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Oct 17, 2024

The Best Knife Sharpeners of 2024 | GearJunkie Tested

Not all knife edges are sharpened equally, but all neglected edges are pretty equally useless. So, we tasked our edge obsessives — the sorts who always regrind every factory edge to get them just

Not all knife edges are sharpened equally, but all neglected edges are pretty equally useless. So, we tasked our edge obsessives — the sorts who always regrind every factory edge to get them just right — to round up the best knife sharpeners on the market.

Led by Ian Graber-Stiehl, a professional blade sharpener, we tested each system against just about every blade you could come across: budget folders, chisels, professional cutlery, high-end EDC steels, axes, machetes, shears, horse clippers, saws — you name it.

We used the systems here in kitchens, in the field, and at the workshop to see not only what they sharpen best but where they’re best suited. After all, the field sharpener an angler uses for shore lunch touch-ups isn’t ideal for sharpening knives at a farmer’s market — and a belt grinder that can quickly repair trail crew axes won’t be appreciated by the apartment neighbors of anyone using it nearby.

The result: We’ve compiled a list of not only the best of the best sharpening systems but also the edges with which they excel and where — and a Buyer’s Guide at the end for everything you need to know to take your bevels to the next level. If sharpening knives is new to you, consult our Price & Value and Comparison Chart sections, as well.

Editor’s Note: We updated our Knife Sharpeners guide on September 30, 2024, to add the Sharp Pebble Whetstone — a budget-friendly option for those who want to hone their craft — as well as the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 — a masterful do-it-all option.

What makes the Work Sharp Ken Onion Edition Elite Knife & Tool Sharpener MK.2 ($299) elite is the fact that it is an easy-to-use, complete knife and tool sharpening system. Comprised of a knife and tool sharpener, as well as a grinding attachment, you won’t find anything else on this list that can do everything this sharpener can do.

Motorized belt sharpening can be a little intimidating. After all, if you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, you can ruin the heat treat on your blade. This will make the knife brittle and unreliable. Thankfully, the MK.2 has a 7-speed motor to help limit or eliminate that from happening.

Also, there is no need to worry about bogging the motor down; it’s designed to take your use and abuse. But keep in mind — you should always let the tool do the work.

Both the knife and tool sharpener and the grinding attachment can be adjusted from 10-35 degrees on each side to allow you to re-sharpen anything with a blade. That includes serrated knives as well. You’ll find yourself relying more on the standard knife sharpener, which allows for easy switching from side to side for the majority of your knives. You’ll need to switch over to the grinder attachment for your lawnmower blades, hatchets, and chisels.

The MK.2 comes with and uses 3/4″ x 12” belts. In the box, you’ll get 1 each of Work Sharp’s P120 (Extra Coarse), X65 (Coarse), X22 (Medium), X4 (Fine), 6000 (Extra Fine), and 12000 (Super Fine) belts. Additionally, the grinder attachment uses 1” x 18” belts. In the box, you’ll find one each of Work Sharp’s P120 (Extra Coarse), X65 (Coarse), X22 (Medium), X4 (Fine), and 12000 (Super Fine) belts.

Over the years, it’s become clear that Work Sharp only produces quality products that are easy to use and durable enough to withstand your most stubborn tasks. The upgrade to a seven-speed motor on the MK.2 is revolutionary. Adding a grinder as a special attachment gives you complete control over keeping all of your knives and tools up and running for years to come.

Pro tip: Get an aftermarket leather stropping belt or two and some stropping compound. They’ll touch up edges without running through belts or kicking up dust.

Work Sharp’s Precision Adjust Elite Kit ($140) is a fantastic option for those focused on bang for their buck, portability, and straightforwardness. Its clamp rotates with ease to sharpen either side of a blade. The stones integrate into a rotating housing, allowing them to stow and swap easily. The Precision Adjust’s angle setting system allows for minute adjustments, making matching the angle of any blade a breeze.

The Elite Kit expands on a sensible grit progression system capable of quickly taking even extremely dull, high-hardness steels like S90V from dull to plenty sharp and relatively polished. And, at only a half-inch wide, the stones also easily sharpen recurved edges — a tricky blade profile to maintain.

While it is high in precision, the Adjust Elite is a touch lower in accuracy. Like many clamp-based systems, the actual sharpening angle depends on the blade’s height and can vary significantly from the labeled angle settings. So, reprofiling — regrinding an edge to a different angle — calls for an angle-finder cube (like the one that comes with the Precision’s Big Brother).

We also found that reprofiling with the Precision Adjust is a slow affair. While the diamond stones make sharpening a breeze, their small size and relatively high starting grit aren’t the best for heavy regrinding. For quick tune-ups, we far preferred the belt-driven Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2.

Our biggest pet peeve was the clamp’s tendency to flex under pressure, changing the sharpening angle. However, this is easily solved with anything wedged between the clamp and the base to prevent flexing. A sharpener with a rotated clamp, like the Wicked Edge Gen 4 Pro, doesn’t suffer from this issue.

