Bryce asks about Hones

Andy, I purchased one of your carbon steel knives recently and love it. I am reaching out to you today because I am looking to getting a honing rod to keep it in good shape.

My understanding is that steel rods are more suited for western style knives vs ceramic rods are geared more towards Japanese style knives.

I assume that your knives are in the western style, in which case I should go with a steel rods, correct?

Bryce

Hi Bryce-

This topic is really interesting to me- honing rods are a great way to keep your cutting edge fresh and optimized, but as you mentioned, there are some fine points to keep in mind.

Speaking very generally, steel honing rods tend to have a ridged texture, ceramic rods tend to be quite smooth on their surface. The reason this matters is that, again speaking generally, Japanese steels are quite brittle, and even a toothed texture on a steel hone can cause microchipping or worse.

Fine ceramic hones, if used gently, can work well with Japanese knives- however, the objective is a little different.

When you use a standard steel hone on a European stainless steel knife, what you're doing is straightening out a distorted cutting Edge. The blades of most knives of this type are not hardened to the degree that Japanese knives are, and they are made of much tougher steel, i.e. steel that can be bent slightly without breaking or chipping. In a way you're trying to solve two different problems with two different types of knife.

A ceramic does true up a stainless knife's cutting edge, but it also removes a very small amount of steel, thus sharpening as you go.

I have found a high temperature vitrified ceramic used by a local potter for glazeless tableware that is a little coarser than most ceramic hones on the market, so it sharpens the cutting edge a bit more as you go. I make and sell hones made from this material.

(Side note, many older American and European carbon steel knives were made with fairly soft steel, and butchers would simply used a polished steel rod to hone them and keep the edge fresh in between sharpenings)

The steel that I use for the kitchen knives I make is an alloy known as 52100 which has been a great problem solver around these issues. This alloy can be ground very fine and heat treated quite hard while still retaining enough toughness resist chipping to a remarkable degree.

For these reasons, any style of hone will work well with Element Fe knives.