Thread: Knife re-edging

I have a few Japanese kitchen knives and do all my own sharpening.

I would definately take the knife to someone who has experience with single bevel Japanese knives - I have sharpened them before, they aren't too difficult but it is easy to muck up the geometry and lose the magic.

There is a bit of work involved with this repair and to get the best results I thin it needs to be done by hand on waterstones. To keep the contrast between the dark, matte cladding and the bright core steel you will probably need someone with a japanese natural polishing stone. I am a knife nut so have all the gears but I'm not sure how many sharpening services are set up for it, unless they are a specialist with Japanese knives.

+1 to taking it to a good Japanese restaurant and talking to the chefs - the good ones know their stuff and a lot of them will do their own sharpening. They will be able to give some good advice.

I find with the hard knives tiny micro chips happen regularly but those look pretty nasty - it can happen when the knives are new (if they have been finished on a belt grinder or similar it can ruin the temper at the very edge) but otherwise I think your mate has gone a bit hard with it... When it gets sharpened you could ask them to do a sightly steeper convex edge for the last mm or so, you lose a bit of cutting ability but gain durability.

Another option which works well on Deba knives is to vary the edge angle along the knife, keep the edge on the front 2/3rds at 15 or so degrees and then the back 1/3rd put a 25-30 degree edge on. You use the tip and belly to slice, and the heel to power through bones.

Hope that helps, I love Japanese knives but they can be a pain in the arse at times!