hey guys welcome back Ricky here what am i subscribed wrote me and asked me if it's possible to use only one stone and to get a razor edge from one stone without strapping on newspaper or any sort of shopping compound I I will attempt to try that today so I will just use my trasero 800 here this is my Messimer go to medium grit stone I have a Wisthoff icon classic a chef's knife that needs to get sharpened so I'll just use this as my example it's not very sharp it's been used for in the kitchen for well a few months now but it's been a few months since I've sharpen this knife and I just went through a quick sharpening of this knife on the glass 120 so it's kind of it's prepped for sharpening and so but it's still not sharp at all because the burro is still folded over to one side of the knife okay so as you guys can see here not very sharp at all and so today I will sharpen this knife on this stone so this is a semi tutorial I walk you guys through what I'm actually doing and I will attempt to strop at the very end of the video with out a newspaper just with a stone itself and see how sharp I can get the edge alright so this is much of Serra 800 which is also known as the professional line a more professional stone lineup now the church Serra name has disappeared but I still have one here in the shop and the professional stone is the same thing just a different name it's a different branding that nani was going for okay so this is a splash and go you can literally throw water on it and you can go sono pre-soaking needed this is one of my favorite stones in terms of a medium grit stone and this has been a wonderful life so I really enjoyed using the Gustav icon chef knife here okay so so being that this is a tutorial I'll talk you guys through exactly what I'm doing so in terms of getting a grip but this is the first thing you guys need to know when you guys are holding or getting into freehand sharpening is how to hold the knife so when you show up in the right side of the knife okay so right side left side and this is the easier side to start on because it's just kind of natural position to lay the knife down with and so I bring my thumb sorry my thumb my my middle finger up to the toy or the neck of the knife and I bring it to as the highest point as far as I can go towards the blade okay then I let my thumb fall into then I bring my fingers around so really like grip when I start I start a grip okay then I bring my thumb down to the edge at the bottom edge here so that I can pin the knife on to the stone and apply pressure to sharpen the bottom bottom corner of this of the edge here then my index finger will just roll over to the top okay so that's how I hold my knife when I'm chopping the right side of the of the knife and the left side will have a different grip which we'll get to when we actually get to the left side of the sharpening portion okay so in terms of my angle of approach I always thought I count my sharpening by passes so when I say pass okay so I mean starting with the front tip and go and work my way towards the back tip that's when I complete the back tip that's one pass okay so that's one pass that's two pass and you'll see I mean it's this is exaggerated or kind of a fast watered version but so that's my that's how I count my passes in terms of my ankle I try to keep it relative to a 45 degree angle you go a little steeper if you want to this is generally little safer because it allows the knife to pass through the stone a little easier if you go too much too close to perpendicular this creates a lot of friction and you're grinding away a lot of the knife at the same time so that creates a little too much friction for beginners I'm not recommended for people who are just getting into knives and freehand sharpening so I recommend you guys go on at least 45 degrees and going slightly steeper is okay as well okay in terms of getting an angle this is the thing that people talk about a lot a lot of I don't I don't go by the 15 degree or 18 degree rule a lot of people will will throw these numbers out at you I go by how the knife feels on the stone okay so this is what I do I bring the knife towards me okay you can also go this way as well okay so either way works so I bring the knife towards me at a certain angle okay so typically I find an angle that is roughly close to 15 degrees okay so you can lay the knife down if you want to completely flat with spine touching that stone and lifting it up just a millimeter or two and then bringing it towards you okay now what I do now is I lean the stone a lean I mean I lean that spine onto the stone or towards the stone enough and whenever I feel the friction being too loose I back off a little bit that tells me I'm going to sharp my proper sharpening angle okay because what's happening is if you're if you if your knife loses traction basically you're on the bevel of the knob of the knife and you don't want that you want to be on the sharp the primary sharpening angle or the primary sharpening bevel not the secondary bevel okay and so you want to be as close to the original factory angle as possible and so this is the easiest way I have found to find that angle so you can you know just go from top to bottom and you lean the knife the spine towards the stone the moment you find that it slips or you lose traction you back off that's your proper sharpening angle and whatever it comes out to be it could be 18 degrees it could be 20 degrees most of it European knives you'll find it to be higher you know 18 20 25 degrees by Japanese knives you might find them in the 12 to 15 degrees but again I never measure those degrees and I don't have any tools so actually proper properly measure those degrees with so I always go by feel of the knife on the stone okay if you going backwards that you want to go this way same thing you would simply find an angle and you would just start moving the knife and I would bring the spine at the other knife toward the stone to lean you lay the knife down and the moment you find yourself slipping back off okay so very easy to do that for me is the safest way to find the proper sharpening angle okay so now we've been so we're going to start with the knife sharpening so I'll guard I'll just go right into it and you guys will just see I'll do one pass I'll talk to you guys to what's happening and then we'll we'll find out how many passes it takes to get this knife to develop a burr okay all right so that was passable one so let's talk about pressure that's something that a lot of folks ask about I applied virtually no pressure on the knife itself I simply let the weight of my hand and the way the knife do the work okay so as you guys to be going down I only apply a lickin I can maybe a pound or two of pressure on the