Knife Care & Sharpening
Jagged Mountain Knives
Why Should You Choose Carbon Steel?
Although stainless steel is the most common material for knives, carbon steel is often the preferred choice of professionals. That's because a carbon steel blade, when properly cared for, holds a sharp edge better than stainless steel. The flip side is that "proper care" of carbon steel involves a bit more day-to-day maintenance.
Clean While You Work
One of the most important steps in taking care of your carbon steel is keeping the blade clean. That means wiping and cleaning your knife while you use it. It may seem tedious at first, but it will keep your blade from rusting. This is especially true when working with acidic foods, like lemons and tomatoes, which tend to be particularly tough on carbon steel.
Patina vs. Rust
Over time, your knife will develop a gray-blue patina. Don't freak! There's a difference between patina and rust. Patina = good; rust = bad. A healthy patina actually protects your knife from rust.
Handle
Caring for the handle of your knife is very easy. All your handle needs is a little bit of oil about every other week unless it is being used very intensely or in a very drastic climate. Such as very humid or very non humid areas. Tung oil or Linseed oil work the best. Do not put motor oil on your handle!!! If you have a sheath, the sheath could also be oiled as well.
Sharpening/Honing/Stropping
Your knife should not need to be sharpened often, simply stropping or honing your edge should keep your knife razor sharp. To strop your knife you need a strap of leather with polish grit on it. Just rub your edge along the leather. There are great videos on youtube showing how to do this. Honing your edge does more than stropping. You need a honing rod. Just use it on the edge of your knife. If you don't know how to hone, youtube has great videos. You can use sharpening stones to sharpen your knife. Just sharpen your knife at the angle of the sharpness grind (it will be between 15 to 30 degrees depending on the knife). The way that we sharpen our knives is with a 220 grit belt on a belt sander. After we get an edge with the 220 grit we work our way up to a 800 grit belt. Then we go to our buffer and buff the blade. (for chef knives and razors we go all the way to a strop) This is the fastest and very good way to sharpen a knife but very few people have the tools to do it this way so you can use a stone instead.