Overall, most of our nitpicks were only relevant on the margins: with heavy blades that made the system want to tip or when completely reprofiling super hard steels. For people simply looking to keep their EDCs and cutlery razor sharp with a system that is easy to use, quick to stow, and won’t break the bank, the Precision Adjust Elite Kit is a fantastically conscientious pick.

Pro tip: The Elite includes an arm with a ceramic rod to knock the burr off an edge. Be sure to kick the angle setting a few degrees high so it hits the very apex of the edge.

DMT’s Dia-Sharp Stones, especially the double-sided 6-inch versions (starting at $55), are the king when it comes to quick, quality, compact, cost-effective freehand sharpening. Two stones, the Extra Coarse/Coarse and the Fine/Extra Fine, especially combined with DMT’s Magna Base Holder, can sharpen anything you can while taking up all of the space of a 1.5L bottle.

Like any diamond stone, they do remove material aggressively. Likewise, what DMT considers “Extra-fine” is still a bit coarse for a finishing stone, in our minds. The company does offer an Extra-Extra-Fine finishing stone, but only single-sided, and not in smaller sizes.

So, the Dia-Sharps may be overkill for light touch-ups. They also leave a pretty aggressive scratch pattern on edges, need to be dried completely before long-term storage to prevent rust, and are only as capable as your freehand technique is good.

However, the Dia-Sharps punch well above their weight class, especially for EDC-ers and woodworkers. Modern medium- and high-end EDC blades are typically high in alloy components and harder than the abrasives traditionally used to sharpen blades. Many whetstones need to be soaked before use and leveled every so often.

These Diamond stones never require leveling or soaking and can quickly remove material from even the hardest modern steels. Since not every company’s “grits” are the same size, DMT’s forthrightness about how many microns a given grit is extremely useful. The stones don’t, however, have a handle like the Smith’s Diamond Combo Sharpener, so you’ll need a flat surface to get your work done.

Simply put, if you need to quickly put a razor’s edge on just about any cutting tool (other than maybe a recurve blade) in just about any steel while carrying little, the DMT Dia-Sharp Stones are a premier pick. Hence, they have been the go-to workplace sharpener for us through years of tending bars where coworkers chipped blades every shift.

Pro Tip: The 6 x 2″ stones were our pick, but you don’t have to stick with one size. DMT’s Magna Base kit can easily accommodate just about any size diamond stone.

There is a good reason why the Wicked Edge Gen 4 Pro ($1,000) is at the top of the wishlist of every EDC fanatic and pro sharpener we know. It makes getting incredibly sharp and consistent edges a breeze at a professional pace — with accessories.

The backbone of the Gen 4 is a double-sided diamond-based abrasive system that allows for easy adjustment of both sides. Simply clamp a blade in, match the angle (made especially easy with the micro-adjustor), or set a new one, and get to grinding with both hands — for a price.

The Gen 4’s biggest downside is that its high price is the starting point, not the end. Even without the micro-adjust and storage shelf (which aren’t strictly necessary), the limited accommodations of the vice, the inherent variability of a clamp system, and the quality you’d have to turn out to justify the price make additional accessories necessary.

Acute, especially asymmetrically ground Japanese chef’s knives will call for a Low Angle Adapter. Blades over 3/16″ thick will require alternative jaws, which, even then, tap out shy of extremely meaty blades like traditional khukuris. Reprofiling blades and mirror-polishing blades for discerning customers will call for a digital angle finder and a suite of extra stones.

The tradeoff here is simple: For the vast and overwhelming array of blades that people pay to have sharpened, chef’s knives, EDC blades, hunters, filet knives — even that one Christmas gift ceramic santoku that’s been rattling around dull in a drawer for a decade — there isn’t a more consistent, user-friendly system for getting amazing edges. Not to mention … the Gen 4 Pro is just sexy.

If the price of the Gen 4 Pro galls you, you can get a similar style and cheaper sharpener in the KME Precision Deluxe Kit (or even the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite), you just give up the better centrally clamped knife position. The clamp on the Wicked Edge simply works perfectly, which helps to explain the price.

Pro tip: Clamp systems tend to leave a steeper edge angle near the tips of curved blades. With the Gen 4, it’s a breeze to reposition a blade in the clamp so the belly of a blade will sit at the same height, and be ground at the same angle, as the rest of the knife.

Smith’s Diamond Combo Sharpener ($20) has had a place in our pockets for over 10 years for good reason: It’s simple, and it works. Yes, there are field sharpeners with more bells and whistles. Work Sharp’s Guided Field Sharpener, for example, comes with two diamond plates, multiple ceramic rods, an angle guide, a strop, and a broadhead wrench. It also comes with a higher price tag and more weight.

There are smaller and lighter field sharpeners, like the glut of pocket pull-through sharpeners all over the market. But rarely do they put on as good of an edge. For a field sharpener, a stowable and streamlined capability is the name of the game. Fittingly, the Smith’s Diamond Combo handle can sheath the diamond plates. This protects the abrasives and your pack alike while providing a slim, packable, weather-resistant profile.

