Summary: A sharpening stone is great for keeping a sharp edge on knives or chisels, and sharpening knives should be done at a 23-degree angle, while chisels should be sharpened at 20 degrees. Learn about using water or honing oil on sharpening stones with help from a home repair specialist and remodeling contractor in this free video on sharpening stones.
Tim Gipson is a home repair specialist and remodeling contractor in Nashville, Tenn. He holds a MST and BS from Middle Tennessee University. Gipson is insured, licensed and bonded with...read more
"Hi I'm Tim Gipson, I'm going to talk to you about how to use a sharpening stone. Sharpening stone is good to use in order to keep a sharp edge on your knives or on your chisels. Now the most important thing when you're using a sharpening stone is to get the right angle. And whenever you're sharpening a knife you want to use a 23 degree angle and the chisel is about a 20 degree angle. And when you're doing chisel essentially you have a bevel surface on the chisel and this bevel is what we want to hold down on the stone. Now when you're using a stone, you want to either use a little bit of water on your stone or a honing oil or just a very light oil. So in this case we're just going to use some water. So with the chisel what we're going to do is we're just going to hold it flat at a little bit of an angle and then you want to run it just like you're trying to skim a thin sliver right off your sharpening stone. And it's very important to try and maintain that angle and keep that bevel flat with the surface. So you can work it back and forth and as you do, it'll finish that edge to a nice sharp surface because when we're using our chisels we want it to be able to have a nice sharp edge so it's easy to cut our wood or whatever we're doing. Now with knives, like I said the knives require a 23 degree angle and one thing that's helpful is some of your honing stones come with a little guide angle that is set at 23 degrees. So we simply can place this on the block and then we can line the knife up with this angle and then as you run your knife you want to make like a cutting action so we're moving down the stone but we're also moving like we're cutting forward. So and it's very important as you sharpen your knife that you maintain that correct angle. So the guide can help you make sure that you do that. And you don't have to get really aggressive, we're just going to make several passes and then what we would do is turn the blade over and work on that back angle. The more accurately you can hold it at that 23 degree angle, the better edge that you're going to get on that knife. So just with a few passes you can score that edge and keep your knife very sharp. So I'm Tim Gipson and that's how to use a honing stone."
eHow Article: How to Use a Sharpening Stone
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