharpmaker. Only takes a few minutes. Easy to store & setup. Was designed by a man who has sharpened probably hundreds of thousands of knives. Reasonably priced. Here is a video about cutting edges and various sharpeners that may be of some help. Of course if you don't have any money the bottom of a ceramic coffee cup will do. But please watch the entire video series. Lots of forum members speak of much more expensive sharpeners but almost always talk about using the Sharpmaker for fast and frequent sharpening. I use it on all our kitchen knives, mostly Fibrox Victorinox.

 
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