If you sharpen blades only occasionally, and know that you will not need to remove a chip along the edge of the blade, a combination stone will suffice. The size you choose depends mostly on a trade-off between cost and speed. The bigger the stone, the faster you can work. Smaller stones work just as well, they simply take a little longer. How much money do I need to spend?

Sharp Pebble is a well-known brand name in the whetstone industry and is the first choice for many people who sharpen their own knives. Having said that, if you need to use whetstones more often, go for 2000 and 3000 grit since they are less coarse. However, this doesn’t really mean that you should sharpen your knives on a daily basis, but just a bit more often, because they aren’t designed for maintaining the edge, but for sharpening.Most knife owners would stop at this grit level after sharpening a knife with this level of grit. The knife will be sharp enough for most home, outdoor, or kitchen uses once it has been finished on these stones. Global knives are a range of Japanese kitchen knives made from CROMOVA 18, a type of stainless steel.

You can get polishing or finishing stones that go all the way up to 20 000 and 30 000-grit, but these generally overkill for most people’s purposes. Fine grit whetstones between 600 and 1000 grit are used to refine the sharp edge of a knife. In the sharpening process for a dull knife, these stones will be used after the medium grit stones. A: While a medium grit stone can be used for general sharpening, having a range of grits will provide the best results by allowing you to repair, sharpen, and polish the blade properly. Now there's some conflicting opinions about what ranges make up coarse, medium, and fine for Japanese style whetstones, but In an edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward, he suggests that anything below 800 grit is coarse, 800-2000 grit are medium to medium-fine, and anything above 2000 is fine or a polishing stone. Keep your focus to maintain the consistency of the knife’s pressure and angle with the whetstone surface. The more accuracy you can manage, the better result you get.Learning how to use a whetstone and a honing rod will give you the sharpest knives with the longest possible lifespan. And while it might sound counterintuitive, the sharpest knives are actually the safest knives. A dull knife needs added pressure to cut, and it slips easily, which can easily mean cutting your fingers. A razor-sharp knife glides exactly where you want it to with ease. Perhaps the single biggest improvement you can make to your cooking is to ensure you have the sharpest knives possible. Still, remember that when choosing a whetstone grit you should think about the purpose. So, if you need a stone for your meat knife, you’d rather stop at 4000 or 6000 grit. If you use the knife only for cutting vegetables or fruit, go as far as you like, maybe 8000 grit stone.

It is unusual to find a whetstone above 6000 grit in the collection of stones used by people who sharpen their own knives. These are probably the stones that you would use most frequently out of your entire whetstone collection, and for this reason, we recommend that you get a quality set of stones in this grit range. Now you know what grits to use for all different knife types. So if you are interested in buying these whetstones, you can find them in the table below: UsageIn more practical terms, lower grit stones are used for abrading metal to repair minor chips, medium grit stones are all purpose used to sharpen and establish the edge, and high grit stones are used to polish the edge. Your knife is sharp, but it's still on the lower end of the spectrum. It should be sharper for general food prep. My knife can cut through newspaper but still with some difficulty