# Knife getting dull very fast



## SuperChef (Mar 27, 2014)

Hey guys.
I work at a restaurant, when i start to cut somthing my knife is sharp( not sharp as i want it but still) after few cuts thats it it dosent go throw veggies smooth and i need to saw the damn vegetable.
Iam using a yaxell Ran chef knife.
At home i cant get it scary sharp, i am trying to shave some hair on my hand and it dosent shave it...only cut paper but i dont cut paper at work  
Please help me to understand why i cant get the knife factory sharp and why its getting dull after 10 min of use.

Thanks.


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## erikz (Mar 27, 2014)

I dont really get this as well. Yaxells are VG10 which normally keep a good edge. Maybe the angle you're sharpening at is too acute and it cant keep it for a long time?


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## Geo87 (Mar 27, 2014)

A little more info would help everyone identify your problem.
What stone progression do you use?
How long do you spend on each stone? 
What angles do you sharpen at ? 
How do you deburr? 
Also how old was the knife before you started sharpening it? 

My first guess is that your not removing/abrading the burr properly. That would leave a weak edge that fails very fast. 
Also if you don't remove the burr your knife won't be as sharp as it could be.


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## SuperChef (Mar 27, 2014)

1000\6000 kingstone... this knife is 5-6 months old....i sharpen at angle that i saw on youtube and other videos ....i think i spend an hour sharpening and nothing happens


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## MAS4T0 (Mar 27, 2014)

It sounds like you might not be removing the wire edge. 

Are you properly deburing?

What you're describing sounds like there is a wire edge which is folding over after a couple of cuts.


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## SuperChef (Mar 27, 2014)

guess i dont deburr cause i dont know what is it


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## rami_m (Mar 27, 2014)

In the word of someone more knowledgable than I am

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showpost.php?p=292104

Slightly off topic but the sharpening videos are good and go through the entire process


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## Geo87 (Mar 27, 2014)

If the knife is quite dull you may need a coarser stone to remove enough metal to expose a fresh edge. If it had seen 4-5 months of pro use without any sharpening then you will definitely need a coarse stone. Say 400 grit. 

Also with a 1k stone you should only follow along with the angle that is already there. It would take a very long time to change the angle. 
What I mean is an angle you saw on YouTube doesn't help.... You need to find the angle that your specific knife is at. 

It sounds like you need to watch jons videos. Jon from JKI ( japanese knife imports) he is a member here and has a brilliant learning to sharpen playlist. 
Watch them all, try sharpening again. If your still having trouble report back. 

http://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEBF55079F53216AB


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## Benuser (Mar 27, 2014)

Seems indeed a wire edge, because of its apparent sharpness that doesn't last. Deburring VG-10 isn't that simple. You have really to abrade it, little by little. Just have it weakened and waiting for falling off as with basic carbons won't happen -- and would otherwise let a damaged edge behind.
Abrade with very light, almost longitudinal strokes, very slightly edge trailing.


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## XooMG (Mar 27, 2014)

Another possibility is excessive convexing/rounding with too much time at 6k. Once the bite is lost, the edge will feel dull.


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## panda (Mar 27, 2014)

Don't use the 6000 side, shaving arm hair is not food either FYI..
Make sure you have a good edge with the 1000 edge, and then learn how to strop using newspaper or cardboard.


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## rick alen (Mar 28, 2014)

I have a Shun in vg10 and it sucks. The edge stability is very poor, due to bad heat treat, and the edge deformed with just a few passes through a steak. Sharpening it a dozen times to a fresh edge helped, but what was also needed to stop the premature deformation was a less acute edge. vg10 like that really can't handle anything more acute than 16deg/side, shun's recommended angle. But if you can't even get the knife sharp on a 6K, there is something really wrong with your knife, or the way you sharpen.

I don't draw a burr when I touch-up sharpen, only if it's by accident or I really want a fresh edge. I never found my shun difficult to deburr, but it is the only vg10 example I am familiar with.

Rick


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## erikz (Mar 28, 2014)

I wouldnt take a VG10 edge anywhere above 2k, maybe even stick with a 1k edge.


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## rick alen (Mar 29, 2014)

erikz said:


> I wouldnt take a VG10 edge anywhere above 2k, maybe even stick with a 1k edge.



