JD Spydo wrote:
I've heard that smooth sharpening steels like my F. Dick Poliron actually "burnishes" the steel rather than abrading it>> it not only is supposed to line up the edge uniformly but by burnishing the steel it actually has a "smoothing process from what a retired meat cutter told me a few years back.
Also I have a finely grooved sharpening steel also made by F. Dick which I was told has a very slight abrading effect on the very edge itself and can also work to smoothing out the very apex of the edge. Now if I'm barking up the wrong tree please tell me where I'm going wrong and why>> also what tasks do you think premium sharpening steels are useful for?
First, this is a really interesting question and it has a very large scope. I will try to find some kind of balance between over simplication and too much complexity of detail.
If you do a quick scan on steeling you can find extreme polar opposites. John Juranich for example has claimed in regards to steeling " This is an edge no hone will ever equal." But if you ask someone with a strong Japanese influence on cutlery they are very likely to regard steels as being almost a destructive tool and will openly argue that they should never be used on fine cutlery. As with many conflicts, the reason there is a disagreement is that the parties are talking about different scenarios.
John was talking about western knives, especially kitchen and butcher style knives which are steels similar to 5Cr15 and 55/57 HRC and which have been sharpened on a fairly coarse stone. Those blades are made out of very tough steels which are very ductile and not prone to carbide tear out. The coarse stones used left a very coarse edge and a steel could smooth that out because of the tough and ductile blades. Hence why he was such a strong advocate of steels and sold a number of them including jig based steels like the Mousetrap.
However Japanese knives tend to use much harder steels with a much higher carbide volume and they finish typically on extremely fine stones. People using Japanese waterstones can even consider something like a 4k stone semi-coarse but that is extremely fine compared to something like Fine India stone which is commonly used on the knives Juranich is talking about. Thus on those knives with the very high polish from the stone then using a steel won't improve the finish and because the steel doesn't have a very high ductility then it is likely that steeling could cause problems with fracture on the edge.
In general then, if the knife blades you use are simpler (low alloy), softer (< 60 HRC), you generally use coarse-ish stones, then you are likely to see benefits from steeling. As you move toward higher hardness blades, higher alloy and you use very fine stones, it is likely that you won't see that same kind of performance increase and you could even see damage.
If using a steel does produce the kind of edge you like and you favor it over simply sharpening the blade then an entire world of sharpening tools will open up to you because there are as many types of steels as there are sharpening stones, possible even more. F. Dick alone makes a huge variety of multi-cut steels which are designed to allow steeling to continue to work even when the cutting is abrasive and wears on a knife edge as typical smooth steels just deal mainly with deformation.
