Hey everyone.I have a whetstone and a honing steel. I purposely tried to make one of my knives less sharp twice to see how well the whetstone and honing steel would work.It even seemed that when I was using my whetstone it wasn't as sharp as it was when I used my honing steel, but when I also used my honing steel after having sharpened my knife on the whetstone, it was razor sharp.I was wondering, is the whetstone only supposed to be used when the knife edge isn't as flat anymore or something? Like, only when it doesn't really have an edge anymore?Please explain your answer.Thanks everyone.
You're not supposed to use the whetstone alone. It leaves a burr, which the steel removes. If you google using a whetstone, you'll see plenty of info. It is possible to use a finer stone in place of the steel.
In general, whetstones will actually remove metal in order to sharpen a blade, and the angle they're used at is important too. A steel will just straighten the blade between uses, not actually remove metal. The effect is to make it sharper than it was just before, but only because it's straighter. Using a knife makes the very thin edge kind of flatten or even fold over a bit, or get wavy, etc...so the steel just straightens it back out (imagine what happens when the very thin blade gets pressed down repeatedly on a cutting board, or even cuts through foods repeatedly). (A whetstone is used only when steeling finally just isn't enough to get the blade sharp as needed.) .
