If you need to sharpen something quickly, then an ordinary whetstone for sharpening a knife is suitable. It would be faster, better and more convenient to straighten the blade on an emery, but this work requires not only certain skill, but also knowledge.
The fact is that the sharpener raises the temperature of the grinding material with high speed, and this is fraught with the uncontrolled process of spontaneous tempering of the hardened blade of the blade. The result is predictable. The knife after such sharpening can be discarded.
It turns out that the quality indicators of a manually sharpened tool are able to exceed the performance of a tool brought to an appropriate level by factory automation equipment.
Any whetstone for sharpening a knife necessarily consists of two fractions:
- abrasive grains of a harder material than the one from which the processed object is made;
- matrices from a plastic substance that is capable of holding the first element in the form of the shape of the same bar.
Typically, the hardness of the template is comparable to that of the material being grinded, sometimes less.
It is necessary to choose the right characteristics of the matrix, this will allow it to wear during operation and expose new abrasive grains. The old ones, dulling, crumble. Simply put, when the material being processed is erased, the bar for sharpening the knife is also erased. This is his normal job. If the template is too soft, the bar will sharpen poorly. In this case, abrasive grains will be pulled out of the processed material from the soft matrix. Self-cleaning, the bar will quickly lose the necessary shape of the contact surface with the material being processed. Processing will be inaccurate.
The main characteristic of an abrasive is the uniformity of its particle sizes. If the grain size is different, then the sharpening will not be very accurate, and the result will be random. Of course, the bar for sharpening a knife should be of high quality, but we will make a reservation right away: the quality of work directly depends on the skill of the master, and only then on the quality factor of the material.
The king of
abrasive materials is considered a diamond. In its crystal lattice, the grains are sharp. In the process, they do not change it. Simply put, don't get dull.
A diamond whetstone for sharpening knives will never lose its flat shape. Such spraying has a thickness measured in millimeters, so all conversations on the development of the surface of such devices are groundless. Before working with such a bar, it must be moistened with water, then it will abrade metal surfaces faster, and it will heat less.
But the most "running" were and remain ceramic bars for sharpening knives. The indisputable advantage of such tools is their durability and a huge resource. The matrix of such bars wears out slowly. But there is a flip side to the coin. During operation, the ceramic bars quickly become clogged with the smallest particles of worn steel, and this entails the loss of abrasive properties. To return the working properties of such a sharpener will help a conventional kitchen dishwashing detergent.
And at the end, a little advice for beginners. You do not need to immediately purchase expensive fixtures. Even the best abrasive will be just a bar if there are no skills to work with it.