Thursday, February 17, 2011

Honing your knife is not sharpening it!

You can help keep your knives in tip-top shape if you hone them regularly using a honing steel. Honing does not replace actually sharpening them though, the mechanics behind honing is it straightens out the blade that may be bent on a nearly microscopic level. It will not shave off metal (unless you have one of those new diamond honing rods, I wouldn't recommend buying one of those), and give you a new edge.

When you hone your knives you usually don't need more than 5 passes on each side to effectively bend the edge back into place. If it takes more than that for you to notice a change in cutting, then you need to sharpen it. I will have a post on sharpening your knives soon.

Also please be careful when using knives. Before I actually learned all these things, my knives were REALLY dull, and I was never worried about touching the edge. After I learned to sharpen and hone my knives, I was in the bad habit of not being careful, and cut my fingers many times.

19 comments:

  1. Good information. I would have never thought to hone the blade back.

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  2. Very good piece of advice. most peopel are not aware of this.

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  3. dint know that, thanks for sharing this information

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  4. Please do something like kitchen for dummies ;)

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  5. I was doing it completely wrong, thanks for the video bro!

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  6. I wasn't aware of this at all, I always thought that was sharpening it. And To Rock this blog is definitely kitchen for dummies I'm learning a ton :P

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  7. I just use new blades. That blade has to be sharp when im shaving my balls.

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  8. Didn't know about this! Glad to learn about it.

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  9. i never knew that, i thought that tool was for sharpening, guess i was wrong

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  10. I can't find any place that sells a honer. Where would I go?

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  11. sharp knife = sharp mind. cool blog and thanks for the tips.

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  12. @Josh You can find a honing steel at nearly any kitchen store, or department store (with a kitchen department).

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  13. didn't know about that 5 passes rule.

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  14. good post. i didnt know there was a difference between honing and sharpening. keep it up.

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  15. Made me lol, my grandpa used to do this

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