Strop vs hone?

[Jurmuscle]

So I was always to the understanding that using a honing rod on a knife realigns the edge. I never even knew stropping was a thing. Im just wondering the difference between the two. Everything I read says honing "sharpens" the blade. But in culinary school they said what I said above. Thanks.

Also if I was to get 1, you think the worksharp field sharpener would be good for that?

[metaphoricalsimile]

One important thing about hones is they're not designed for knives treated to a decent hardness, which is why you see them used on mass-manufacture kitchen knives, but people don't tend to use them on pocket knives which are almost always treated harder.

[Bloke]

By hone I assume you mean a steel as used by butchers etc. I’ve used a steel a fair bit and continue to use one on butcher’s knives like my Dexter Russell’s

You’re correct in that all a steel really does is to realign a soft edge that has rolled from hitting a bone or similar.

Sharpening with a steel and again specifically to softer blades, I’d say you can sort of if you have a coarse steel. A quality steel like a F. Dick etc. is harder than the average production butcher and fillet knife so it will tend to work as a file of sorts. Personally I use the finest (F. Dick) steel available.

Anyhow, hope this and the post about help clarify things a little.

[Jurmuscle]

Well I have a wustof honing rod. I'm wondering if the occasional hone will be as effective as stropping.

[TkoK83Spy]

You're starting to dig deeper than you should at this point with your sharpening experience/skills. Gotta stick to the basics from the other threads we've been telling you. Stay off YouTube, you'll just get more confused at this point!

[skeeg11]

With the proliferation of harder steels these days, I suppose the term "sharpening" steel or hone might be a misnomer. When HRC starts going north of 61 many favor strops and diamond compounds. Perhaps it's a generational thing, but I still use honing steels a lot. I really like their convenience. Perhaps I'm an outlier here but I like 'em a lot. Light touch ups only. Stones do the heavy lifting.

I have been meaning to pick up an F. Dick steel or two but have just not got around to doing it. My preference is for smoother steels. Even cheapo smooth broken in Chicago steels see a lot of use in my kitchen.

Whenever I see these celebrity chefs whacking their blade against a steel like it was sword play it makes me cringe. Why would anyone do that to a nice flat bevel that they've worked so hard to achieve? You'll have a convex edge in short order.

After you've done your stone work, I would suggest that those unfamiliar with hones or sharpening steels to just lay them down on your cutting board. Being mindful of your bevel angles, lightly and "slowly" draw the blade from heel to tip on the off side towards the handle with an edge leading stroke. Next, firmly lean on the handle with your left hand to raise the steel's tip off the cutting board. Starting with the blade heel near the hone's handle and ever mindful of your bevel angle, lightly and "slowly" slice the show side towards the tip end of the steel. Two or three alternating strokes using only the weight of the blade is usually sufficient.

You guys who like easy low maintenance and salty SE or low grit PE might want to give it a shot. In the field I'll often carry a 2 3/4" steel with a 1/8" diameter. Light and convenient.

In this day and age of "Super Steels" few will likely give this much consideration. When I got my first high Vanadium carbide blade almost 20 years ago (Scott Cook S90V) steel hones did fine for touch up. Then again I doubt the matrix exceeded 61 HRC in those days.

[vivi]

I get better results from bench stones than strops or hones. Crisper edges.

[RustyIron]

So I was always to the understanding that using a honing rod on a knife realigns the edge. I never even knew stropping was a thing. Im just wondering the difference between the two.

I've dabbled with a steel and honing rod, and never really found either to be useful. If a knife needs sharpening, it needs sharpening, and it's time to get out the stones.

A strop can be useful. I use them on occasion when I'm just goofing around and want to do something a little different. Keep in mind that a strop is soft, and it can round off the perfectly flat edges that you've worked so hard to achieve. Most of the time I like to finish with a hard, flat stone, so my edges will be as spot-on as my skills allow.

[ZrowsN1s]

There's no wrong answer, just preference.

I have really good results using leather on a woodblock, and a polishing compound. Lately I use diamond paste.

Find a bare leather on wood strop on Amazon or somewhere and get some 5 micron diamond paste. Paste it on the strop, let it dry, then strop the edge. You will polish the edge and remove a very small amount of metal too, so unlike stropping with bare leather or straightening with a steel (unless you're using a very hard steel), you will actually be sharpening the blade slightly as you straighten out the edge.

As a side note, if you're just looking to straighten out the edge, you can strop on a stiff piece of cardboard placed on a firm flat surface like a countertop. The kind of cardboard you'd find on the back of a legal notepad.

