Japanese Knife Sharpening & Care

0:00What is the Bitey Finisher?

Most people following Japanese knives have heard of Takayuki Shibata — Masakage, Kotetsu, and he works with the masters out of the Takefu knife village. Shibata's reputation comes down to one thing: an obsession with edges, not just how sharp they look but how they feel on ingredients, and that same philosophy carries over into his stones. The Bitey Finisher is a two-in-one: one side around 600 grit that he calls the Bitey Rough, the other about 1200 grit, the Bitey Fine — one stone meant to give you a sharp, toothy, high-performance edge.

2:11Same knife, same strokes

The subject knife is the same Nigara kiridashi every single run, and before each comparison the same hundred strokes go down on a prep stone — a 220 grit gets the coarse group going, a Chosera 400 the fine group. Then the scratch pattern gets photographed at zero, five, twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five and a hundred strokes, at three magnifications each. Two stones can look identical at a hundred strokes and still be completely different to use — one can be done by twenty-five, the other only catches up at seventy-five, and the snapshots are exactly where that difference shows itself.

4:31Fast and very even

The coarse group is where the Bitey makes its case. The Shapton Glass 500 and the Naniwa Diamond 500 both leave deep scratch patterns, and the Chosera 600 sits in the middle without any excitement; all the while the Bitey, to my eye, felt right on top of the Chosera 400, and for a 600 grit stone that is saying something. On the fine side the 1200 finish comes out comparable to a Chosera 1000, not as fast as the Kuromaku 1000 but without the Kuromaku's deep scratches either. Add the competitive pricing, two stones in one, and that really nice muddy feedback, and I have no problem recommending it — the only reason to pass is if you already have a stone sitting at the Kuromaku's level.

The 600 Bitey is very good in my opinion. Fast and very even.

0:00Which one should you buy?

Three Shaptons, all 1000 grit: the Kuromaku — the long-running Shapton Professional, probably one of the most popular Shapton stones around — the Glass series, and the latest addition to the lineup, the Rockstar. Different thicknesses, different price points, and the question is a fair one: is one of them actually better value than the others? To answer it in a scientific way I took a Hatsukokoro 210mm gyuto through all three and looked at the edge under a microscope.

1:53Coarse stone first, every time

The order never changes: the knife always meets the coarse 400 stone before it touches the 1000, then back to the 400, then on to the next 1000, so every stone faces exactly the same edge at exactly the same point in the progression. After each pass I checked the result under a 30x and a 60x microscope. If one stone ends up finer than the others, or they all turn out the same, that is where it shows.

2:58Pure Performance

Pure performance, the Shapton Pro is quite fast, and it's a speed that shows up in the scratch pattern — easily the most scratches of the three. The Glass and the Rockstar sit much closer to each other, with the Rockstar edging ahead for a slightly finer, hazier finish. All three are fast splash-and-go stones, so speed alone does not separate them; I would take the Kuromaku for pure speed and the Rockstar if I'm after that more refined 1000 grit finish. Full disclosure: of the three, I only carry the Rockstar.

if you just talking about Pure Performance, I think the Shapton pro is quite fast, and that's noticeable because it has the most scratches

6:04Getting less stone for more money

Here is the point I certainly missed when I bought my first stone ten years ago: thickness. The Kuromaku is about 15 millimetres and the Rockstar around 10, but the Glass is also about 10 millimetres overall and only five of those are actual abrasive — the rest is the glass backing. So with the Glass, one of the pricier stones of the three, you are buying five millimetres of stone; add in the flattening such a thin working layer needs, and it does not last you that long.

So you are paying for the same, if not more, for a lot less abrasive.

0:00The true meaning of the word 1000

Four 1000 grit stones on the bench today: the Chosera, the Shapton, the Suehiro Cerax, and the good old King. Ask around online and you will get two camps — the Shapton lot love how fast it cuts, the Chosera lot go on about the feedback and how smooth it feels. The truth is the 1000 doesn't really mean that much, which is why I grabbed a single-bevel kiridashi, flattened everything, and put them all under the microscope to compare the scratch pattern.

2:42Do I really need to flatten a brand-new stone?

Yes, and I flatten every stone that comes near my bench, new or not — an unflattened surface just won't leave an even scratch pattern for a test like this. After sharpening, the burr gets stropped off and it's down to the lab, where the 1960s Olympus microscope that Shoichi Hashimoto gifted me, with a digital camera on top, photographs the edge and the surface in high resolution.

Even if the stone is new, it is still a good idea to flatten the surface of it.

