Learn To Shape, Sharpen, And Hone Your Knives

Sharp Matters in our day to day tasks. A sharp, well maintained knife creates ease and precision in the variety of projects at hand, whether that is in the shop, during a hunt, on the farm, or on the job-site. The tools you use go through rigorous use and knowing how to properly care and sharpen these tools is crucial to making your life easier, tasks quicker, and overall, success in what you do.

Work Sharp is dedicated to educating the world on sharp and the three best things to know how to properly perform on your blade is shaping, sharpening, and honing.

Shaping

Shaping your blade is needed for a few different reasons: to repair a blade, to re-establish the edge on a extremely worn blade, and to change the type of grind on your knife edge. We also recommend shaping your blade when using a new sharpening system for the first time. This ensures your knife has its greatest symmetry and re-establishes the angle. Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpeners come with coarse belt abrasives designed to help shape your blade before progressing down to finer belts for sharpening and honing purposes.

With Work Sharp, shaping is as easy as placing the proper abrasive belt on the sharpener, pulling your knife along the angle guide, and creating a burr on each side of the blade before switching out your belt for sharpening.

Sharpening

Sharpening is best after heavy usage of your knife and your blade has become too dull to cut. Sharpening is also the next step after shaping a blade. With Work Sharp products, the process for shaping and sharpening is the same, with the only change being the type of belt abrasive you use.

The most important step to sharpening, if you did not shape first, is raising a burr. Watch our sharpening video to see just how easy shaping or sharpening on a Work Sharp can be.

We recommend a sharpening cycle once a month for knives that see medium to heavy use. Between sharpening, maintain the knife by honing.

Honing

Maintaining a blade during or after use will help keep the edge sharp longer. This is where honing comes in. Ceramic rods are a great and fast solution, many which are designed into Work Sharp Sharpeners, like the Guided Field Sharpener. Another great option is the fine abrasive belt that is included with the powered sharpening solutions by Work Sharp. Honing is the process of straightening out any minor waves or bends in the blade and you will feel a noticeable difference after just a few strokes along the belt or ceramic. Honing creates minimal material take-off and the more often you hone and maintain your knife, the greater life you will see out of your blade.

Want to know more? Visit our Sharpening Tips Page to learn how Work Sharp can make sharp fast and easy for everyone on any knife.