edge trailing strokes okay and then when the edge is coming back towards me I release all pressure so I only push down going up and I reverse it when the knife is this way so ones this way I push when the knife is going towards me this is called an edge trailing stroke this is an edge leading stroke okay so I never apply pressure on edge leading strokes okay so I get lots of emails lots of messages from subscribers telling me that they have gouges in their stone and that mainly has to do with the fact that either they're sharpening too much of a perpendicular angle too close to it and there's so much friction that knife eggs into the stone or they apply pressure too much pressure on a stone that might be softer than the show Sarah and they are applying pressure with edge leading strokes okay that's very common it's a very easy mistake to correct you simply don't push down when the edge is coming towards the stone okay so when the edge is going away from you you can put apply pressure so listen to the sound when I'm applying equal pressure to both sides okay so the pitch is a little different but they sound they sound very similar but now I apply pressure only when I'm pushing down and I release pressure when the edge is coming towards me so you can tell okay so it sounds a little different um you shouldn't have you shouldn't have any pressure in my opinion when the knife when the edge is coming towards you and this style of sharpening now if you're doing these stroking motions these are this is a very different technique we're not talking about that right now if you'd only single stroke sharpening that's very very different that's that would be for a different video but for the sake of this conversation and this type of shopping that I'm doing today I only apply pressure when the edge is trailing okay so I know that's a lot of talking a lot information so we'll go to another pass here oh and one last thing before I start again you guys will see me moving the knife around the stone okay and so that's simply need making sure that I use as much as of the stone as possible that way I keep the stone as flat as I for as long as I can okay so that's all that's happening all right so that lasts that last few moments you see me staying on one side of the stone and sharpening the bottom edge that's just a good habit to develop because it's actually quite difficult a lot of folks have a harder time sharpening the bottom edge of their knife mainly because they don't have enough pressure or their fingers aren't in the right position and so I make a habit making sure that I get the bottom edge of the knife okay one other thing to note and this is something that you guys will just naturally develop on your own is when you are sharpening a knife with a rounded belly okay what's going to happen is if you stay static and you apply pressure and you only sharpen in a straight motion what's going to happen is you're going to straighten that you're gonna create a flat spot you're going to you go straighten that edge and you don't want that okay you want to keep the radius of the cutting edge so by doing what so by doing a slightly relaxing a wrist room to relax and allowing the knife to kind of run its course on the stone okay and just allowing your wrist to flex just a little bit that will allow you to to sharpen that curvature of that knife okay and to remain and to keep that that nice beautiful radius that that a cutting edge has okay so sometimes you'll see me flex my wrist and allow my wrist to kind of float on the stones that's very very normal okay that's not a bad habit to develop okay so and also you want to keep your wrist relaxed a lot of folks really grind down and you know grind away on the stone no it's really sharpening hand you know hand chocolate should be relaxing it should be freeing it should be fun so when you're sharpening you know the tip allow your wrist to relax a little bit and that makes it a lot more easy a lot more pleasurable to sharpen and then when you get to the put onto the areas that are flat okay or if it's flat at all this is not this doesn't have any flat squash okay but you get to a flash a flat spot then you can stay here and grind and stay straight for a little while but when you're on a knife that is has got a beautiful curvature for a cutting edge don't be so inflexible I'll work with a knife alright so now I'm going to move on to the left side of my knife alright so basically I know I know I'm ready to move because there is a micro burr so a macro micro lip that is folding up from the bottom side or from the right side of the blade and so basically what it looks like is it looks like if you're looking you know if you look under a microscope this is the blade it's doing you see these little teeth kind of coming this way and obviously that's exaggerated it but that's what they look like and so don't have to develop a very big bird eye you know a lot of folks will will develop birds that can actually cut you if you ran your finger on the other side of the knife you don't want that you just want a micro burr I call it micro brush so just little tiny little tiny little teeth indicating that the the burr is there okay that's all you need and so in terms of a grip on your left side all right so it's a little different than the right side because on the right side you have your fingers they don't wrap around very much because if your because of where your thumb needs to be so you see there's my fingers are barely holding on to the handle on this side however you want to bring your fingers up okay and so depending on how long the knife is or what area you're trying to sharpen this knife here because it doesn't have a full bolster I want to make sure that I show up in this area so I could pin my finger there okay that tells me my starting point and then I wrap my fingers around and then my thumb comes down and so you can see there my fingers have a lot more of a grip than the previous hold okay you can also come you can also still bring your middle finger up and that works well too and that gives you more leverage if you have a longer knife and this is a very short knife is only eight inches long so I don't have to worry so much about bringing my index finger too far up so I can relax a little bit I can keep my finger further the back and that's my grip okay and your thumb just sits on the spine and that's going to your thumb is going to be the kind of main controller of your ankle addition to your wrist and your index finger is going to apply the pressure on the knife itself okay okay so now you guys see me starting to turn the knife more perpendicular okay though eyes though I know that I said that you don't want that you have to do it unless you're ambidextrous okay so if