After a period of time, you will notice the cutting edge is not quite what it used to be and your knife needs a touch up using your Ceramic honing rod.
When we sharpen your knife professionally the angle is precise, within plus or minus 0.1 degrees, and razor sharp. Please don’t worry that you are going to ruin the edge of your beautiful knife! The purpose of the rod is to realign the blade edge, not remove steel from it, which maximises the edge retention (sharpness) between professional sharpening. This is relatively simple to do if you follow a few simple steps.
Here is a simple way to find the correct angle
- If you have ever made a paper plane, it will be a piece of cake! Take a piece of paper and fold and crease the top right corner down towards the bottom and parallel with the left side; this will be 45-degrees.
- Repeat this by folding the 45-degree angle parallel with the left-hand edge again and this will be 22.5 degrees, do it again and it will be 11.25 degrees.
- Unfold it once and the mid-distance between the 22.5 and 11.25 angles is pretty much spot on for your honing angle. You can mark a line with a pen to show the angle or simply cut the paper to this angle.
How to use the Ceramic honing rod?
- Hold it vertically with the top end on a dishcloth (to stop it from slipping).
- With your non-dominant hand holding the handle, place your knife flush against the rod then lift the spine until the angle is the same as on the paper which you can hold against the rod with the same hand that’s holding the handle.
- Once you have the correct angle drop the paper and hone away!
- With gentle light strokes, run the edge from heel to tip of the knife, from top to bottom of the honing rod, alternating sides with each stroke.
- Three or four strokes each side should do the trick, and you’ll be a pro in no time.
- We recommend you perfect the procedure first on a cheap knife. There are plenty of great videos on YouTube as well.
- If the honing isn’t helping then its time for a professional sharpen.