We also found the handle ergonomic, putting distance between your hands and edges while making field sharpening easy. Likewise, the grits of the diamond plates are more than enough to put a working edge on just about any blade.

The Diamond Combo is exactly what a field sharpener should be: cheap, easy to pack, hard to break, and effective on everything from hunting knives and broadheads to fishing hooks and multitools. We might reach for the Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker a bit more often if we’ve got more downtime in camp, but for pure on-the-go versatility, this sharpener is where it’s at.

Pro tip: Short sectional strokes along a blade, followed by a few passes on the fine grit at a slightly steeper angle make it a breeze to deburr and micro bevel an edge — giving you a keen edge in no time.

There is no shortage of pull-through sharpeners marketed for kitchen knives, but the Tormek T-1 ($371) is the best we’ve ever used. The vast majority of kitchen-oriented sharpeners are manual pull-through carbide stones that often damage edges. Electric pull-throughs can get an edge relatively sharp but typically offer little variability in angle range and mediocre permanence.

The Tormek T-1 is another beast entirely. Its 600-grit stones made short work of restoring even relatively damaged edges. The 8-22-degree range makes it easy to match the edge angle of almost any style of cutlery. The felt and magnet thoughtfully integrated into the clamp made it easy to ensure that blades didn’t get scratched while drawing them through.

We did find it to be slow at completely reprofiling edges — something that would be helped by Tormek offering a wider range of replaceable wheels. This is where a belt sharpener, like the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2, takes the lead, as swapping out different grits is simple. Although incredibly simple to use, a slow hand can also easily round out the tip or heel of a knife over time.

The T-1 also sits at a niche nexus. It can sharpen most blades but is best in a kitchen. It’s large for a home kitchen sharpener but a bit limited for professional kitchens.

However, between a whisper-quiet motor, an integrated handle, and a frankly gorgeous design, the Tormek T-1 wouldn’t be out of place on any countertop. With a wide angle range, an effective abrasive system, and the ability to accommodate everything from the smallest paring knife to the largest bone cleaver, the T-1 is a premier pick for passionate chefs — both home and line cooks alike.

Pro tip: While the T-1’s clamp is great for most blades, especially flexible ones like filet knives, removing it allows the T-1 to easily accommodate tall cleavers.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a cutting tool the Tormek T-4 Bushcraft ($590) can’t put a professional-quality edge on. Throughout our testing, the only edge it couldn’t tackle were saws, hair clippers, and the meaty convexed recurves of khukuris. For everything else, the T-4 is a premier pick.

At its core, the T-4 Bushcraft is a rotary, water-cooled whetstone grinder/leather strop combo with jigs for knives and axes alike, which can match or regrind nearly any edge, to nearly any angle: chisels, pocketknives, cutlery, woodturning equipment, pizza cutters, even tungsten carbide, and ceramic blades. Most recently, we used the T-4 while on deployment with a wildland fire crew in Nevada to keep their pulaskis shaving sharp.

The T-4 easily hangs with our heavy hitters. With the right setup, it can grind edges just as consistent and sharp as the Wicked Edge Gen 4 in less time, and with more range. It loses out on size, utility for thick convexed tools like axes, and (without diamond stones) speed against the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 — but is far quieter, cleaner, more precise, and can’t overheat an edge.

The Tormek T-4 has a pro-quality jig and a stone for almost every type of tool. The downsides: It’s by far the most complicated system to set up and use here, and those accessories add up. After extra stones and jigs, it’s not hard for the T-4 system to blow past the Gen 4’s high price tag.

The tradeoff? The ability to get incredible results on almost any type of blade. So much so that our sharpening guru Ian Graber-Steihl said that if he could only have one guided system for sharpening everything, both client’s tools and his own alike, it’d be the T-4. After all, if a Tormek can’t sharpen it, you’d probably have to do it by hand anyway.

Pro tip: While Tormek offers tools for setting the angle, combining a measuring tool like this one with a grinding wheel calculator or using a diamond wheel with a jig that allows you to grind on the side of a wheel makes angle-setting leagues easier.

KME, especially its Precision Knife Sharpening System Deluxe Kit ($335), doesn’t excel in any one thing — but certainly earns top marks in almost everything. It’s among the smallest, quickest, most portable, easiest to use, and well-built systems in our lineup.

All KME kits come with a case for easy transport and storage. Between the build quality and swiveling stand, once set up, it offers the slickest, best-feeling operation of any manual system we’ve tested.

KME’s stones are among the smallest we’ve tested, but punch well above their weight class. The 50-grit “Beast” diamond plate included in the Deluxe Kit is particularly aptly named. The coarsest stock stone of any kit we’ve used, it makes heavy grinding leagues quicker than any other system in the lineup. Even the 100-grit coarse diamond plate included in the brand’s more cost-wise R.P.S.H. Combo Kit is a speedy beast in its own right.