you're not ambidextrous this is the important part because when you are getting to this part I'm going to release the knife now so here if you guys are trying to sharpen the that corner of the knife so if you don't turn the knife you actually cannot get there because a bolster all your farro is actually in the way okay you see that so you have to turn to allow the stone to get that corner of the knife so if your lefty if you are ambidextrous okay I actually am so I actually can sharpen my knife with my left hand and be just as comfortable okay so you guys can see here this is the side that that we were sharpening on but I don't need to turn my knife at all so it's you basically mirroring the two sides okay so you can do that I don't do that for my videos anymore because it confuses people so I just simply go with one hand and so I turn the knife when you're at the 50% mark you thought you start trying the knife you lift the handle off and you come in okay so that's exactly how you would you know to get this angle here alright so so yeah that's pretty much what you guys need to know at this point okay and oh yes so again just a quick reminder when in terms of pressure when your knife is with it when the blade the cutting edge is facing away from you this now when you pull towards you this now becomes the stroke where I apply pressure okay so now the edge is trailing again so I apply pressure this way going up I apply pressure this way coming down okay so just just keep in mind that your pressure depends on where the edge is actually facing whether it's facing facing you or away from you okay so again always apply pressure on edge trailing strokes okay okay so I've developed burrow on that side so now I quickly my strapping okay so this is what I do for strapping a lot of folks now can actually jump on to their higher polishing stones but the request was to strop and to do a complete session of sharpening on one stone so that's what we'll do okay so strapping is a little bit it takes practice this is where you actually need to spend some time and practice this this motion because it's actually not not the easiest motion to get down but it just takes a little bit of practice and so basically what you don't want to do now is you want to take your your top edge you want to come to the bottom of the stone and you want to bring your knife along its edge cutting edge okay so what you're doing now is you're folding the burr okay you're forcing that bird to come to a stand up instead of a right now the bird is sitting on this side okay because we just finished the left side and so the bird is sitting like this and so what you want to do is you want to straighten up er okay and so every time you drop on each side you bring the bird that's laying down ever so slightly closer to a standing position okay so this is what we do we simply go you can count what I typically like to do is go 12 times or you can even go 20 times if you want to but twelve times is generally good and then you reduce that number by one or two every time you come back to that same side okay so I'll do exactly what I'm talking about and then you guys will understand when you guys see it okay it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 okay there's 12 times on the backside with the left side a lot of folks will have problems with this angle because you have to come kind of at an extreme angle so an easier way to do it is to grab from the bottom side you start from the bottom side and go this way okay so that's perfectly normal I you know being very comfortable coming from this angle I can do this angle pretty easily but if you're just starting off and that angle is too difficult for you that approach is too difficult go from this side it works exactly the same way I think that was 12 not sure exactly so now there I go now we reduce by two okay okay that was ten I'll go from my typical angle okay so it's it's important that you apply water in between every side because because of these sweeping motions you're pulling a lot of water off the stone okay so to make sure the stone is well lubricated when you are stopping now we're going to count to eight okay so I'll go the easier way okay that's eight now we go six okay I'll go six time moves again okay now we're go to 4 right 4 and go to 2 okay now we'll go to 1 now you can do a one a few times it's actually generally safer you're three or four times however you like it until you feel that you're your edge is very smooth so I think that was four or five times on each side okay so now I'm going to dry off my knife and do a quick cut test and see how sharp it is alright alright so this is the same crappy newspaper I have laying around the house it's very very this actually quite damp at this point and very wrinkled as you guys can see so let's see here now this let's grab a better piece a slightly better piece okay so this is just as wrinkled if not worse but it's dry okay and this is Japanese newspaper okay let's see here okay does cut that's um sure you guys kind of hard for you guys to see from that angle but it does cut fairly well this paper is just really bad all right let's try proper paper this time okay so slightly straighter paper and okay no cuts really well this is I should just have some proper cutting samples in around but I don't or having proper straight newspaper okay so it cuts really well I mean again this is a really poor example of me but it cuts pretty well so I don't know if that's considered razor sharp or not but it's sharp it definitely has a nice bite to the edge you guys and hear it you know if you haven't if you hear a nice ping to your edge Yugi tells you that's pretty sharp okay so hopefully you guys enjoyed the video I don't know you know like I said hopefully that is considered fairly sharp I'm not a complete expert when it comes to sharpening but this is you know I think this would be good as as good as any knife that I can use in my kitchen and it doesn't have a nice you know polish to it the you know the edge is what you would consider a consuming or very matte finish which is which is a nice edge it just doesn't have that a nice glass or mirror polish of a 3000 or 5000 6000 grit stone but in terms of sharpness yes you can achieve very good sharpness with just one stone no strapping with newspaper or compounds and so yes if you are considering one stone you can you not to buy the trasero obviously but any medium grit stone can you can achieve the same results as what I have achieved today and you guys saw exactly what happened all right so hopefully you guys enjoy the video the guys did give the video a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe to see other videos like it thank you for watching and I'll catch you in the next video you