# Wide bevel sharpening



## perneto (Jan 5, 2014)

Hi all,

I'm having trouble keeping the shinogi line clean and non-wavy on my wide-bevel gyuto (a Konosuke Fujiyama, soon to be joined by a Heiji).
Any advice? What should I look out for when practicing?


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## schanop (Jan 5, 2014)

A couple of things that help me are to keep your left hand fingers under shinogi line (assuming right hand is holding the handle) so that there will be less tendency to flip the knife over and blur the line; and a relatively flat stone will help keeping the line sharp.


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## Dave Martell (Jan 5, 2014)

Some wide bevel gyutos do not have a crisp shinogi and never will, they have hammer blows/marks right at the top of the bevel and there's nothing you can do about this.

Now if the knife came with nice crisp shinogi line then maybe it's your technique. More practice!


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## Dave Jacobson (Jan 5, 2014)

When your sharpening on a water stone, keep changing the direction slightly every 15-20 strokes then look at the blade , you will be able to see where you need to put more pressure and where to put less.


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## perneto (Jan 6, 2014)

Dave Martell said:


> Some wide bevel gyutos do not have a crisp shinogi and never will, they have hammer blows/marks right at the top of the bevel and there's nothing you can do about this.
> 
> Now if the knife came with nice crisp shinogi line then maybe it's your technique. More practice!



I'm pretty sure it's my technique. Do you have any suggestions on what I should do when I practice?
Is it better to learn with a coarser stone (less strokes, less potential messes), or a medium one (more strokes but less consequences per stroke)?


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## perneto (Jan 6, 2014)

Dave Jacobson said:


> When your sharpening on a water stone, keep changing the direction slightly every 15-20 strokes then look at the blade , you will be able to see where you need to put more pressure and where to put less.



What do you mean by changing the direction exactly?


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## mkriggen (Jan 6, 2014)

perneto said:


> I'm pretty sure it's my technique. Do you have any suggestions on what I should do when I practice?
> Is it better to learn with a coarser stone (less strokes, less potential messes), or a medium one (more strokes but less consequences per stroke)?



Medium, coarse just lets you mess up faster.


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## mkriggen (Jan 6, 2014)

Oh, and Jon at JKI has several excellent sharpening videos on youtube.


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## Dave Martell (Jan 6, 2014)

I vote for an extra coarse stone. My thought is that as long as you go slow and stop to look what you're doing you can control what you screw up on. When using a coarse stone you get the bevel set to where you want it before you get fatigues and start screwing up. Using a medium or fine stone is for making things look pretty/refining scratch patterns/tough ups, coarse stones do the work.


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## mkriggen (Jan 6, 2014)

LOL, considering relative levels of experience and expertise (his huge amount, my tiny amount), you'd probably be better off listening to Dave

Be well,
Mikey


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## perneto (Jan 7, 2014)

Thanks all for the advice!

mkriggen, I've already watched Jon's videos many, many times


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## Brad Gibson (Jan 7, 2014)

ive seen very matured sushi chefs ruin shinogi lines and it is not a hard thing to do. while sharpening double bevel knives with shinogis, it seems you have to be extremely delicate on the edge.


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## Von blewitt (Jan 7, 2014)

Make sure your stones are flat, try not to use stones that produce alot of Mud. 

If you want to maintain the geometry (thinning), you will need to place pressure on/ above the shinogi, it's just a matter of keeping the line straight with even pressure and grinding, if you wobble, you will break the line. If its a faintish line to begin with, I find a magic marker can help.


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## Dave Jacobson (Jan 8, 2014)

perneto said:


> What do you mean by changing the direction exactly?



By changing direction you can see the fine scratches from the stone cross each other. If your strokes are always in the same direction when you turn the blade over to see progress you cannot tell where you are removing metal.


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## eighteesix (Jan 10, 2014)

mkriggen said:


> Oh, and Jon at JKI has several excellent sharpening videos on youtube.


jon seems to use mostly japanese knives. can the same techniques shown in his videos be applied to western style gyutos as well?


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## JBroida (Jan 10, 2014)

yup... the angles will be different and the bolster is an issue you will have to deal with, but knife sharpening is still knife sharpening at the end of the day

also, softer steels wont respond the same way to higher grit finishes, and deburring may be a bit more difficult depending on the steel


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## eighteesix (Jan 10, 2014)

JBroida said:


> yup... the angles will be different and the bolster is an issue you will have to deal with, but knife sharpening is still knife sharpening at the end of the day
> 
> also, softer steels wont respond the same way to higher grit finishes, and deburring may be a bit more difficult depending on the steel


awesome. ill be sharpening an AS Hiro so I think the response should be similar.

what is the bolster? maybe i should watch your videos :laugh:


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## JBroida (Jan 10, 2014)

hiro AS is still a japanese knife... i'm sorry, but i misread your previous post and thought you were asking about western chefs knives (like whustof)... my bad. Same technique for a wa-gyuto works for a gyuto.

and the bolster i was referring to is the huge metal chunk near the heel of german/french/american chefs knives


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## eighteesix (Jan 10, 2014)

your incredible response time made up for any misunderstanding


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