I dunno about that, I find a polished edge stay sharp longer, particularly with my crappy-heat-treat shun vg10 that acts as if it had internal stresses alone that bend the edge. It would also seem to me any little teeth you leave in the edge will just deform and get knocked off easier. But I've certainly heard a lot of folks experience the opposite. I know that with teeth you can push right through a tomatoe skin with absolutely no slicing motion, but here a polished edge only needs the most imperceptible of slicing motion to zip right through.

I know it's suppose to be a nono with hard steels but I use a hard-fine Arkansas to finish (probably the equivalent of a 10-12K in finish), I also use the same stone to steel by using a stropping motion. All I can say is that it works for me on all my knives.

Rick


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## erikz (Mar 29, 2014)

Everyone uses a different progression on different stones up to varying grits that seems to work for them individually.

For my VG10 Yaxells I use my beston 500 and SP1k. I strop these either with newspaper or with my SP5k.


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## XooMG (Mar 29, 2014)

Even if one can take the steel to a high grit, it's probably best to start with a solid foundation. A 1k edge ought to be very usable and even close to ideal in some applications, so the OP should probably nail that down first. When he or she's got a solid 1k as tested on food for a while, they can try to refine.


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## Benuser (Mar 29, 2014)

Don't know about others, it might be my lack of technique, but with VG-10 I do need a 5k, not so much for polishing the edge -- which I don't -- but to get rid of the burr.


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## Benuser (Mar 29, 2014)

But if I remember well previous discussions about that very same knife, here and in another forum, the OP got the advice to perform some serious thinning behind the edge as well as the blade had lost all of its original edge due to improper treatment -- six weeks of stealing in a pro environment. A thick knife will encounter more resistance and make the user to use disproportionate force. Even when excessive thinning may weaken the edge, a thick blade may have a very poor retention as well. Just curious to know whether the OP has followed the given advice and thinned it, and to which degree.


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## jai (Mar 29, 2014)

No offence man and I dont like shuns either but if you think that they dont hold and edge and it fails after cutting a few steaks then you need to relearn how to sharpen I have sharpened a ton of shun knives for co workers even ones that are massively chipped and they do get very very sharp and hold it for awhile at the end of the day if I can get a butter knife to sharpen up and cut over 40 ducks and still hold its edge and it has no heat treat I think its just your technique. I really dont like people saying knives from vg10 cant hold an edge or sharpen up, anything can sharpen up a pan handle can. Just sit down and practise sharpening and learn to take care of your edge and you will have it last weeks.


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## jai (Mar 29, 2014)

That was to rick alen.
Sorry if I sound like a wanker but it just really gets on my nerves when people blame heat treat and steel types for there skills with sharpening. I understand that some steels and heat treat are alot better and are amazing but you can still get almost any piece of cutlery to a razor edge.


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## Benuser (Mar 29, 2014)

I can agree. The Shuns aren't the worst. I've found them quite easily to get deburred, even. But in the case of the OP it's no Shun but a grossly mistreated knife of a less than optimal VG-10 we're speaking about.


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## panda (Mar 29, 2014)

jai said:


> ... but you can still get almost any piece of cutlery to a razor edge.


+1 yup!!


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## jai (Mar 29, 2014)

I have a yaxell ran knife I used when I just started my apprenticeship and they sharpen up fine to 5k he just needs to practise it is nothing to do with the knife. He needs to spend more time on a 400 grit stone until he has established a new clean edge and only then he should move up to 1000 grit to establish sharpness then to 5000-8000 to hone the edge


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## Benuser (Mar 29, 2014)

I can agree. The Shuns aren't the worst. I've found them quite easily to get deburred, even. But in the case of the OP it's no Shun but a grossly mistreated knife of a less than optimal VG-10 we're speaking about.


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## snowbrother (Mar 29, 2014)

jai said:


> No offence man and I dont like shuns either but if you think that they dont hold and edge and it fails after cutting a few steaks then you need to relearn how to sharpen I have sharpened a ton of shun knives for co workers even ones that are massively chipped and they do get very very sharp and hold it for awhile at the end of the day if I can get a butter knife to sharpen up and cut over 40 ducks and still hold its edge and it has no heat treat I think its just your technique. I really dont like people saying knives from vg10 cant hold an edge or sharpen up, anything can sharpen up a pan handle can. Just sit down and practise sharpening and learn to take care of your edge and you will have it last weeks.