4:26The sound test

Under the microscope, three of the four stones are near enough identical — similar scratch pattern, similar feedback while you sharpen. The Shapton is the odd one out: it cuts noticeably faster and leaves a coarser feel, and the sound tells the same story. I pointed a mic straight at the stone during these runs, and the finer grits run almost silent while the coarser ones get audibly rough as the abrasive bites in.

it feels more like the 400 rather than the 1000. I would say it's probably somewhere about 600 grit.

6:15Don't mix and match by the printed number

Different manufacturers use different systems for naming their stones, and there is an excellent chart on Wikipedia that maps each claimed grit onto a common scale — it confirms the Shapton sits on the rougher side of its number. And I'm not bashing the Shapton here, I think it's an excellent stone; it's just that pairing its 1000 with the next stone up makes a jump that's too big, whereas a proper three-times step like a Chosera 1000 to a Chosera 3000 climbs cleanly. The number on the box is really not the most informative number out there, so work out which grit feels right in your hand and don't try to mix and match.

12:17My take on the four

The Chosera is what we use in the shop and it earns that spot — excellent feedback, and the closest of the four to a true 1000. The Shapton I would start at 2000 rather than 1000, since you get its speed without the extra coarseness. For white bevel sharpening and carbon knives the Suehiro 1000 is hard to beat, and on modern steels like R2 or ZDP-189 I would not bother with the King — it is a little rough and a little slow for them.

0:00Four bottles of the same thing

The episode opens with a cheesy Mastercard-style ad I clearly wrote for the bit, right down to "have a baby smooth skin, three dollars", and then it turns out I'm actually holding four bottles from the same family. Paraffin oil from the hardware shop, pharmaceutical-grade liquid paraffin from a pharmacy — sold as a constipation aid — an "IKEA board oil" that is basically mineral oil, and baby oil, which is mineral oil plus perfume. The cheapest of the lot is the baby oil at $2.40 for 500 millilitres.

3:03Why the marketing makes no sense

The same base oil, priced completely differently depending on the story around it, and the pharmaceutical one for human consumption ends up the most expensive of the four. I draw a direct parallel to buying a knife: the brand and the price tag are what you see on the surface, but what actually matters is what's behind the product — the blacksmith, the sharpener, whether you're getting an actual good deal. That's the whole point of the exercise.

The world is full of marketing, really. What we have to do is think about what is behind the product. What are you really buying?

4:49Can a $7 oil replace the $12 one?

The real reason for all this: mineral oil standing in for camellia (tsubaki) oil, the traditional Japanese oil for stopping carbon knives rusting. Same routine either way, wipe the blade clean and dry after use, then a thin layer on top. In this test, the tsubaki oil works out at more than five times the price per millilitre of the most expensive alternative. Hence the test.

6:50What actually matters in a knife oil

Two properties, really. It has to be inert — no reacting with moisture or oxygen, no oxidising, no going rancid — which matters a lot if you're oiling a knife for long-term storage and don't want it coming out smelling. And it has to be safe for humans, which is why I look for oil that is safe for human contact. The baby oil is out on quality grounds, the fragrance; the hardware paraffin is probably fine but might not be medical grade; so my call is to pick one labelled medical grade from Amazon or a local pharmacy. Cheapest route here in Australia, I would say, is Amazon.

If you want to do some long-term storage, then you have to make sure your beloved knife is covered with oil that is not going to smell.

0:00The profile that went the wrong way

A new knife curves up at the tip, and this one curved down. You have probably seen the same thing on a friend's knife, or on your own: the middle of the blade is flat, and the tip has hooked over.

A knife, when it's new, should have a curved up, and this knife is curved down.

1:47Why it happens

The usual cause is sharpening only the part of the blade you actually use. That section dulls first, so it gets sharpened first, and over time it gets sharpened over and over while the rest of the blade is ignored. The profile goes flat, and then the over-sharpened section starts to hook.

7:20The fix

At this point the knife has lost its chef-knife profile, so the fix is a full reprofile: reshape the blade back to a proper curve, then do a major thinning pass to bring the edge down to the cladding line.

So we are cutting the potato, no longer splitting. And this is the combination of reprofiling, thinning, and sharpening.

9:11The moment of truth

The whole job took about forty minutes, most of it thinning. A light refinish on 400 grit cleaned up the scratch pattern, then a fresh edge on 1,000 grit. The result: the potato is cut, not split. That is the combination of reprofiling, thinning, and sharpening.

