How to Use a Knife Sharpening Steel?

Any decent knife is pretty sharp when you buy it, but the difference lies in how you maintain it over time. With a bit of use, the edge loses its straightness along with its sharpness.  

That’s why sharpening is such an integral part of your experience with a knife. There are sharpening tools like whetstones, but I find them too tedious to set up. 

A sharpening steel is where the sweet spot lies for me — especially if I don’t want to take a lot of material off the blade. This piece will work as a guide to help you sharpen your knives with a sharpening steel. Furthermore, it’ll address the age-old confusion between sharpening and honing steels. 

What is a Sharpening Steel? 

The terms sharpening steel and honing steel are often interchanged, but they have different purposes. Hence, it’s essential to understand which one suits your purpose well. 

Firstly, sharpening steel (sometimes called a sharpening rod) is utilized to sharpen the knife. Sharpening has to remove a bit of material from the knife’s edge to achieve the expected results. 

Otherwise, the chips, dents, or sometimes corrosion won’t go away. Consequently, sharpening steel has coarser materials. 

Usually, most options in the market have something like aluminum oxide (an industrial ceramic) or diamond. But, contrary to usual assumptions, you usually only need to sharpen your knife once a month, give or take. The abrasive materials take much of the steel off, so regularly doing it doesn’t make sense. 

Sharpening vs. Honing

This is very crucial. Honing gets your knife’s edge straightened up after a bit of usage. You don’t do it to sharpen the knife, which requires a bit more abrasion. 

Therefore, honing steels or rods are comparatively finer, and you won’t be removing as much of the blade’s steel. 

Note that you could hone your knife multiple times a day between usage, as it helps get rid of burrs and keeps the edge straight. However, you wouldn’t sharpen a knife that often — it does more than straighten up the burrs. Similarly, sharpening your knife with a honing rod would take ages. 

Which Sharpening Steel Should You Use? 

You can find sharpening steels with varying degrees of coarseness. Users pick them depending on the material, the hardness of the blade, or even their usage pattern. 

To no one’s surprise, the coarsest steels or rods use diamonds. These can sharpen your knife quickly and efficiently due to their abrasiveness. They’re especially beneficial if your knife is on the tougher side of the Rockwell hardness scale. 

The drawback is that it’ll take more material off the blade, although you wouldn’t notice it with a few sessions. Another issue is that it won’t achieve the highest level of sharpness. 

In such cases, ceramic sharpening rods can be a decent option. They’re not nearly as abrasive as diamonds, so you won’t eat up the steel. Moreover, it’s possible to achieve a higher degree of sharpness, which is a priority for many.

The drawback is that ceramic options require a bit more elbow grease. Furthermore, many have the morbid experience (like me) of dropping one of these rods and watching it break apart. 

Using a Knife Sharpening Steel

Regardless of whether you’re honing or sharpening, the steps are more or less the same. Here’s how to go about it: 

• First off, we need to position the sharpening steel. If you’re right-handed, hold it with your left hand and set it down on the surface (preferably somewhere it won’t move around, like a cutting board). 

Many people prefer holding the sharpening steel in the air, so that’s an option as well. This approach is much faster if you’re experienced with these rods. However, you might face a lack of stability if you’re only starting out. 

• Now, it’s time to get the knife at a proper angle to start sharpening it. In most cases, it should be somewhere around 15 to 20 degrees for ideal results. Unfortunately, it’s tricky to get that angle right and even trickier to maintain it while sharpening the knife. A helpful method is to hold the knife at a right angle and divide it into two halves for a ballpark idea. 

Plus, a slightly bad angle won’t ruin your knife. Just make sure you’re not doing it heavy-handedly when starting. That way, you can get the hang of it without drastically changing the knife’s edge. 

• Hold the knife so that the part near the bolster or handle is positioned against the rod. If you’ve got the sharpening steel set on a surface, you’d be pulling the knife toward yourself. 

• Keep the angle consistent if you’re taking a free-hand approach, as it’s easy to lose control that way. You’d also be pulling the knife away in this method. 

• Now, keep sliding the knife across the steel to cover the whole blade. It’s better to avoid putting too much pressure. Once you’re done with one side, move on to the other and do the same number of passes. 

How many passes you do, depends on how much you want to sharpen the knife. Take it slowly and take a look at the blade at regular intervals. 

Once you’re done sharpening the knife, rinse it with water to ensure you don’t have any metal stuck to the blade. Afterward, wipe the blade off, and you’re done! 

Things to Remember When Using Knife Sharpening Steel

• Avoid trying to dig into the sharpening steel with force. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on consistency, and the blade will have more metal taken off from some areas than others. Instead, doing a few more passes and keeping things gentle will provide consistent and long-lasting results. 
• If possible, ensure that the sharpening steel you’re buying is taller (or at least the same size) than the knife’s blade. That way, you can maintain consistency and cover the whole thing with each pass. Otherwise, you’d have to repeat the process for the untouched portion of the blade. 
• In some cases where the knife feels like it has lost some sharpness, it suffices just to hone it lightly. It’s easy to go overboard with sharpening steel, so ensure you’re doing it only when it’s a requirement. 

My Last Words!

Keeping a knife’s blade ready to go at all times is a necessity to get optimal results. Compared to options like whetstones, a sharpening rod can be more convenient. Along with learning how to use a knife sharpening steel, ensure you get the right product. The material and size are all crucial — ensure they suit your knife.