Our biggest complaints were just the limited angle range and kit options. As with any clamping system, the actual grinding angle depends on the height of the blade, but the 17-30-degree range trends steep for acute cutlery. Likewise, without any micro-adjustment system, dialing in the angle can be a bit finicky. This keeps the KME from ranking higher in our lineup, but with a good eye, you can make it work.

The Deluxe is also the only KME kit that includes a suite of diamond stones and a base. Others, like the R.P.S.H. Combo, lack the base, as well as the fastest-cutting and highest-polishing stones. Compared to others in our lineup, we tended to prefer the perfect-every-time aspect of the Wicked Edge Gen 4 Pro (even at the price).

Even so, any KME kit, especially the Deluxe, is a safe bet. Its portability, speed, and ability to be used sans base make them practical for travel sharpening (perfect for those who end up sharpening familial knives during the holidays). KME’s extensive accessories, from axehead sharpeners and convexing kits to mirror-polishing strops, also allow any of its kits to be expanded into a truly impressive system.

Of all the systems we’ve tested, none are as good at sharpening as consistently or to as high a finish — right out of the box — as the Edge Pro Apex 4 Kit ($285). Unlike most of the other manual systems here, the Apex isn’t a clamp-based design — which, without a careful hand, changes the sharpening angle slightly as you run along the curve of blades.

Instead, the Apex allows you to set and slide the blade along a table. This means that the sharpening angle doesn’t change with the height of the blade either — usually eliminating the need for an angle measurer. On the downside, it can be more difficult to account for the angle at which full flat-ground blades, or those with only small flat portions, rest on the table.

The Edge Pro also offers some of the largest and finest grit stones of any angle-guided system on the market. This makes it, for our money, the easiest system for those obsessed with fine, mirror-polished edges. The tradeoff is that even the coarsest of the stock stones reprofile hard steels slowly, and themselves wear relatively quickly.

The guide arm also doesn’t have any micro-adjustment for angle-setting, and the suction cup base doesn’t like to adhere to every surface — making the Apex finicky to set up without some accessories like the bench mount. Without some prep, it’s easy to scratch up the finish of knives as you draw them along the table, since steel particulates tend to collect there.

However, the Edge Pro Apex 4 Kit is an OG. Offering arguably more in-house and aftermarket accessories and stones than any platform we’ve tested, the Apex can be expanded into one of the most economical pro-grade manual knife sharpeners on the market — some experience, time, and assembly required.

There are far faster and more consistent overengineered options in 2024, but few compare to the streamlined versatility of a good whetstone. A good freehand sharpening session is one of the most spiritual experiences a knife obsessive can have — second only to your significant other finding the bill for the last knife you bought. And few whetstones provide a better quality experience than the cost-conscious Suehiro CERAX 1010 ($33).

Much of freehand sharpening comes down to feedback and hardness. Whetstones with more softly bonded particulates typically form an abrasive slurry more quickly but require longer soaking times before use. Harder stones offer better feedback and shorter soak times but clog with swarf more quickly.

Suehiro consistently manages to hit a sweet spot, with its CERAX 1010 being a standout. It wears somewhat quickly, but cuts fast for a medium grit stone, offers tons of feedback on edge orientation, and doesn’t clog with swarf easily.

The CERAX 1010 is slow for badly damaged edges and ultra-hard high-carbide steels, but for simply livening up dull edges, it’s so much of a dream to work with that we genuinely lament that our edges rarely get dull enough to break it out. To be sure, there’s a learning curve to sharpening with a whetstone, which is why we recommend a guided system for most folks. But for those willing to slow down, it’s perfect.

For a complete freehand sharpening system, the Suehiro 5/6-Piece Sharpening Kit offered by Burrfection bundles two of our favorite whetstones, the CERAX 1010 and Rika 5000, into one fantastic package.

The Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker ($127) is the touch-up king. It is simplicity at its finest, with a pair of medium and fine stones that can be set at 15 or 20 degrees per side, a horizontal mounting option for shallower angles, and the ability to stow the entire system into itself.

Aside from quick touch-ups, there is another place where the Sharpmaker shines the most: micro beveling. This practice of taking a few swipes at a slightly steeper angle than the edge was sharpened is a great way to knock the burr off an edge and bring it back to hair-popping sharp.

A precision system, this is not. If you’re looking to put a perfect mirror polish on an edge or restore a chipped blade, the Sharpmaker isn’t the move. Reprofiling an edge with the Sharpmaker goes beyond an exercise in patience. Like the pocketable Smith’s Diamond Combination Sharpener, the Sharpmaker is better suited to quick and dirty sharpening in between big jobs.

We tend to reach for our Smith’s field sharpener a bit more (due to the lower fiddle factor compared to the 7-piece Sharpmaker), but there’s much more versatility in this kit — something that makes more sense as a basecamp sharpener. With the optional diamond stones, we found it quick and easy to touch up even relatively dull, high-carbide steels like S90V and CPM-20CV without having to break out the big toys and whetstones.

