— Cathy Chapman

So let me answer your last question first with enough an enthusiastic. Yes, you can absolutely sharpen your knife. However, you want to and it's really going to be based upon one's skill. Okay now I am going to approach your scenario here with the assumption that we're using whetstones. Okay, and in this scenario, the the first thing I always say, is that whetstones have a Learning curve and sometimes it's long and sometimes it's a sharp learning curve that we get to to figure out and I always recommend to students all so that if you're going to start using wet stones that you consider a practice knife right one that you don't mind sort of beating up so to speak as you learn to use the stones because Stones can inflict pretty quick and severe damage to a knife if they're used improperly. Okay, the results can be astounding but on the other hand, once you learn to use wet Stones, the results can be fantastic and so it sounds like Kathy that you're somewhere still on that learning curve. I'm not talking about A damaging your knife at all. But if you've experienced a sharper blade than it was but not as sharp as it was brand new coming from the factory. Then I'm guessing that you would benefit from your practice. Okay now in terms of you know things to keep in mind, I happen to have a knife Within Reach here. and you know, you get to choose the angle right at which you apply the bevel to the blade and You know if you look at the blade here. Right along this edge here. You can see it's a little bit shinier. Okay, that's the bevel and that's The Cutting Edge and that's what we're working on and As you adjust your angle on the stone, you can create a bevel that's very wide or you can create one that's much sharper and that's going to reflect the sharpness of the blade as well as how long the edge May last. Okay before it needs sharpening again and You know very often we know we'll say Hey, you know shoot for something between maybe 15 and and 20 degrees off of the stone and that's probably a good place to be in we're typically going to sharpen evenly okay on either side at least with most knives. Okay, some Knives have a single bevel but with most of ushoffs and in other European knives, you're gonna have a double bevel that's even on both sides. And the other thing is when you apply the knife to the stone. All right, you want to keep the knife moving across the stone nice and evenly as if you were a mechanical jig holding the blade in place in other words, if your knife starts to rock a little bit like this as you pulled across the stone, then you're going to develop rounded bevels. Okay, which are going to feel less sharp. Okay. So your goal is to create nice straight bevels, but that requires that the knife really be kept nice and straight coming across and at the same angle nice and straight flat. Okay coming across the other direction. And again that takes a lot of practice. There are jigs that you can buy that will help you keep the blade at a Constant angle come across the stone. I don't use one. I know some people that do I'll leave that up to you to experiment. Okay, but you know, ultimately it takes a lot of practice to get up that learning curve and then it takes some repetition right or sort of, you know ongoing practice, you know with with some Not so long time intervals so that you can maintain your skills. Okay, because if you wait, for example a year before you sharpen your knife again, then you're going to have to go through a little practice session again before that muscle memory comes up comes back again. Okay, so I hope that's helpful and I hope that's encouraging because you can get there with practice. All right.