How to sharpen a knife

Good quality sharpening stone

Steel for honing knives once sharpened

Sharpening steel

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Sharpening stone

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Hi, I'm Marc Bauer from the French Culinary Institute.  Today we are going to talk about sharpening knives.

Why sharpening? Because the blade gets dull very quickly especially if you use it over a cutting board.  The very edge of the knife cracks off somehow after multiple uses.  So you need to sharpen it.

There are many ways to sharpen it.  Here I have a diamond stone, it is diamond powder against metal for creating good abrasion against the blade. So, the idea is that you take the blade at the beginning and you want a 20-27 degree angle.  To get there, we all know that 90 degrees is straight against this blade, 45, and then half again is 22.

I always start from one edge of the sharpening stone and from one edge of the blade.  You start from a point of the knife to one side of the stone and rub it all the way through.  So you use the stone and knife evenly. 

Now, if you go twice on one side, then you turn it around and go twice on the other.  Remember 90 degree, 45, 22 or 20, whatever you want.  And I start one, two, and so on until your blade is nice and sharp. 

Once you sharpened your blade you want to remove metal particles on the blade and hone it a couple of times. Similarly to stone, you start on one side of the blade and go all the way down making full use of the honing steel and you see you do the same 20 to 30 degree angle. What it will do is the very fine edge of blade will be straightened.

Is it sharp enough? Take a piece of paper and if it cuts nicely like this, no problem.