Whetstones aren’t sexy sharpening solutions, but they are danged reliable. Knifemaker Nick LeFort cut his teeth on stones like the Sharp Pebble 1000/6000 Whetstone ($40), and while he’s got access to sharpeners with far more widgets and gizmos, it’s a simple whetstone like this that he uses when he wants to zone out with his knives.

Simple as simple can be, the 1000/6000 whetstone is a dual-grit aluminum-oxide unit that settles into a bamboo and silicone base to keep it from working its way around your workbench. Aluminum-based stones like this are best soaked in water, and after a 10-minute dip, it’s ready to go.

LeFort says that most folks looking to spruce up their kitchen cutlery will find more utility on the white 6000 grit side, as it’ll hone edges that aren’t dull and return them to that factory pop. The blue 100 grit side, on the other hand, is where the “EDC and outdoor crowd looking to bring their knives back to their original luster will most likely start off.”

Sharpening on the Sharp Pebble isn’t difficult, but it does take some practice. Working up a good slurry of material aids in the sharpening process, but you’ll need to clear it once it begins to build up. Thankfully, the Sharp Pebble also comes with a 20-degree guide for sharpening, though this won’t cover all angles some knife owners are looking for.

Aluminum-oxide stones like the Sharp Pebble are certainly cheaper than ceramic whetstones like the Suehiro CERAX 1010, and they also won’t have as long of a lifespan. But for someone who doesn’t want to jump up to even a budget angle-guided unit like the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite, the $40 it takes to get into the Sharp Pebble 1000/6000 Whetstone may be more palatable — you’ll just need to practice.

Hot take: As vital as stones are, a good strop is vital for maintaining a blade. We have gone months keeping our favorite chef’s knife shaving sharp sans stones — and we’ve found that few strops maintain an edge with the style, quality, and sharpness of Burrfection’s Rolled Buffalo Strop ($63).

Buffalo hide naturally tends to contain fewer silicate abrasives than some high-end horsehair hides. However, compression concentrates these abrasives on the surface. This, combined with the toughness of Buffalo hide and how easy it is to load with stropping compounds, make Burrfection’s compressed buffalo strop our unequivocal favorite.

It comes perfectly flat with rubberized feet to prevent slipping. Burrfection offers three base options: polycarbonate (our waterproof, budget-conscious favorite), tempered glass, and Hinoki wood. Every one of them makes for a gorgeous and utilitarian addition to any kitchen counter — exactly where we keep ours, at the ready.

Not every blade is a knife, nor is every sharpening job simple. On a long enough timeline, every blade gets chewed up, chipped, and spit out. We have used many of these systems for years, but newcomers and longstanding favorites were all put through a diverse wringer.

The most consistent backbone of our head-to-head tests were Benchmade’s Station and Table Knives, whose edges we dragged (with a heavy heart) along bricks until they were chipped, dull, and damaged. The CPM-154 steel, edge geometry, and the latter’s partial serrations made them an excellent analog for how each sharpener would handle heavy restoration and reprofiling of a broad spectrum of steels.

We also tested tool-oriented systems like the T-4 and Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 by reprofiling axes, machetes, and khukuris. Systems capable of sharpening saw teeth were put to task by touching up folding saws. Ultimately, every testee was thrown up against a broad array of different tools, edge geometries, and degrees of dullness.

To get a good idea of how various sharpening systems performed in the real world, we tested each system against steels in three brackets. To approximate the maintenance of softer, lower carbide steels often used in bushcraft blades, axes, budget EDC blades, and mid-range cutlery, we used each system to sharpen steels like 1050, 1095, 14C28N, and AUS10.

The biggest range of testing was with the medium-high carbide content steels common to mid-to-high-end cutlery, fixed blades, and folders like S35VN, CPM-154, and M4. Lastly, to see how well each system held up to the hardest high-end EDC blades, we also used each sharpener with stubborn steels like S90V and S110V. A few diamond-base systems were also tested against ceramic knives.

Our lead tester, Ian Graber-Stiehl, is an edge obsessive. He’s a “knife guy” through and through, who definitely doesn’t have a problem and can quit collecting anytime he wants. As a former bartender, cook, and hobbyist bladesmith, he’s lectured many coworkers about metallurgy and nearly strangled more than a few for chipping his santoku knife by tossing it in the sink.

Moreover, he’s professionally sharpened blades for commercial kitchens, antique axe and sword collectors, sushi chefs, home cooks, hairdressers, horse trainers, woodworkers, and more — and never met a factory edge he didn’t completely reprofile within weeks.

Our testing team is also graced with Nick LeFort, a knife industry old hand who has been writing about knives for 10 years and is part-owner of Ragged Mountain Knife Works. LeFort also extensively tests knives, hatchets, and multitools for GearJunkie, so you know he’s wearing knives out enough to need a good sharpener or three.

