There are a few things to consider when choosing the right grit for sharpening your knives. The type of knife, the level of dullness, and your own personal preference will all play a role in determining which grit is best for you.
If you are using a honing rod or stone, a lower grit (around 200) will be sufficient. For more serious sharpening, you’ll want to move up to a medium grit (400-600). And for very dull or damaged blades, a higher grit (800-1000) may be necessary.
Personal preference also comes into play when selecting a grit. Some people prefer a sharper edge, while others find that a slightly less sharp edge is easier to work with. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what level of sharpness is right for you.
If you’re not sure which grit to choose, start with a medium grit and work your way up or down from there until you find the perfect one for your needs.
You can use the following method to determine the correct grit for sharpening your Knife.
Knives with chipped edges that have been damaged
In order to sharpen a chipped, cracked or damaged knife, I recommend using a grit of less than 1000.
The grit of 250 on a coarse sharpening stone will remove a massive amount of blade material, and can be used quickly to repair a damaged blade or create a new bevel angle.
Knives that are extremely dull, but undamaged
Choosing a coarse grit between 1000 and 1500 is sufficient for knives that are simply dull. Using this type of grit, you can restore a cutting edge without having to remove a great deal of material from the blade.
Knives that have been sharpened need to be finished
Start with a coarse grit of about 4000 after basic sharpening. Using this finer grit is more than just sharpening, it restores the cutting edge to its original polished finish.
If you want to polish the cutting edge of the blade without compromising the durability of it, this is a good choice of grit for you. When it comes to meat knives, you should not sharpen it more than 4000 grits.
For a Perfectly Polished Knife
A perfect razor sharpness is required for some knives.
There are these types of edges necessary for perfectly slicing delicate ingredients like seafood, but they are not necessary for every knife in your kitchen. Take, for instance, your fillet knife.
Using a polishing stone with a very fine grit of 6000 to 8000 will produce a perfectly polished, razor-sharp, mirror finish.
Sharpening knives with serrated edges
It is important to sharpen your serrated knives regularly, just like you do your other knives, but sharpening serrated knives requires different tools and techniques.
While you can use flat edge is a regular process, like sharpening all of your knives, sharpening serrated knives requires different tools and techniques than sharpening knives with flat edges.narration altogether and leave you with a flat edge.
Conical steel is required to sharpen a serrated knife. Using steel will allow you to maintain the special one-sided bevel angle of serrated blades due to the cone shape which fits into the teeth no matter how narrow they are.
When using a serrated blade, you should keep in mind that the teeth will wear differently depending on how you use it.
When you use a serrated blade for cutting bread or steak for example, the blade is moved back and forth in a sawing motion, which wears both sides of the teeth evenly.
Nevertheless, if you are slicing fruit with a thick skin and tender fruit, such as tomatoes, peaches, and the like, the blade will be doing the majority of its cutting on the inside of the teeth, as delicate fruits are usually cut by pulling the handle.
If the serrated blade is used differently than flat-edged knives, one side of its teeth could wear out more than the other.
Best Grit for All-purpose Kitchen Use
It is highly recommended that anyone searching for kitchen knives who wants them to be useful and effective without a lot of hassle and fuss picks up a medium-grit sharpener (1000 to 1500 grits) that will work fine for the majority of purposes.
If you have only one medium grit sharpener like this, it may take a little longer to restore a good edge to a dull knife. Thereby, if you only have one medium grit stone, you should sharpen your knives more often and avoid letting them become very dull.
Nonetheless, for most people who are choosing between spending a little bit more time on their knives more frequently, or spending more time and less frequently on two stones with rough and medium grits to sharpen, it makes more sense to choose a single stone and sharpen more often.
Besides the conical ceramic steel, you also need a conical hard steel in order to sharpen serrated knives, and to maintain a good edge on your bread knives and steak knives. Experts have agreed that (so far) manual tools are better suited to sharpen serrated knives than electric knife sharpeners.
With time, most home cooks will require a flattening stone as well as a sharpening stone.
Over time, a sharpening stone will develop a slight curve, making it difficult to sharpen flat-edge blades.
The flatness of a sharpening stone can be restored with a flattening stone. The best thing you can do to maintain the edge of your knives is to maintain the sharpening stone itself.