Yes, I agree with the waterstones.

With care, you may find a sharpening service which is familiar with
the techniques of using waterstones. Chances are, though, they'll
simply lay your knives on a rather coarse grindstone and hand them
back to you with their invoice.

Simply put, sharpening Kapanese knives is a bit of an art. It's
possible to learn how to do it (and it's a most satisfying
accomplishment) but it does require some skill and practice.

One begins by using a coarse (1000-grit) waterstone to shape the edge
and to remove all those little nicks and gouges. Then the edge is
honed to a very fine edge on a 6000-grit stone (it feels almost as
smooth as a piece of marble.)

In general, a knife made with good steel (or layered steel as in
Japanese knives) can be sharpened to a razor edge with two
waterstones. In fact, after finish polishing (on the fine stone) the
ground edge should be as smooth and as bright as a mirror. Often, I'll
follow the fine stone honing with polishing strokes on a scrap of
leather that's been rubbed with jeweler's rouge (iron oxide.) That
edge will be razor sharp.

As a cabinetmaker, I discovered Japanese Waterstones about 20 years
ago after decades of using Arkansas stones and machine oil diluted
with kerosene. The differences are remarkable. The waterstones
generally cut faster and produce a very highly-polished edge. My
kitchen knives (like my woodworking chisels and plane irons) are
routinely so sharp as to shave the hair on my forearm easily.

A funny: My wife could always tell when I had spent some time
sharpening my tools from my shaved-off forearm!

Pixmaker




On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:28:51 -0500, " Nartker" >
wrote:

>I recently bought a single bevel Japanese slicer. What is the proper way to
>set and keep the edge?
>