There are many approaches to sharpening, but the principles are all the same. How coarse a grit you should start at depends. (Pro tip: Different companies and types of abrasives have different grit sizes, but if a company offers the size of the abrasive particles in its stones in microns, this is a universal unit.)

The more material you need to remove, the coarser you should start. For simple sharpening, coloring in the edge of a blade with a black marker makes it easy to ensure you’re matching the existing edge angle.

As you grind one side of a blade, you will form a burr: a thin, wiry piece of steel at the edge that folds over to the other side. A burr, especially with coarse stones, is easy to feel with your fingers or even see with the naked eye.

Form a burr on one side, then sharpen the other side until you form a burr in the other direction. Then move up in grit and repeat, sharpening each side until you form a burr and replacing the scratch pattern of the previous stone with the current, finer stone.

After stopping at your desired grit, all that’s left is to break off that burr to reveal a fresh edge. This can be done in several ways: with hones, strops, or with a stone. Simply run the blade backward (think: the opposite direction of how you’d cut) at a slightly steeper angle on alternating sides until you break the burr off. Deburring, realigning warped edges, and light touch-ups are where hones and strops truly excel.

Edges aren’t created in a vacuum. Their geometry is a compromise between doing a job as well as possible and working for as many users as possible.

Many pocket knives and Western kitchen knives, for example, are simply V-ground to around 20-odd degrees on each side, with the steel left relatively thick behind the edge. This makes for an edge that will cut well enough and be a bit harder for less careful users to chip and damage.

How an edge comes from the factory does not necessarily determine its best performance. The same blade that works well for one person left thick behind the edge with a steep angle might work better for another at a thinner and more acute angle.

Likewise, there are many different edge styles. The ones most divergent in sharpening experience are arguably convex, V-ground, micro-beveled, and asymmetric edges.

V-grinds are the easiest to manufacture and resharpen consistently. Pick an angle, stick to it, and grind. On the downside, V-grinds have a shoulder — a sharp transition from the edge to the rest of the blade above, which has more resistance in the cut. They can also be harder for new sharpeners to freehand, especially in the field.

A V-grind with a few swipes taken on a fine stone at a steeper angle — to hit the very apex of the edge — simplifies things. For most resharpenings, only this “micro-bevel” at the very apex needs attention, speeding up touch-ups. On the downside, this makes for a steeper edge.

Asymmetric edges come in two flavors. On the extreme end, a chisel-ground edge is sharpened only on one side. The wide edge provides plenty of feedback when resharpening but steers your cuts in one direction.

More common, especially among Japanese cutlery, are edges that are sharpened at different angles on either side. These edges are often extremely acute and cut well. However, they can make sharpening more difficult — especially on angle-guided systems, where sharpening each side requires completely changing settings.

Convex edges (think apple seed-shaped) allow for a steep angle at the apex, for a tougher edge, with a rounded shoulder for slicker cuts. This makes it much easier for them to be sharpened freehand. The tradeoff: sharpening on more angle-guided systems is considerably harder.

Most steels tend to be relatively soft and easy to resharpen on almost any kind of stone, oil, and water. With these sorts of steels, the biggest hurdles are often repairing damaged edges — especially for thick blades like axes, hatchets, bushcraft knives, and khukuris.

Thick blade stock means sharpening requires removing more material. So, reprofiling an edge and repairing large chips can still be a slow affair.

High-end EDC knives tend to trend toward steels that are chock full of carbides, which are harder than the abrasives in traditional whetstones and oil stones. This allows them to hold an edge for ages. However, this can make sharpening (especially reprofiling) these steels an exercise in tedium.

As a general rule, if the name of the steel in a blade starts with “CPM” or “ZDP” — doing the bulk of your sharpening with either a diamond abrasive or powered grinder is a good way to make life easier. We recommend reading up on the specific steel your blades are made from, as it will pay off during sharpening.

Ultimately, what type of sharpeners will work best for you is determined by a mix of what you’re sharpening, how much you’re sharpening, where you’re working, how skilled you are, and what your budget is.

The best sharpener for a home cook on a budget isn’t the best for professionally sharpening ultra-hard steels, nor is it ideal for a landscaper repairing damaged mower blades, nor is it the most neighbor-considerate option for apartment-bound bartender touching up the kitchen knives at home at 3 a.m.

Even so, what’s more important isn’t the method. It’s the edge at the end. After all, an edge that cuts reliably is less likely to cut you.

On the simplest end of the scale is sandpaper. For hand-sharpening your average steels, most sandpapers will work — though silicon carbide or ceramic sandpapers tend to perform the best.

Clamping sheets of sandpaper to a table is actually how our lead tester cut his teeth. The downside is that sandpaper is only as flat as the countertop you clamp it to. This actually makes sandpaper ideal for convex edges since it can be clamped to a flexible backing like a mousepad. Likewise, for a budget, lightweight field sharpener, you can wrap a strip of sandpaper around a block eraser for touch-ups.

