Eze Lap

Does a Butcher’s steel actually make your knives any sharper ?

I have good quality knives that I sharpen with various things, but mostly with a fine, diamond encrusted dry stone (eze lap) . When I run them over the steel, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I’ve heard that it “aligns the edge”, whatever that means. Using a steel, is it all just for show ?

Very short answer is yes, steeling makes the edge sharper, but not by sharpening, but by realigning the deformed edge, which (edge deformation) is the primary reason for dulling the knives, not the loss of metal due to friction.

The initial and final result of steeling are shown on this micrograph – http://zknives.com/knives/knimgtmpl.shtml?/images/knives/macro/sestudy/wtnbnkstrop150x01.jpg

The steel has to be smooth though. I have no idea why majority of the steeling rods sold with knife sets are grooved, it actually damages the deformed edge, ripping the chunks out of the edge instead of pushing them back.

Steeling is not a substitute for sharpening though. You can only realign the same deformed sections only so many times. Eventually it’ll break off due to metal fatigue.
ideally you steel the knife before each use, since the deformed metal tends to “relax” back into deformed state.

One thing is, to make steeling effective you have to match the edge angle, and obviously it has to be used and deformed already. In other words, right after sharpening steeling will not make any difference. On the other hand, if the blade wasn’t sharpened for a long time the the edge is too thick and damaged, steeling will not be able to compensate for sharpening.

There’s more details on all steeling and stropping details here – http://zknives.com/knives/articles/wssteeling.shtml

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