0:00What you need to get started

Freehand sharpening looks intimidating, but it really isn't. Besides your dull knife, you need a couple of stones — I sharpen on a 1,000 grit medium and a 3,000 grit finisher — plus a spray bottle of water, a paper towel to clean the blade, and something to keep the stone from sliding, an anti-slip mat or a stone holder. One thing to know before you buy: some stones are soakers, the classic King stones being the standard example, and they need a soak in water before you sharpen. The faster modern stones do not need soaking, and in fact soaking will damage them.

your right hand will be responsible for locking the angle of the knife against the stone, so we hold the knife in a classic pinch grip position

2:46The two-coin method

How do you find the right angle? The simplest trick is the two-coin method: lift the spine of the knife and rest it on two coins laid on the stone. That gap is roughly the correct angle for most kitchen knives, and it is the fastest way to check yourself as you set up.

So you put two coins on there. That's roughly the correct angle, like so. So this is one way of determining roughly what sort of angle you are using.

5:15The Sharpie test

For a new knife, the Sharpie method is my favourite. Mark the factory bevel with a permanent marker, then take a few strokes. If the marker barely moves, your angle is too high; if you wipe away a lot, you are mostly scratching the top of the edge. When the whole edge clears to a uniform shine, that is the right angle.

7:18The angle guide

The third option is a physical angle guide, which we give out with some knife purchases here at Knives and Stones. It is fine for setting your initial angle, but I would not keep it on the stone for the whole session. In the end, experience does the work: after a while you simply know the correct way for the knife in your hands.

With experience gained, you would just know that, okay, this is the correct way for this sort of knife. It's, it all comes down to experience.

12:06Sharpen the whole edge

Always sharpen the entire blade, not just the section you happen to use. People do this all the time, and the section they favour gets sharpened a little more every time, until the profile goes flat and then hooks over. If you have seen a colleague's knife with a hooked edge, that is exactly what it is.

17:03The burr tells you to stop

We do not count strokes. The stop signal is the burr — a small wire of metal that forms on the edge once the stone has worked through to new steel. You can feel it scratching your finger, and it is much easier to feel on a 400 or 1,000 grit stone than on a fine one.

19:30Removing the burr

Once the burr has formed, remove it before you flip the knife or move to the next stone, or it will wreck your result. Trailing strokes — edge away from the stone, not into it — take most of it off. Carbon steels release theirs easily; on a stainless like VG10 or Ginsan, a light pass along a paper towel or a piece of soft timber does the rest.

25:44Two stones is enough

For a kitchen knife, a 1,000 grit stone to form the edge and a 3,000 or 5,000 grit stone to refine it is all you need. The 12,000, 20,000 and 30,000 grit stones are completely unnecessary for a knife that cuts vegetables on a hard board — that showy edge will not hold for a few cuts.

well you can certainly use them if you like it, but it's completely unnecessary, as I can totally understand the eagerness when one just started the journey of sharpening

28:52Testing the edge

A well-sharpened knife grips your nail without slipping, and it will slice a sheet of A4 paper cleanly. If a section of the edge catches on the paper, that section is not done.

There are a few ways to test the sharpness of your Edge. One very easy one being the nail test.

31:23Sharp does not mean it cuts

Here is the catch: a hair-sharp edge does not guarantee a knife that cuts well. An axe can be sharpened to a hair-shaving edge, and it will still split a potato instead of slicing one. That is the thinning problem, and it is what part two of the course covers.

0:00How many stones do I actually need?

One question I get asked all the time, either from someone just starting out or someone who's been at it for years: how many sharpening stones do I need? My answer is a small core set. 400 for thinning, 1000 as the everyday starting grit, 3000 as a solid pre-finisher, and 5000 if you want a fast, nice polish (the Naniwa one is good). Past that it's 6000, 8000, 10,000, 20,000, even 30,000 from Shapton, and honestly I don't know what the difference between an 8000 and a 5000 even is. So the list just keeps going, and unless you're super rich, it's not really feasible.

3:02The chipped-knife dilemma

Then one day you look at a knife that's super thick or just got damaged, there's a big chip on it, and even your 400 grit is going to take a long while to thin it. Do I buy a 200 grit stone for that? There's probably not a 100 grit out there. So what people do is grab an Atoma diamond plate or a DMT, and that little guy costs about 150 Australian dollars, 120 US dollars. It may actually cost more than the knife you're trying to fix. That's the dilemma this whole episode is about.