However, sharpening with sandpaper can involve a fiddly setup and quite a bit of time, especially with harder steels. Likewise, being consumable, it’s usually more expensive in the long run than a good set of stones.

There are many types of sharpening stones, but they traditionally come in two broad categories: oil and whetstones. The abrasives in these stones — usually novaculite, silicon carbide, or aluminum oxide — can overlap quite a bit. The distinction is in how the abrasive particles are bound together, how you use them, and how fast they cut.

The abrasives in oil (or Arkansas) stones are bound tightly into a hard stone. This means they wear slowly and don’t need much maintenance. They’re also fantastic for polishing.

However, a stone’s wear exposes fresh abrasives. So, less wear makes for slower sharpening, especially with very high-hardness steels. Oil stones also clog more easily with steel particles or ‘swarf’. Fortunately, when an oil stone gets really clogged and discolored, a few minutes of warm, soapy water and a scrubby pad will clean it right up.

The abrasive particles in whetstones like the Suehiro CERAX 1010 or Sharp Pebble 1000/6000 are bound more loosely. This means the stones themselves wear more quickly and form an abrasive slurry. This makes for faster sharpening. However, most whetstones must be soaked in water before use and leveled more often than oil stones to stay flat — typically with either a diamond plate or a leveling stone.

Plates embedded with diamond or cubic boron nitride (CBN) are less traditional but incredibly fast. Boasting, respectively, the world’s first or second hardest abrasives; plates like the DMT Dia-Sharp Diamond Stone sharpen quickly, require minimal maintenance, and stay perfectly flat.

On the downside, diamond and CBN bench stones are often expensive, provide less feedback than traditional stones, and can be heavy-handed for lighter sharpening — removing more material than needed and leaving heavy scratches on the edge.

These incorporate any of the above abrasives into a system that secures the blade, allows you to dial in the angle, and uses a guide arm that holds a stone to sharpen at a consistent angle.

There are broadly two types of manual angle-guided systems. Clamp-based ones like the KME, Wicked Edge, and Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite secure a blade in a clamp that can rotate to hit both sides of a blade. This makes them simple and easy to use.

However, the actual sharpening angle of these designs depends heavily on how far the edge protrudes from the clamp. Likewise, the point of contact, and thus the sharpening angle, will change on heavily curved parts of a blade. So, for precision obsessives, an angle-measuring cube of some type may be necessary.

Table systems, like the Edge Pro, require holding a blade on an integrated table with the edge hanging off. Because the blade’s position can be manipulated, even with long and heavily curved blades, it’s much easier to keep a consistent angle.

On the downside, these systems are a bit more involved to operate. You also need to account for the angle at which blades with no flat sides will rest — still making an angle cube a good idea. Swarf can also easily get on the table, scratching a blade’s finish as it’s drawn along.

There’s no shortage of electric sharpeners. However, the best of them generally fall into two categories: belt systems and grinding stones.

Belt sharpeners are the quick-grinding kings, but speed comes with costs. They’re noisy. Consumable belts are a secondary cost. And even with belt sharpeners marketed for kitchen use, we at GearJunkie recommend using a face mask to keep from inhaling steel dust if you’re grinding at low grits or for more than a few minutes at a time indoors.

At high speeds and high grits — especially on a belt with stiff backing — friction (particularly at the tip) can overheat a blade. Dunking a blade in water helps, but it can be messy and time-consuming, and (for folding knives) it can get rust-prone swarf in the pivot without cleaning.

Systems like the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 scale down the power and speed of a grinder. With more slack, the chances of the belt overheating a blade are lower — though that slack means that you’ll get slightly more of a convex edge. Adjustable angle guides make sharpening more precise and easier. That said, the dust and noise remain.

On the other end of the scale are powered grindstones. Although there are some systems like the Tormek T-1, which are meant to be used dry, the majority of grinding systems meant to be used for sharpening are water-cooled, like the Tormek T-4.

These are the behemoths of the list and easily the most complex systems. Their grinding wheel — either a whetstone, CBN, or diamond-embedded wheel — rotates through a water trough. They remove material incredibly fast. Running at low speed, they make little noise. With the stones constantly covered in a film of water, you’ll never overheat the blade, and the swarf collects neatly in the trough.

Wet grinding systems are endlessly customizable, with jigs for every occasion. However, unless you’re either sharpening professionally or working with tools that need to be sharpened regularly (landscaping, woodworking, cooking, etc.), it can be hard to justify the bulk and expense.

Kitchen sharpeners aren’t a class unto themselves. That said, keeping kitchen cutlery sharp comes with certain considerations.

Countertop space can come at a premium. A full suite of soaking whetstones or a large powered grinder of some sort can take up a lot of space. A belt sanding system could contaminate food around with steel dust.

On the upside, most kitchen cutlery steels are considerably softer than most EDC steels. Likewise, it’s easy to touch up kitchen knives on the regular.

