How to sharpen a knife perfectly on a hand grinder

Perfect knife sharpening is an art. Ideally, you need to learn this from the masters, comprehend many subtleties, intuitively feel the knife, increase your experience. But there are basic principles and simple equipment that allows anyone to get closer to the skill of professionals.

The main principle of high-quality knife sharpening is its sharpening strictly at a certain angle. During the sharpening process, the knife or block should only be held in one position. Agree, this is difficult to do without proper training and experience. Manual sharpening machines are used to fix the bar in one position. There is a large selection of them for every wallet. But I will focus on the most popular and versatile option:

The set includes 4 bars the length 15 cm with different grain sizes. Moreover, they do not need to be changed in order to reinstall something. We just rotate the bar along the axis and that's it. All 4 bars are installed at once. The sharpening angle is also easy to change. Let's talk about it in more detail below.

On aliexpress the same model, but in two versions - with the possibility of fixing to the table with a clamp and to any base through self-tapping screws. There is delivery from the warehouse of the Russian Federation. Some pictures from buyers:

The knife can be fixed by hand with a thumbscrew or an additional plate can be installed and the knife tightened with a hexagon. It is better to screw the machine to a base. Otherwise, you will have to hold it with your hand. Scissors can also be sharpened on the same manual machine. There is a mount for vertical fixation. You can also sharpen chisels or a woodcarving tool.

For completeness, I propose a video about this sharpening machine from a specialist who sharpens knives:

The specialist's feedback is positive. The advantage of this particular sharpening machine is that the entire length of the bar is used in the work (not all machine models allow this). In general, in order to have an initial idea of ​​sharpening knives, I recommend watching some of the videos from this channel. We can say that there are free master classes and training on sharpening knives at the level of professionals. Having looked at several videos, I realized that without a hand-held machine you cannot sharpen a knife so perfectly.

In short, here are some tips. The first step is to determine at what angle the knife is initially sharpened. So as not to sharpen it for a long time at your corner. To do this, a marker is drawn along its cutting edge (cutting edge):

They are installed in the machine and the bar on the bar is fixed in such a position that it grinds the entire plane of the cutting edge (edge), erasing the entire trace from the marker, and not just the edge. The process is shown here: https://youtu.be/n7TCTPGYVj4

Having determined the angle, sharpen the knife. If necessary, they work first with a large bar, with the transition to a smaller one.

If the knife needs to be sharpened (the knife is sharpened with an arc, incorrectly), then you need to choose the optimal angle. Usually it is 30 or 40 degrees (15-20 gr. from each side). But you need to take into account the angle of narrowing of the blade (blade) of the knife itself. It can be 3-7 gr. An example definition here: https://youtu.be/6dvPwZ456gU

An electronic protractor is used to determine this angle. I wrote about him in this article: Inexpensive digital protractor. List of works where it can be applied

The angle can also be determined by the "Protractor" program in the smartphone. I looked, there are a lot of them in PlayMarket - download which one you like.

But for this, there must be a function for measuring the position of the smartphone along the axes (gyroscope function). We put the phone on the side of the machine bar and fix it at the desired angle of 15-20 degrees.

With the bar in place, move on to sharpening along the entire length with back and forth and side to side movements. With the finishing bar, we make movements only to the blade with minimal pressure on the bar. The final polishing is done on thick leather with the addition of goy paste (you can just use toothpaste).

If someone has learned the skill of perfectly sharpening knives on such a manual machine - write your comment and the subtleties of this process.

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