[JD Spydo]

By hone I assume you mean a steel as used by butchers etc. I’ve used a steel a fair bit and continue to use one on butcher’s knives like my Dexter Russell’s

You’re correct in that all a steel really does is to realign a soft edge that has rolled from hitting a bone or similar.

Sharpening with a steel and again specifically to softer blades, I’d say you can sort of if you have a coarse steel. A quality steel like a F. Dick etc. is harder than the average production butcher and fillet knife so it will tend to work as a file of sorts. Personally I use the finest (F. Dick) steel available.

Anyhow, hope this and the post about help clarify things a little.

Brother I totally agree with you. I also have several F. Dick (German Made) steels and a couple of Dexter Russell steels as well. I also have a couple made by Victorinox and Orion. And I do believe that F. Dick is the Rolls Royce of butcher steels without any doubt>> not to mention their awesome vast selection of different types of steels.

Another item people tend to overlook is that not all "sharpening steels" are created equal. Because F. Dick has a wide variety i.e. you have everything from a coarse/grooved type steel to a super fine grooved steel and a completely smooth/polished steel. F. Dick also makes one of my favorite sharpening steels which is the F. Dick "Multi-Cut".

But Dexter Russell and Victorinox also have decent equipment as well. Not to mention all the diamond steels now on the market along with several types of ceramic steels which I find quite helpful at times. And YES!! sharpening steels can be helpful under the right circumstances.

[olywa]

I've got a few vg-max/vg10 knives from Shun and Enso in my kitchen block that are rated 60-61 on hardness. I kiss them with a steel every other use or so, and give them a few strokes on a ceramic steel rod now and then. I've been doing this since new, so a couple years now, and they still look and perform like new. I use but don't abuse them and they've never seen a stone yet.

My folders and outdoors fixed blades are maintained on my Sharpmaker along with diamond and ceramic benchstones. I finish them on a strop.

[Jurmuscle]

I've got a few vg-max/vg10 knives from Shun and Enso in my kitchen block that are rated 60-61 on hardness. I kiss them with a steel every other use or so, and give them a few strokes on a ceramic steel rod now and then. I've been doing this since new, so a couple years now, and they still look and perform like new. I use but don't abuse them and they've never seen a stone yet.

My folders and outdoors fixed blades are maintained on my Sharpmaker along with diamond and ceramic benchstones. I finish them on a strop.

Do you find sharpmaker viable it you didnt use the benchstones? I got rid of mine cause I was no good. But I have sharpmaker with CBN rods and ultra fine.

[olywa]

I mostly use the Sharpmaker on serrated edges but I also use the diamond and CBN rods to more accurately thin plain edges down to 15 degrees. Once they're set I typically maintain them on my benchstones. I spent many hundreds of hours building that benchstone muscle memory. Be a shame to let it go to waste.

All that being said, my daughters bring their kitchen knives to me a couple times a year, sometimes in pretty atrocious shape. I've got a 300 grit UltraSharp diamond stone to correct most of the damage. It's a very aggressive stone.

[Jurmuscle]

I mostly use the Sharpmaker on serrated edges but I also use the diamond and CBN rods to more accurately thin plain edges down to 15 degrees. Once they're set I typically maintain them on my benchstones. I spent many hundreds of hours building that benchstone muscle memory. Be a shame to let it go to waste.

All that being said, my daughters bring their kitchen knives to me a couple times a year, sometimes in pretty atrocious shape. I've got a 300 grit UltraSharp diamond stone to correct most of the damage. It's a very aggressive stone.

Hmmm. Do you micro bevel or use at 15?

[zhyla]

Most sharpening “steels” are useless. And sharpening technology has moved on so much since then. Even if you had a real honing steel you’re better off spending the same time sharpening.

Also generally kitchen knives do not need to be sharpened to a fine grit. I usually run mine at 600 or 800 grit.

Stropping, man, I dunno. I do hit my straight razors with a leather strop now and then but can’t tell you if it does anything. Again I think the time is better spent with a real sharpening system. Takes no time to sharpen a blade that is in good shape.

[JD Spydo]

Most sharpening “steels” are useless. And sharpening technology has moved on so much since then. Even if you had a real honing steel you’re better off spending the same time sharpening.

Also generally kitchen knives do not need to be sharpened to a fine grit. I usually run mine at 600 or 800 grit.

Stropping, man, I dunno. I do hit my straight razors with a leather strop now and then but can’t tell you if it does anything. Again I think the time is better spent with a real sharpening system. Takes no time to sharpen a blade that is in good shape.