Pull-through sharpeners are very popular for kitchen use because of their size and ease. However, we at GearJunkie don’t recommend most of them. Most pull-through sharpeners use thin blades of tungsten carbide oriented in a V-shape to scrape material from a blade.

Aside from limitations like being slow for heavy sharpening, a limited ability to change the angle, and how easy it is to be inconsistent when drawing a blade through, these carbide sharpeners can damage blade edges.

Carbide blades are brittle. Steel, like wood, has a grain. Grinding both sides of an edge while scraping off the burr by drawing steel along the grain against a brittle material, and putting pressure on a very thin cross-section of the edge at a time, is an easy way to chew it up.

Electric pull-through systems that sharpen one side at a time using a belt (like the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2) or a grinding wheel (like the Tormek T-1) are much better and faster. They also allow you to adjust the sharpening angle.

As long as you’re not cutting with a straight edge on glass or ceramic plates or cutting board (an activity that both frustrates and keeps professional sharpeners employed), which is just about the quickest way to chip and dull an edge, most of the time kitchen knives will only need quick touch-ups to realign the edge.

A steel honing rod or strop works really well for realigning and polishing. Ceramic hones or strops rubbed with a sharpening compound remove more material, making them better for light sharpening as well.

Most sharpeners tend to break down pretty neatly into a few different price brackets. On the ultra-budget end of the scale are the DIY solutions that run a few bucks: sandpaper clamped to a mousepad or a homemade strop of leather glued to a 2×4. Then you’ve also got your fully electric countertop rotary sharpeners, which can command north of $500. Consider what you’ll be sharpening most, and how nice of a polish you want to put on your blades.

The $15-35 range is where you typically find touch-up tools like quality strops, hones, and pull-through sharpeners. The Smith’s Diamond Combination Sharpener ($20) is a great field tool, but it won’t do much more than tune up an edge.

Bench stones, especially when comparing oil, whet, and diamond stones, can range quite a bit. However, the vast majority fall into the $30-100 range. For home and hobbyist sharpeners, stones like the Suehiro CERAX 1010 ($33), Sharp Pebble 1000/6000 ($40), and DMT Dia-Sharp ($55) will offer the greatest versatility and bang for your buck of any offering.

From $140 to $350 is where most precision sharpeners fall: angle-guided system kits (most manual clamp or table-centric systems, and some powered). These typically come with a suite of different grit abrasives. The manufacturing companies also typically offer numerous optional attachments for different types of blades.

Equipment in this range is typically much faster and more precise than freehand sharpening. The Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 ($300) belt sanding set-up is a dream to use and super versatile. With experience and accessories, these systems can be expanded into nearly pro-grade kits.

At the $400-1,500 end of the scale, we get into pro-grade systems that are capable of precision, versatility, and exceptional speed. Gear like the Wicked Edge Gen 4 Pro, the Tormek T-4 (and its bigger brother, the T-8), or full-on belt grinders can speedily regrind dozens of blades in a day.

However, the expense is hard to justify for non-pros — be they professionals at sharpening or in fields that involve working with a lot of sharp tools, such as trail builders, chefs, woodworkers, landscapers, and more.

What’s best is heavily situational. For our pick, the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 is a versatility-minded tool that can handle almost everything you throw at it, with a modicum of precaution.

Otherwise, for simple, cost-wise versatility, little can beat a good whetstone like the Suehiro CERAX 1010 or Sharp Pebble 1000/6000.

Professionals usually have a number of pieces of equipment that excel at different things. However, they largely fall into three categories:

Manual, angle-guided systems like the Wicked Edge Gen 4 Pro are often used to achieve precision, mirror-polished edges, especially on smaller blades.

For heavier sharpening water-cooled grinding wheel systems like the Tormek T-4 and T-8, and belt grinders (bladesmithing grinders at the extreme end and systems like the Work Sharp Elite Knife Sharpening Solution for smaller jobs) are common choices.

Lastly, good, old-fashioned whetstones still have their place, especially for extremely acute or asymmetric edges, such as those found on Japanese chef’s knives.

What really makes a professional job is understanding what type of edge a given blade requires, and how to use the tools available to get it done.

Pull-through sharpeners that use a carbide blade to sharpen both sides of a knife at the same time can damage edges very easily. Electric pull-through systems that sharpen one side at a time with a belt or grinding wheel, on the other hand, such as the Work Sharp Ken Onion MK.2 or Tormek T-1, can be fantastic.

Sharpening often won’t damage an edge. However, sharpening inherently requires removing material. Doing so too often and with too heavy a hand will eventually grind the edge of a blade higher and higher up, towards the thicker spine of the blade. This leaves it thicker and less slicy behind the edge.

An easy workaround is to regularly touch up a blade with a ceramic hone or a strop loaded with compound. Regular maintenance with light-handed tools can make it so that a blade rarely has to touch anything beyond relatively fine stones.

In all likelihood, you cut yourself. A dull blade doesn’t just make a task harder, it makes it more dangerous. Not to mention, knowing how to sharpen a blade is a timeless skill.

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