I do have to agree that VG10 can hold an edge well. I have a Shun Premier santoku that I have been trying to get rid of forever. It is my goto knife when I have a job that might not treat the knife I'm working with very well, yet it manages to push through and still hold its edge. Everytime I grab it, it is razor sharp and performs its job well. I still dislike Shun, but this damn knife is starting to get on my nerves as to how well it holds an edge. I have a Hattori 270mm JCK Gyuto that holds an edge even better than the Shun. The Hattori has been abused, chipped, been thinned and had the profile changed so many times over the years, but it still holds a screaming sharp edge and it never fails to let me down. 

That said, I still prefer white #1 or AS just because how it reacts on the stones and I can get a sharper edge on them. But I can't knock VG10, it's held up much better than I thought it would. I would have to say that it is my favourite stainless atm.

To add to the conversation. I had this issue come up when I first started sharpening my own knives. I found that I had two seperate issues that was causing my edge to die off quickly. The first is that I had a hard time feeling a burr at first, so I would guess when to move on to the next stone. Because of this, I never actually sharpened it properly at the 1k before moving on to the 5-6k, etc. 

The second issue I had was that the knife I got wasn't properly treated. It was a Takeda and I sent it back for him to look at. Somehow along the line, the steel wasn't treated properly and it was too soft to keep an edge for long. It would last maybe a couple of hours into service, then I would have to swap it out for another knife. He sent me a new one with a custom handle added free of charge. 

My guess is that it is either the knife is just a ****** one that is too soft to hold an edge for long, or that you aren't getting a burr before progressing to the next stone. If both of these aren't the case, maybe you are just pressing too hard when cutting? If that is the case, add a micro-bevel at a shallower angle and work on using finesse, not force.


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## rick alen (Mar 30, 2014)

Well Jay no offense but you are being a wee bit of a wanker here. I wasn't knocking vg10 in general, I was knocking shun for the inconsistent quality of their vg10 and various edge qualities which numerous individuals, pro-sharpeners amongst them, have enumerated. If you read for comprehension what I said, I never complained about my knife not getting sharp (though the OP did), and the blade improved with successive sharpenings, indicating also a rather brutal treatment of the edge in shun's edge shaping/sharpening process, which often happens with such high-production knives. I'm not a pro-sharpener but I have been using whetstones for over 40 years now. For cutting steak, which is all I use this knife for, I no longer have the deformation problem even with a 24deg inclusive angle, but whacking this knife particular knife against a board might be a totally different story.


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## panda (Mar 30, 2014)

shun steel is not bad, it just feels gummy on stones which is its biggest drawback, and also annoying to deburr but that's not a big issue if you know what you're doing. why they are so chippy when new i dunno, maybe when being ground/sharpened on machines it gets too hot hence weakens metal at the edge.. the real reason majority here dislike them is because of its big belly profile.


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## Geo87 (Mar 30, 2014)

rick alen said:


> I have a Shun in vg10 and it sucks. The edge stability is very poor, due to bad heat treat, and the edge deformed with just a few passes through a steak.





rick alen said:


> with my crappy-heat-treat shun vg10



Rick Alen : I think it's easy to see why someone would get annoyed by those comments. 
there's nothing wrong with shuns or vg10 and the heat treat is not crap. Your posts read like your blaming your tools. I think it has very little to do with the tools but everything to do with technique. 

Shuns and vg10 have been discussed a lot here. The general consensus was that it's the users techniques giving them a bad rap. 
http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php?t=16614

Also there has been some discussion about factory edges being chippy but once the factory edge is removed they are fine
http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showpost.php?p=285049
Jons post #41 sums it up. 

Also you said your hard Arkansas stone is 10-12k ?? I think your misinformed there. BDL states in his blog that the hard ark is about 
JIS 2000 
A guy at work uses Arkansas stones there's no way the hard one is 10-12k 
Here is the blog on Arkansas stones 
http://www.cookfoodgood.com/?p=21

Either way were getting off topic. The op said he did not know what deburring was... So it's a technique issue. hence why I suggested that he should watch all of jons videos and practice practice practice as other members said nail the 1k first. 
Any further suggestions could just confuse / scare the OP off learning to sharpen as we're overcomplicating the issue .


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## rick alen (Mar 30, 2014)

OK, if this is a wire on my shun's edge then it is the biggest, thickest damn wire than can be, but I guess that is within the realm of possibility.

As far as the Ark stone goes, the grit of the stone is irrelavent, it may not even be an Ark stone but something else, but I am referring to the finish it leaves when I say 10--12k grit.

Rick


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## panda (Mar 30, 2014)

you could just be rounding the edge, not a wire burr. don't go any higher than 2k or 3k grit.