I do respectfully disagree with you on "sharpening steels". Because some of the newer, higher quality steels like the German made F. Dick units are really helpful. I've done side by side tests using my smooth F. Dick "Poliron" steel on edges that I've sharpened with the 204 Sharpmaker. And the ones I use the smooth F. Dick "Poliron" steel on are indeed sharper than
the blades that I only use the stones from the 204 Sharpmaker ( ceramic).

Now I will admit that there are some sharpening steels that are antiquated when trying to use them on many of today's much harder materials and usually only good on older high carbon blades.. But I've had some significant results with both of my smooth German made F. Dick Sharpening steels as well as my F. Dick "Multicut" steel

Now I'll admit that most of the older style "grooved sharpening steels" that you see in many restaurants and meat cutting facilities are truly the equivalent of buggy whips when using on most of today's newer blade steels. Also F. Dick has another different type of sharpening steel called the F. Dick "Multicut". That tool has several different grooves and varied surfaces that can align, burnish and somewhat abrade any modern blade steel. The F. Dick "Multicut' is a different animal all together.

[Big John]

"sharpening" to me is decreasing the width of the apex.

"Honing rod" is vague, because there are "steels" which are rods made of hardened steel that realign slightly rolled, blunted, or otherwise deformed apexes to be relatively straight again. But that generally only increases cutting ability, not sharpness, as most common steels don't remove any meaningful amount of material from the blade (some are capable of temporarily repairing blunting). A steel can be good in a culinary setting where soft meats or vegetables are cut frequently. However, each time you realign the apex, while you are undoubtedly extending the lifetime of the knife, your edge retention will continually decrease with each alignment. At some point, you'll want to remove the fatigued steel from the apex with a good sharpening, ideally from quality stones.

Then there are "honing rods" that are actual sharpening rods which use ceramic, diamonds, AO, SiC, etc. which actually remove material from the blade, thus capable of decreasing the width of the apex (actual sharpening).

This is often a debated subject but to me and many others, sharpness corresponds directly to apex width. And since cutting ability is different, a duller knife can actually out-cut a sharper knife. That is difficult for some people to wrap their heads around, but the easiest example is looking at polished versus extremely coarse edges in a draw cut/slicing comparison. Things like blade geometry, direction of scratch pattern, sharpening angle (and others) also affect cutting ability yet have nothing to do with sharpness.

This also introduces the idea of how "edge retention" itself is vague. What aspects of the edge are being retained, sharpness or cutting ability? And how some edge retention tests test for the former, and some test for the latter.

As far as stropping goes, that is a much deeper subject than one would think at first glance. The difference in abrasives and medium (wood, leather, nanocloth, etc) are numerous and lead to many different possibilities. The best part about a strop for my uses is that it lets me know if an otherwise undetectable burr is present, as well as how large it is. This lets me know whether or not I can strop it away or go back to the stone, which is important, since unless I want an irrationally polished edge, I like to keep stropping to a minimum.

[S-3 ranch]

Man I love my sharpening steels/hone victornox 600 grit diamond steel/hone works great on ZDP189,20cv , m390, s90v, vg10 , I use a strop a lot on these steels, diamond spray on basswood and also diamond on leather ,zdp189 strops good with pikal metal polish on leather
As a matter of fact I stroped my LC200n salt2 on a leather board with black compound and sharpen the tips of serrated delica, salt 2 with the steel

[standy99]

Being a butcher for 20 years steels are the most left out arsenal in keeping a edge.


It won’t sharpen a dull blade but it will keep a good edge longer. A lot longer
When people comment about a knife loosing a edge after 3 deer……Try 20 bodies of beef in a day

Here is my F-Dick steel


A good steel is like good sharpening stones and good knives.

( I was butchering when ceramic steels came out and must have tried 5-6 and never found them any good compared to a good metal steel…know many a butcher who swore by them for a short time but not many stuck with them )

[S-3 ranch]

Being a butcher for 20 years steels are the most left out arsenal in keeping a edge.


It won’t sharpen a dull blade but it will keep a good edge longer. A lot longer
When people comment about a knife loosing a edge after 3 deer……Try 20 bodies of beef in a day

Here is my F-Dick steel


A good steel is like good sharpening stones and good knives.

( I was butchering when ceramic steels came out and must have tried 5-6 and never found them any good compared to a good metal steel…know many a butcher who swore by them for a short time but not many stuck with them )

Yeah a good steel is a must when cleaning multiple animal or fish , try cleaning a boat load of red snapper or cleaning 4-6 wild hogs without a steel