Sharpening Annie and Ryan’s Knives

happy New Year everyone uh we have my neighbors an and Ryan we’ve got their knives um taking a look at what they have here so um these Victorinox Knives these are great um you know they’re not very expensive but these are what Pros use in the kitchen uh they’re a great shape they cut great um they’re a little bit softer so they’re not going to hold an edge as long but they will sharpen up like that these are great knives pro move getting that knife um and then this is probably one of my time favorite knives um the Woof classic icon I sharpen a lot of wofs I sharpen a lot of woof Classics they’re great knives they’re Forge steel uh they’re great pretty hard steel will hold their Edge for a while um what I like about the icon line is this bolster right here doesn’t go all the way down uh I personally prefer a knife that doesn’t have a bolster so this doesn’t have a bolster that goes all the way down um my uh globals don’t have a bolster really at all and then um yeah this is feels great in a pinch grip um you got a little back of the edge a back of the knife here you can use if you need it um plus as a sharpener sometimes just dealing with a bolster is just more to deal with so I would definitely appreciate these knives as a sharpener as well Pro knives these are going to sharpen great let’s get started all right now um typically when these knives come from the factory something like your your uh your woop here um this could actually have a factory Edge as low as 14° on it um um and then you know usually there’s like a stereotype that um Japanese knives get a 15 Dee Edge and Western Knives get a 20° Edge but if you put a 20° Edge on this it’s just not going to perform as nicely as if you leave its Factory edge of like a 14 on there uh a knife like this this is probably going to come with something closer to a 20 it might be in like the 18 or so um and then you know same with the rest of these now what we do here at SimplySharp is uh if it is an actual Japanese style knife we will give it a 15° Edge um and the reason that you can do that is typically those knives are quite a lot harder and their Edge retention is quite a lot better and they’re typically being used on foods that aren’t quite as tough on the knife edge um on your western style knives I’m almost never going to go to 20 unless it’s just a very thick knife um I’m not going to uh do it at a 20 um I will almost always opt for 17 so even though this might come with a 14° edge I’ll usually give it a 17° Edge um and the reason I do that is it’s going to hold up longer and for the type of cooking your typical home cook is going to do that’s most of our business is is uh residential people we go to your house and sharpen your knives um you know that’s going to be what they want and that edge is going to hold up longer so I feel like I’m giving better value uh to the customer in that case and then certainly if they have any sort of feedback like oh no they really want it like Wicked razor sharp then I will absolutely put a 15 or 14 degree Edge on it um based on their feedback but a 17° Edge for these knives is going to be very sharp it’s going to do a great job for uh pretty much everything that they’re going to want to cut with it and especially like these knives like that’s going to be a fairly resilient Edge this is softer metal um but it’ll it’ll help that edge hold up um a lot longer so let’s go ahead and get started for anyone who’s not seen this before the type of progression that we will do is we’ll first start with 120° sorry 120 grit belt um this is going to put an edge on the knife and then everything we do after that is the refining of that edge to get it really making a good cut so we’re going to drop this down to 17° turn on our air filter and we’re going to get started visually I can see that a burr formed and I can also feel it with my fingertip so that knife has its Edge so that also was two passes like the loo off but there’s nothing closer as on this like you couldn’t you could you can’t shut yourself with that knif right now sh is sh sh sh wow so it’s not uncommon for a knife like this a utility knife to be one of the dest knives in the block um usually a go-to knife people will just get out and it’s also a knife people will use on things like cutting open a box or opening a package or something like that so these knes tend to get a good bit of abuse and um you need many more passes to get a nice Edge on them the other thing um I don’t know if I’d seen this knife of theirs before this may have been a knife that came with a 20° Edge and I just took it down a 17° Edge that often takes a little bit of additional effort as well okay so all that with this belt right here what that does is that puts an edge on the knife so if before if the knce was if the knife edge was dulled and it looks like that it now looks kind of like that so it is uh a pointy Edge but it’s a little bit rolled over to one side that’s the bur that you can see and feel um and that is a sign that you have uh uh reached the the sharpening of