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## jai (Mar 30, 2014)

I wouldent be leaving a 10-12k edge on a shun anyway basicly anywhere between 5k and 8k is a good finish for gyutos, santokus and certain sujis and pettys if using for purely portioning fish or trimming boneless primals then maybe higher is viable but otherwise edge retention and toothyness drops off a bit faster. Try sharpening to 5k see if that helps


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## Sherski (Mar 30, 2014)

So under what circumstances would we progress to the 8000 grit or 10,000grit level of stone use? :bliss:


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## jai (Mar 30, 2014)

Single bevel knife such as yanagiba, usuba and deba. Knives used for off board work such as meat trimming with a petty. I personally find the only knives I like 10k+ for are my single bevels. Look at the end of the day its all personal preference but I use knives every day between 4 and 16 hours per day and this is just what I have gathered from personal experience ask any of the other pros. Dont quote me but I guarentee people like salty and theory dont take there gyutos past 6-8k .


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## panda (Mar 31, 2014)

never, at least not in any practical sense. of course you can take it there, great many people do. highest i take my gyutos to is around 5k (only carbon, stainless stops at 2k).


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## rick alen (Mar 31, 2014)

No it gets very sharp, but a relatively few passes through relatively soft stuff and the edge just folds, and I believe it has done this just by sitting for a while doing nothing. In all honesty it's is just like a super-thick burr. Though one pass on a regular steel (which I only used as an experiment) or a few stropping passes on a smooth surface and it just disappears, for a while. From my machining experience it behaves much like metal when you fly-cut or grind one side, and stresses in the metal cause warpage. Eventually after enough "stropping cycles" the edge settles down/goes away.

What it comes down to is this knife is a real pain to keep sharp, and if that is a burr it must be one real pain to remove. I will eventually try the removal method described here and see if that 'completely" rectifies things. If I have been inferring the wrong underlying principles then you all have my apologies for being "annoying." But if this is what it takes to maintain a shun knife then I'm sure you can understand why having just one of their knives is more than enough for me.


Rick


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## snowbrother (Mar 31, 2014)

Do you cut a lot of onions or anything like that? Onion skin is horrible for dulling edges. It also depends on how much you use it. Working 12-16 hour shifts meant I would have to strop a few times a night to keep a sharp edge on some of my knives. If it is the burr, I think it was already mentioned, but try cutting through felt. I personally like to strop on kangaroo leather or my finishing stone (or even a wooden cutting board when I'm on the line), but I've had other chefs tell me that the felt is the easiest/fastest way to remove the burr. Has the knife been exposed to a lot of high heat? While not very likely, it is a possibility that the heat has weakened the steel and prevents it from holding a proper edge without rolling.


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## Benuser (Mar 31, 2014)

No good idea to have the burr falling off with VG-10. It will leave a horribly damaged edge behind. It has to get abraded.


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## rick alen (Mar 31, 2014)

Snow, the Shun replaces a vintage Deluxe Persona as a dedicated steak knife, so it never sees a board or anything warmer than a medium-rare steak, and of course no part of it touches the plate other than the very tip. So that is what is so mystifying about its performance. I like it in that it definitely gets sharper than the DP using the same stones. It isn't chippy either, I accidentally drove it into a stainless appliance with some force and the extremely pointy tip just deformed a very tiny bit, so it cleaned up easily. I'd say it is very likely under-tempered, at least at the tip. But I bought it, I foolishly paid $100 for it, I still like it better than the vintage DP, so God darn it I'm going to continue to use it. Benuser of course I'd agree with you on that one.

Rick


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## SuperChef (Mar 31, 2014)

I usually work for 5-6 hours in cutting at work when i have the time for it...at first when is start cutting a tomato its ok but after 10 tomatos its allready dull and cant pass the skin of it...i use honing rod at work cause i dont have time to sharpen there.
At home i spend at list 1.5 hours at sharpening the knife but i still cant get a razor sharp edge...i cant figure up the angle approach i guess... i get a burr only if i sharp at a high angle...if i do at a low i dont get any burr at all...am i mising somthing? i watched lots of videos and did every thing they said but i still miss something.....
any tips and tricks that u guys know about those knives? 
i am desperate


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## Benuser (Mar 31, 2014)

If you only get a burr at a high angle, and not at a lower one, you should first thin it a lot, or have it done. It has become much too thick behind the edge.
After that a fresh new edge at a low angle may be created. And stop using that honing rod. It fatigues the steel and its debris form a wire edge.


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