How to Hone a Knife in 6 Simple Steps

A honing steel or rod is a knife-sharpening tool that returns knives to their optimal functionality after you cut food items. Honing rods are for keeping up routine maintenance rather than hewing a knife back from total dullness. Over a long period of time or in the case of extreme dullness, your knives will most likely need to undergo sharpening with more specialized equipment. You can sharpen both carbon steel and stainless steel knives on these rods. Consider using a ceramic honing rod if you plan to whet a ceramic knife.

Honing rods help you maintain your knives’ versatility and functionality. Consider following these six easy steps to sharpen a knife with a honing steel:

1. 1. Adapt to the circumstances. You should sharpen a serrated knife and a paring knife using different methods. If you have a serrated knife, you’ll need to sharpen each individual indentation on your honing steel. Otherwise, you can just drag the entirety of the blade across the rod repetitively.
2. 2. Determine dullness. Kitchen knives will dull at different rates over time. More often than not, a honing steel will refurbish the side of the blade without any need for additional equipment. However, if you’ve had your knives for a very long time and they just can’t cut like they used to, it’s probably time to forgo honing and turn to a more heavy-duty sharpening method.
3. 3. Drag across the sharpening steel. Apply light pressure to drag the sharp edge of the knife from the bottom to the top of the steel away from you. Alternatively, you can place the steel vertically in front of you on a cutting board or another flat surface and drag the knife across it horizontally.
4. 4. Repeat the process. After you sharpen one side of the blade, you’ll need to whet the opposite side of the knife edge, too. Realign the edge of the blade on the opposing side and drag this new edge against the steel from the heel to the tip of the knife. You can interchange this process with each stroke or focus on one side for a while before moving on to the other.
5. 5. Scrap any shavings. If this process releases any knife shavings, make sure to discard them immediately. Run your knife under water and use a thick washcloth or oven mitt to cautiously wipe down the sharp edge of the knife. The last thing you want is for steel shavings to show up in your next meal.
6. 6. Use the correct angle. As you drag the top bevel to the heel of the knife, you must ensure the blade itself is at the right angle for sharpening. As a general rule, you should position your knife at a twenty-degree angle along the sharpening rod.

Even the highest-quality knife set will lose its sharpness over time, so you should hone your knives after usage as often as you can. Sharpening knives with a honing steel is a part of routine maintenance. Honing the cutting edge of your knife will allow you to exponentially prolong the period of time before you’ll need to sharpen your knife with more intensive tools. Remember that an aspect of practicing good knife skills is also maintaining your equipment.

While honing sharpens knives, it does so by returning your blade as closely as possible to how it was before you cut with it. By comparison, sharpening a knife in the proper sense means truly stropping it to a new degree of sharpness. When a previously sharp knife goes completely dull, it’s time to put aside the honing rod for more heavy-duty kitchen tools.

Whetstones and waterstones are both sharpening stones built expressly for purposes of sharpening knives—they usually come with both a coarse and a fine grit side. There are also more high-tech knife sharpening tools—like electric sharpeners—that serve the same function.

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