5:36Making a one-off stone from offcuts

Here's the trick I often tell my customers to do. Go to the hardware shop, pick up some plywood offcuts (MDF works even better), cut them to roughly the size of a sharpening stone, or bigger. Cut a piece of sandpaper to match, glue it on with contact adhesive or spray glue, put some weight on top and wait for it to set. Now you have a one-off base for a one-off sheet of sandpaper. Want to try a 20,000 grit for once? Or a very coarse paper to thin a broken knife? There you go, without buying a full stone.

Cut them into whatever size they desire, similar to a sharpening stone.

7:48The clamp that holds the sandpaper

If you don't want to wait on the glue, the shop sells a sandpaper holder that clamps loose sandpaper drum-tight. Once you clamp it, it generates a tremendous amount of tension, which is super important because when you're sharpening, it's very easy to push the sandpaper around. That's exactly why we have to glue them down in the first place.

Because when you are doing sharpening, it is very easy to push the sandpaper, that's what we have to glue them.

9:58Putting the 80 grit to work

Let's see how this one-off stone performs. First up, the 80 grit. As you can see, it's already flattened half of the Naniwa 8000, and it takes pretty much no time. If that feels a bit too coarse, you can go on to 200, even 400, to remove the deep scratches. The point is, because the water hasn't really penetrated through the material yet, it is more than enough, and it's very, very flat. So if you want to use it as a flattener or a thinner, you don't have nearly as much problem as a softer 300 or 400 grit stone that dishes really, really quick.

It takes pretty much no time for this 80 grit sandpaper stone to be able to flatten this naniwa 8000.

13:14Bottom line

After doing the test, I believe you have now seen that these one-off stones actually work quite well in their designated situations: thinning, refinishing, and flattening. And if you want to try out some of the grits you haven't tried before, this is definitely a good way to save you a few bucks. Of course you would not be able to replace an actual stone, because they do have different feedbacks, and the grits on sandpaper sometimes differ from the grits on a stone. But as a trick to get away with "I just need this stone and I don't have it", it works.

0:00The knife that looks sharp but won't cut

This one is a customer's knife, and it looks sharp enough, but it cannot cut at all. Years of abuse from the owner — it has been run through machines, and now it splits potatoes instead of cutting them, leaving a rough, uneven surface.

while the knife looks sharp, it cannot cut at all, that's because of years of abuse from the customer

3:05The potato test

To see the difference, I cut a potato with the problem knife and a new showroom knife as the control. The new knife slices through easily, and the cut surface reflects the light — a smooth cut, no problem. The problem knife has to force its way through: the surface comes out rough, and the blade wedges badly, thin on one side and thick on the other.

5:04Why it won't track straight

The difference between the two blades is the cladding line. On the new knife the core is exposed, and that is where the hard steel does the cutting — this is a clad knife, soft cladding on the outside, a hard steel core inside. On the customer's knife the core is gone: years of sharpening have removed it, and the knife has never been thinned at all.

7:48The fixed-angle problem

Over the years, knives get run through fixed-angle sharpeners, and that is the problem: none of them can thin the knife. And if you want to preserve the performance of a knife, you have to thin it.

they all have this similar problem, that is, you can't really thin the knife

9:41How the shoulder builds

A new factory edge is ground properly thin and sharp. Every time you sharpen, you lift the knife up at an angle, and over the years the angle stays the same. That builds a shoulder — a thick wedge of metal right behind the edge — which ends up pushing the potato instead of cutting it. That is the biggest problem.

11:38Sharpening vs thinning

Sharpening lifts the knife up at an angle; thinning is the opposite — you lay the knife flat to remove the excess metal. You cannot just sharpen this little edge anymore; you have to get rid of metal, and on a double-sided knife you have to do both sides.

we basically have to lay this knife flat to remove any of the excess, excessive metal in here

14:00The re-grind

After thinning, the knife is significantly thinner than before. Re-establishing the bevel across the whole blade took a lot of work, but the result is clear: the knife cuts much better, and the bevel is straight and centred instead of sitting on one side.

16:47Watching the clad line

How do you know when to thin, and when to stop? Keep the edge and the cladding line the same distance apart — about five millimetres, give or take. Normal sharpening with the knife lifted is fine; once in a while, lay flat and remove the shoulder. That gap is the one to keep.

our goal is to always keep these two lines around the same distance, around the same distance

0:00How do you know when you're done with a stone?

People come to me all the time with a stroke count in their head — twenty on the 1000, thirty on the one above it — and that is exactly the mistake. Sharpening just removes old steel to expose fresh steel underneath, and the only signal that matters is the burr, or the wire edge, forming along the edge. Raise the burr in three strokes and keep going to thirty anyway and those extra twenty-seven do absolutely nothing for the edge.

