How To Use A Sharpening Steel Properly Step By Step
The key to keeping your knife useful is to keep it sharp. After all, what use is a dull blade? But, did you know that sharpening your knife isn't always the solution? Maybe the problem isn't that your knife is too dull, but instead that the metal has buckled due to extended use. Before you begin to panic and throw out your knives, these problems are easily fixable.
A Sharpening steel, is a device that is used to set your knife's edge back to the way it was. Which is to say sharp and on-point. There's a catch, however, as most sharpening steels take a little bit of practice before you can master them. Which is why we've provided you with this handy guide so you too can hone your knives and keep them truly long-lasting!
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We've covered just about every knife sharpener in our website so far; this includes electric, manual/pull-through, whetstone, and knife sharpening systems. We've also mentioned knife honing, the other way to keep your knives in working order.
This guide will be all about how to use a sharpening steel, that is how to hone your knife because the name "sharpening steel" is rather misleading.
What Is Honing And Why Will It Help Your Blade?
Before we get right into honing your sword, let's briefly touch on what honing is. As you should know, what makes a knife so sharp is the thin ridge at the bottom of the blade. Because of how thin, and delicate, this small ridge is damaged is to be expected from normal usage. Either by the actual blade becoming dull, or becoming unaligned.
And becoming unaligned tributes to shortening the lifespan of a knife. Even if you sharpen a blade that's unaligned, the edge will still be twisted. This is where honing comes in. By running the blade over a hone, or a sharpening steel as they're also called, the edge is realigned back to a straight line.
As mentioned in our article on how to sharpen a knife, a sharpener removes material while the hone instead readjusts the material.
So the name "sharpening steel" and even "hone" is a misnomer. This will not sharpen your blade, instead it'll just readjust the blade. Now that we've covered that, let's look at how to properly hone your knife using a sharpening steel!
How To Use A Sharpening Steel Properly Step By Step
There are two ways to use a sharpening steel, either running the knife over it or running it over the knife. We'll discuss how to do both with a step-by-step instruction guide.
Using your knife on a sharpening steel:
Using your sharpening steel on your knife:
Honing your knife isn't much of a challenge as we just saw, but it can be a bit tricky for first-timers. We recommend you practice honing on very dull knives, or knives you don't mind losing. Misusing a sharpening steel can easily damage your blade as opposed to fixing it.
How Often Should I Use My Sharpening Steel?
Now that you know how to properly use a sharpening steel, how many times should you use it? In our previous guide we mentioned using the sharpening steel as much as possible.
And we still stand by this statement; hone your knife every time you're about to use it and every time you finished using it. Because of how thin sharp knife blades can be, becoming dented and mangled is quite common and you'll never notice.
By using a sharpening steel before and after using your knife, you're ensuring that your blade is in tip-top condition and you cut down on unnecessary sharpening which can easily shorten the lifespan of your blade.
It's better to hone your knife than it is to sharpen it, as counter-intuitive this might seem.
Which Sharpening Steel Should I Use?
The most common type of sharpening steel you'll find are simple metal rods with a handle. There are some models that come attached to workstations, but really you just need the rod. You can find them online and in-stores, and they tend to be not at all expensive unlike your kitchen knives.
This said, never buy a sharpening steel that's too cheap. These models tend to be made of pot or pig iron, and while they sell for quite cheap their quality can easily mess your blade more than it can fix it. On average you should pay around ten-to-twenty dollars for your sharpening steel, while making sure that the rod is made of actual steel.
And that's all there is to using sharpening steel and honing your knife. While this may not be as glamorous as using a whetstone to get your edge just right, it's still important. Sharpening your blade, as we've repeatedly said, shouldn't be done very often. Honing, meanwhile, should be done every single time you use your knife and after your done with it.
It doesn't take long to do, nor does it take long to master but honing your knife is the best way to keep it sharp. If you already invested in expensive knives for your barbecue you need to invest in a sharpening steel rod.
