Search results

Gotta show my love for "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. It might be a more guy-ish book (the author escaped from an Australian prison, went on the run to India, surviving and starting a free clinic in the Bombay slum, and wrote a book about a man who escaped from an Australian prison and...

Consider this another EdgePro endorsement. I bought my Apex before I owned a single good blade (figuring that I'd learn proper care first, then buy the good stuff one blade at a time) and have never regretted it. You know, before I learned to sharpen, I kept one knife in the block that I never...

Er, by that I meant "highly-refined" or, in other words, using your finest stone. Sorry for the confusion! I guess the highest stage of sharpening could be referred to as "polishing", as the scratches become too small for the human eye to see.

Chiffonade some basil with an "okay" edge and with a good, highly-polished edge, and see how long it takes the herb to turn dark. A good edge makes a difference!

I use the ceramic hones when finishing pocket knives, hunting knives and western kitchen knives. I use a honing steel on my western kitchen knives between sharpenings. I don't use a hone on my Japanese knives. The theory behind this is that the softer steels tend to roll or warp as they wear...

Yes, ideally you'll want to remove the burr before moving up the stones. If you don't, you can sometimes get an okay edge anyway, but what you're really doing is pushing the burr from side to side and making it smaller and smaller. You might use a wine cork to remove the burr (just gently cut...

I've seen this mentioned a couple of times now. Could you elaborate on the "freezing" part? What does this accomplish? Does it affect the steel itself, or make the job easier in some way? Thanks for taking the time! -Dawk

buzzard767 has good points. Also, I find that one of the tricky things when starting to use an Apex is keeping the knife flat. This is easy for -say- a gyuto or chef's knife which is essentially flat on both sides, all the way to the spine. But when sharpening a big ol' thick Buck pocket...