Order of whetstones

Today, I had an absolute blast sharpening Japanese knives. I experimented with adjusting the micro-bevels, and the more time and thought I put into it, the sharper the knives became. I’ve had those ‘whoa!’ moments before when a blade bites in, but this time, I really hit the mark.

It’s amazing how much difference it makes just by tweaking the order of the sharpening stones! I couldn’t help but smile at how much the results changed. There seem to be several methods I want to explore, and once things become clearer, I’m looking forward to diving back into some serious sharpening with natural stones.

I also played around with the Uraoshi technique, but since I haven’t finalized my findings, I hope to share more about that in the future.

• 2011-09-22