There are many articles, techniques and tools out there which purport to be "the" way to get the best edge on your knife. I should know because I have all kinds of real Arkansas stones, synthetic stones, diamond slabs, and ceramic rods, not to mention several sharpening system kits and copies of sharpening directions. In other words,  I have tried just about everything out there.

For many years I believed that you started with a coarse or medium sharpening stone and then proceeded towards the finer stones until you had a razor edge. I faithfully used 4 different stones in many cases, culminating with an utra fine diamond pad or black hard arkansas stone.

However, I noticed I had a problem. The blade edge would be razor sharp, would cut paper like a straight razor, but it wouldn't really cut anything substantial like it did when it came from the factory. I sat down one day and pondered the problem and came to a strange conclusion. namely that I might actually be sharpening the edge too sharp and smooth.

Time passed, with me still wondering what to do about my apparent lack of sharpening prowess, until something happened that made the solution to my sharpening problem jump out at me.  I bought a knife. Not just any knife, but a David Boye dendritic cobalt boat knife. This knife is special in its own right, but what was really special to me were the sharpening instructions and explanation that came with the knife.

In his simple intructions he mentioned just using a medium stone to sharpen the knife, but his explanation of why to use only a medium stone was what turned on the lights. You have to understand that David Boye is concerned with crystal structure and alignment of cutting carbides. That is why he uses special alloys and casts all his blades (as far as I know). He is looking for a lot of sharp "micro teeth" that will all line up at the edge and do the cutting/ripping at a microscopic level.

He came to the same conclusion I had-that you could oversharpen a knife edge to the point that the carbides couldn't do their job because( in my words) the teeth were all smeared too close together from oversharpening. This was a breaktrough for me. It all made sense then, especially if you hold a brand new and sharp factory knife to the light and rotate it to see the fine grind and sharpening lines of a really well done edge that you know works. You will see all the ridges go right to the edge to form mini teeth.That also explains why I have felt the edge of a some new knives and didn't think they were too sharp, but they still cut extremely well.

What does this all mean? Well, I would recommend that you try using just a medium stone as your final stone on your next sharpening effort. And, don't drag the blade laterally across the stone. Keep the portion of the edge being sharpened perpendicular to the direction of travel down the stone. I guess this would tend to negate the use of ceramic rods for heavier cutting applications, and I'm sure I'll hear about this, but this is effectively what the factories do when they sharpen a new knife in my opinion.

Dr. K.