The Three Steps Necessary to Sharpening a Knife

Sharpening a knife isn't as simple as you might think. For instance, there is not just a single step in the process. In fact, there are essentially three different steps to sharpening a knife and the only way you can actually guarantee that any of the three methods will leave you with a high quality cutting instrument is to take it a professional. Even so, the tools necessary to do it yourself are readily available and if you don't mind not having professional quality work, you can do an acceptable job of sharpening that blade at home.

Grinding.

As you might suspect from the connotation of the word itself, grinding is not something that should be done too often. To grind the blade literally means to grind away the metal. How often should you grind your knife or have it done for you? If it's a high quality piece of workmanship, this should be done at most twice in a single decade, and a top notch knife that you take care of will require grinding just once in that period. A cheap knife won't really benefit much at all, to be perfectly honest. (Nor will even a high quality knife that you get clean by placing it in a dishwasher. Putting a good knife into a dishwasher even once can corrupt it forever.) In fact, the only time you should ever consider grinding your blade if the knife has become noticeably dull or if it has gotten badly chipped.

Honing.