3:53The fifty-stroke test

On this Naniwa Arata 1000 the burr came up after fifty strokes, and I stopped right there — stropped it, and took the edge to the microscope. For the second run I doubled it to a hundred strokes on the same knife so the two results could sit side by side, and a much wider wire edge appeared.

I'm able to form the burr in 50 times, 50 strokes, and let's go and have a look

5:19Once the burr is up, you're done

So what do the two results show? The same thing — after the burr has formed, extra strokes make no difference to how sharp the edge ends up. The danger with counting strokes actually runs the other way: if the burr needs fifty strokes and you stop at thirty, the burr never forms and you've wasted the session; push it out to a hundred and you've thrown away another fifty for exactly the same result.

after seeing the results, my conclusion is that both tests yield the same result

6:27When you can't feel the burr

This only really bites at the fine end: above about 3000 grit the burr becomes too fine to feel, and by 8000 you almost definitely can't feel anything at all. At that point it comes down to experience — once you've spent enough time on the stones you just know whether the burr is there or not. And it still has to come off: getting the burr off is every bit as important as raising it, and that's where the strop does its work.

0:00Which is better, the Chosera 800 or 1000?

Honestly, one of the most-asked questions in this hobby, and it's been going for years. Naniwa's Chosera line is among the most reputable in Japanese sharpening stones, and the 800 and the 1000 sit so close in grit that everyone has an opinion. I had wondered it too, but had never put the two side by side — we use the 1000 in the shop, while I only use the 800 occasionally. It's the sort of question people will happily argue in the comments, which is exactly where it keeps showing up.

For many years, even myself have wondered this question, which one between these two is the better one?

3:16Sharpening my kiridashi on both of them

I sharpen my little kiridashi on each stone and compare the surface finishes under the microscope. The 800 leaves a visibly coarser scratch pattern than the 1000, and yes, that shows up magnified — but in actual sharpening feedback the two perform very similarly. You can feel the 800 cut slightly faster, though the 1000 is not slow at all, it's genuinely fast. The clearest difference between the two is what you see under the scope, not what you feel under your hands.

5:14My take

If you prefer the harsher, more direct feedback, take the 800. If you're like me and prefer the slightly smoother feel and a more refined, even surface finish, take the 1000. Neither is a wrong choice, they're close enough that it comes down to how you like a stone to feel, and there's absolutely no problem picking either one. That's the whole point of the side-by-side — so the next person asking doesn't have to buy both to find out. The full sharpening plays out in this final pass, no step-by-step voice-over, and that's it from me, really.

0:00What actually makes board wax pasty?

The short answer is beeswax, a lump of solid wax that needs oil to loosen it into a paste. The mineral (paraffin) oil is the liquid part, it soaks right down into the timber, and the beeswax is what stays on the surface to protect it from daily use and give it that shine. I add a bit of coconut oil to the mix as well, for the warmth and the creamy feel — the classic combination the French polishing guys use. Stick with 100% natural beeswax though, because as far as I know the cheap candle wax is good for burning, yes, but we don't know what's actually in it.

4:21Melting it on the cooktop

Equal thirds — one part mineral oil, one part beeswax, one part coconut oil — melted together in an old pan on a portable induction cooktop. Don't put it on full power, that's how the whole thing boils away before you know it; and cut the beeswax into smaller pieces first, which I forgot to do, so I ended up stirring around one stubborn chunk while everything else melted. If you don't want the stovetop setup at all, I reckon you can just throw everything in the oven.

6:04The secret ingredient

Once the mix is off the heat and has settled, a few drops of vitamin E oil goes in and it all gets stirred through. I call it basically a cosmetic cream, and sure enough the instructions that follow are: do not give it to your wife. Give it to your mother-in-law, tell her it's some fancy organic thing from a trusty source, and she will love you. Don't ask how I know that. I've done it.

essentially all we need to do is put a bit more. A few drops of this vitamin E oil, and that is basically a cosmetic cream

7:58Does the DIY version actually work?

Give it a couple of hours and the oily mix sets into a solid, buttery paste. I wipe a thin layer onto an untreated saya and hold it next to a plain one, and the difference is plain to see, or more honestly, to feel — more figure, more colour, more warmth, which is very hard to show on camera. A single batch works out to about one and a half litres of this board butter. That's saya and cutting boards covered for a long while, and because you made it yourself you know it's the top ingredients going into it.

you can see it has a lot more visible figure now