the knife at this angle you are done at that point as long as there’s like no chips or defects left in the knife you’re done putting an edge on it everything after this is a refinement so I do kind of compare this to woodworking it’s kind of like sanding and that you start with lower grits and you work your way up to higher grits in the case of kitchen eyes what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this up to about a um 6 to 800 grit is where I would it’s about as high as I would take it and the reason is that’s still going to leave some some toothy grain in the knife that actually helps with the performance for cutting through food stuffs um it’s not where you would want to stop with something like a razor um but for for kitchen knives this is this is what you want um for something like um garden tools you probably actually just stop right here at about 120 so maybe go up to like 400 um um on some things but uh kitchen knives 6 what okay give me 20 minutes there’s actually two things that we’re doing here uh one is we are refining that edge so that the bigger deeper scratches of um 20 grit belt are getting refined into smaller smoother scratches um but the other thing is we’re working that Burr that form back and forth and then it’s going to start to come off for those of you who are sharpening KN this is an area where you’ll really start to notice different metals and their their behavior so some of these burs come right off others are pretty stubborn um and take many more passes than you would care for um and you know also just depending on how aggressively you need to put an edge on the knif like you can leave different types of birs and take different levels of effort to get the birs off all right so we’ve now uh We’ve refined that edge so if we were to look at this under a microscope and actually one day I do have a microscope um I’ll use that one day um but if you were to take a look at that instead of like big wide grooves like that just big huge grains in the edge of the knife now they’re like a bunch of smaller tinier smoother grains in the knife um and so what that’s going to do when you when if you didn’t do that when you try to cut through something those bigger grains are going to grab more and cause more friction you’ll feel more drag um as you’re using the knife so this is going to help that this is also going to um I’ve been told I don’t really completely understand this and and it’s something I’m I’m working on learning more about um that that more refined of an edge does add more stability and strength to the edge to help it uh stay sharp longer uh I am kind of curious uh uh how exactly that works not 100% sold if it’s true but I I’ve been led to believe that so uh there we go regardless uh this is the proper technique to sharpen uh these types of knives uh the last thing we’re going to do is we’re going to do uh a strap and a strap is basically just applying compound to uh typically some like leather or denim is is a typical material in um here at SimplySharp we have a bunch of leather belts that we will apply a compound to um so it’s just just a piece of leather uh it holds compound and the compound does all the polishing um we’re actually going to use this new felt belt um this is a another uh way of stopping that I’ve been using I’ve been getting pretty good results with uh it seems to work really well with this particular type of compound as well and what this is going to do is it’s really really going to it’s polishing that’s what you’re doing you’re polishing metal at this point um and it’s also going to remove any last little bit of Burr which is what this belt is better excuse me this belt is better at removing that Burr than uh the leather um but it also holds the compound well and the compound is what’s doing the polishing uh let me give you a quick test here so um we use a microfiber cloth uh to really help us detect if we really remove the bird and have a nice smooth edge um right now with uh where it’s been it’s see how it’s just grabbing right so we want it to not do that all right so back to our microfiber we’re going to just wipe this down all right see nothing’s crapping it’s nice and smooth um that is good to go on to the rest of them sh for sh H so little bit right back here and if I’m looking at it um doesn’t look chipped or anything so a little bit more there one little spot back there there we go all gone all right let’s see how we did so wicked sharp knives these are going to perform great um again they got some great knives here so if people always ask like what kind of knives do you recognize my recommend my own personal knives are globals um I love them um I will say uh if I was going to buy another set of knives I probably would go with another set of globals but I definitely consider this these icon Classics and I would definitely consider these so if I’m going to give people a spectrum of what they could um price-wise the Victor noxes or something like the uh the woff classic icon um can’t go wrong with either of those great knives thank you everyone