- Joined
- Monday July 5, 2010
- Location
- The world is my Office
I have some hones that have never been used to sharpen a razor but have been used to sharpen chef knives.
Needless to say they were badly dished to the point that if my old Japanese head chef saw them he would cut my nackers off with a very sharp sushi knife. I was a sushi chef for 4 years so learned about using the toishi (sharpening stone). In the past to lap them one of the guys would rub them on the back door step untill they looked flat ish we could make the blades sharp enough to shave with but I could not tell you if it would have been a comfortable shave but a drop of water on your arm and it would nock all the hairs off no problem.
Anyway back on track my stones were bad so I looked on SRP forum and followed their guide to lapping hones.
So I had on the kitchen work top 320 grit wet and dry paper water and a pencil stones in to soak.
First problem was I poured water on to the work top placed the wet and dry onto it and it curled up faster than you can say Jimmy Jack Jones so that was a pain but managed to reduce the problem by just wiping the work top with a damp cloth and pouring water on to the abrasive side.
I marked a grid on to the side of the stone that was to be lapped and off I went I knew this had to be repeated a couple of times because the pencil can get washed off.
Now the question I have is although it was taking the pencil grid off towards the end I noticed that in a couple of rubs it was coming of instantly but washing the stone and looking at it under a light I could still see it was not quite flat so I carried on untill I could see it was flat. Is this being OTT or will just being able to remove the pencil grid very very quickly be good enough?
Also towards the end of lapping I would begin to feel suction on the stone to the paper is this a good sign or a bad thing?
Anyway 2 1/2 hours later I had finished.
http://i770.photobucket.com/albums/xx349/Big-Dave-X10/2010-08-21200035.jpg
the big one I call the beast is a 1000 grit Japanese hard sinthetic stone I forget the make,the middle one again Japanese a double sided 800/1200 soft stone and the one on the right is between 1000-1200 but do not know the make it is hard.
I was told by the first Japanese head sushi chef I worked with (who's family had ran a sushi shop in Tokyo for at least 3 generations) that although it takes longer a hard stone gives a better edge and that a modern soft stone is quicker but does not give as good an edge my observation of this comment was Both did the job but he may have been right and that I had missed some small detail that he would know about but would not tell us because he was such an old fashioned Bastard!!! but thats another story. He would go 800/1000/sometimes 10000 on his knives the 10000 stone was only used when we had ViP's in and it would put a mirror finish on the blade.
After honing that lot with a big dollops of elbow grease I'm Knackered.
I would be interested to hear any comments on what I have done and is there anything I could do to improve even further what I have done so far.
Needless to say they were badly dished to the point that if my old Japanese head chef saw them he would cut my nackers off with a very sharp sushi knife. I was a sushi chef for 4 years so learned about using the toishi (sharpening stone). In the past to lap them one of the guys would rub them on the back door step untill they looked flat ish we could make the blades sharp enough to shave with but I could not tell you if it would have been a comfortable shave but a drop of water on your arm and it would nock all the hairs off no problem.
Anyway back on track my stones were bad so I looked on SRP forum and followed their guide to lapping hones.
So I had on the kitchen work top 320 grit wet and dry paper water and a pencil stones in to soak.
First problem was I poured water on to the work top placed the wet and dry onto it and it curled up faster than you can say Jimmy Jack Jones so that was a pain but managed to reduce the problem by just wiping the work top with a damp cloth and pouring water on to the abrasive side.
I marked a grid on to the side of the stone that was to be lapped and off I went I knew this had to be repeated a couple of times because the pencil can get washed off.
Now the question I have is although it was taking the pencil grid off towards the end I noticed that in a couple of rubs it was coming of instantly but washing the stone and looking at it under a light I could still see it was not quite flat so I carried on untill I could see it was flat. Is this being OTT or will just being able to remove the pencil grid very very quickly be good enough?
Also towards the end of lapping I would begin to feel suction on the stone to the paper is this a good sign or a bad thing?
Anyway 2 1/2 hours later I had finished.
http://i770.photobucket.com/albums/xx349/Big-Dave-X10/2010-08-21200035.jpg
the big one I call the beast is a 1000 grit Japanese hard sinthetic stone I forget the make,the middle one again Japanese a double sided 800/1200 soft stone and the one on the right is between 1000-1200 but do not know the make it is hard.
I was told by the first Japanese head sushi chef I worked with (who's family had ran a sushi shop in Tokyo for at least 3 generations) that although it takes longer a hard stone gives a better edge and that a modern soft stone is quicker but does not give as good an edge my observation of this comment was Both did the job but he may have been right and that I had missed some small detail that he would know about but would not tell us because he was such an old fashioned Bastard!!! but thats another story. He would go 800/1000/sometimes 10000 on his knives the 10000 stone was only used when we had ViP's in and it would put a mirror finish on the blade.
After honing that lot with a big dollops of elbow grease I'm Knackered.
I would be interested to hear any comments on what I have done and is there anything I could do to improve even further what I have done so far.