Santa Monica Knife sharpening, the best hand sharpening service in Los Angeles
A newly sharpened slicing knife
I’m a knife sharpener, my name is Magnus Pettersson, and I hand sharpen every knife on Japanese water stones. If you truly care about your knives and want them as sharp as possible, let me sharpen them for you. I work out of my home, and offer free pickup and deliver, with no minimum charge on the westside.
Here is how it works, email me at magnus@memagnus.com, or call/text me at 310-486-6068 and let me know how many knives you have and when it would be a good time to come by and pick them up. The turn around is usually a few hours, and at the latest the next day depending on how busy I’m.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 oremail.
Knife sharpening with the Nubatama ume 4k and 6k, are so different compared with the other stones in the series. First off they are both pre finishing stones, so I will mostly comment on how they feel and what kind of finish they leave. They are rather hard stones, so hardly no dishing, the mud is just black swarf from the steel, and they both cut fast for their grit range. In all other ways they are really different compared to each other and it is hard to believe they are from the same series of stones.
Knife sharpening progression
In the pictures bellow I will show the progression from unsharpened to strop, to demonstrate the whole knife sharpening progress and where the Nubatamas fits in, in the progress.
Knife before sharpening
Knife after sharpening on 1000 grit stone
Knife after sharpening on 2000 grit stone
Knife after sharpening on Nubatama ume 4000 grit stone
As you see the use of Nubatama ume 4000 in the sharpening progress, doing a fine job refining the edge. It feels super smooth, cuts well and doesn’t mud much, and it is not super rock hard so it still have a great feedback. The finish it leaves looks surprisingly more polished than I would have thought; it really feels and behaves like a Chosera 3000 stone. This would be a perfect final stone when sharpening soft steel knives.
Knife after sharpening on Nubatama ume 6000 grit stone
Knife sharpening with the 6000 is very different to the 4000, it’s harder, cuts slower, and in close-up it refines the edge with a slightly finer scratch pattern. The most surprising though is that to the naked eye, the polish from the 4000 looks better. First I thought I did something wrong, so I retested several times side by side with different knives, and every time the 4000 left a better finish to the naked eye, but in close up the 6000 had a slightly better finish. A speculation could be that they have different abrasive density or different kind of binding material, I have no idea maybe, I could figuring it out if I haul out the big microscope, but I will save that project for the future.
Knife after sharpening on 8000 grit stone
They both cleanup equally on finer grit stones, I can’t see any difference at all.
Knife sharpening, final edge after stropping
Edge after a fast tour on the leather strop.
Conclusion:
I see no need to buy both of these stones for knives, because they are not that different. I love the 4000 it is a really nice fast cutting stone and it leaves an awesome finish, the only thing I don’t like is that green / yellow color that stains everything. The 6000 is also a really good stone, and leaves a finer scratch pattern, and the hardness and low mud makes it perfect for straight razors.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpening, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
I just got 4 Nubatama Ume stones #320, #1k, #4k and #6k, I was a little hesitant to buy them because the only reviews I could find was from the people selling them. Anyway here they are and I will start with the Nubatama Ume #320 and compare it to my favorite coarse stone Bester #500, and if it is up to the task it will replace the bester in my setup. I love the Bester, it cuts fast and give a decent feedback, the downside is that I use a lot of pressure with the coarse stones and it dish fast and it is tough to flatten. I use up 2-3 bester #500 a year, and it dries out way to quick, so for me it’s not problem free. I know I could use DMT’s but I hate the feedback and the scratches they create is hard to get ride of. The list of coarse stones I have tested in this grit range is extended, the one that got closest to Bester was Chosera #400 it did dish but not as much and left a nicer finish, but it doesn’t cut as fast and time is money.
Nubatama ume 320 and Bester 500 water stones
As you all see the Bester is well used and in it’s prime, so it will be a tough one to beat. The things I will compare first are, cutting speed, dishing, general feel, and the finish they leave. The Nubatama came really flat, I still gave it a fast flattening to get ride of that new stone feel before I started the test.
Drying time compair between Nubatama ume 320 and Bester 500
One thing that bothers me with bester is how fast it dries out, so that was the first thing I tried. The Nubatama is a tiny bit better, 48sec for Nubatama and 34sec for bester, but its almost a 50% improvement that will actually make a little difference.
2 brand new Kiwi knives to use to compare Nubatama ume 320 and Bester 500
To make the cutting speed test fair, I have used 2 brand new cheapo Kiwi knives. I know it’s cheap somewhat soft stainless, but at least it will give me an idea of how fast they cut. I have sharpen Henckels twin cermax rc 66 on Bester, possible but it takes a lot of time, so I know Besters limit. With in time I will test the Nubatama on some really hard steel to, and will give a report how it went. Even if I expected Nubatama to be slower cutting than Bester after reading a few peoples impression of it, and feeling how smooth it was out of the box. Well it wasn’t, it just took 6 strokes to get a good burr with Nubatama and 10 strokes to get a burr on Bester. So Nubatama Ume #320 definitely cut faster and it behaves as expected for a #320 grit stone.
Edge finish difference between Nubatama ume 320 and Bester 500
The Bester isn’t know to leave a nice finish, but Nubatamas finish at least on the burr is even rougher as it should be for a low grit stone. What I think is fascinating though, is that the surface is slightly greyer from the Nubatama that is usually a sign of a finer stone. Time will tell but I definitely think that Bester leaves a better finish.
The difference in dishing between Nubatama ume 320 and Bester 500
Here comes the most positive surprise, Nubatama dishes less not by much, but still less. The picture is taken after 50 strokes on the corner on each stone, and as you see it obvious that Bester dishes a little bit more. So taking in effect that Nubatama is faster cutting and dishes slightly less, it should mean much less stone flattening. Yeah.
As you hear in the video the sound isn’t much different between them, and the feel is somewhat the same. The Nubatama doesn’t have the annoying sticky feel under pressure as the bester have, but definitely feels a little bit rougher. They both have similar amount of feedback feeling, but to be honest I actually think I prefer the feel of the Nubatama. (it might just be that the Nub is the newest one and that I just have an hour on it)
I did a fast test cleaning up the scratches on a higher grit stone, in this case I used a Bester #2000 grit. They both cleaned up equally fast, it makes me think that the finish from the Nubatama just looked rougher and in reality they were pretty much the same.
Flattening: They are both pretty hard stones to flatten, but I think it went slightly faster to flatten the Bester.
Conslusion:
Nubatama pos: Twice the size, Cuts faster, dishes slightly less and doesn’t dry out as quickly as Bester.
Nubatama neg: Leave a slightly rougher finish and a bit harder to flatten.
Bester pos: Leave a slightly better finish, slightly easier to flatten
Bester neg: Cuts slower, dishes more, dries out faster
After using the Nubatama a little bit more, I definitely prefer the feel and performance of it over the Bester and it is the coarse stone I will be using from now on. I will keep the bester though, in case the Nub doesn’t perform well on really hard steel.
Update: After some heavy use the last week, I still love the stone. I have sharpened some hard steel +rc61 knives on it, and the nub dish as much as Bester if not a little more wish was a bit disappointing, but I have realized that it is much easier to flatten than my first impression so it evens out. One other thing it is a rather muddy stone, and it helps the cutting speed a lot, the mud is the grainy sandy kind so it is a bit messy and not the most pleasant one.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpening, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
Well I have talked a lot about why you should have your knives hand sharpened on whetstones, but a few things are worth repeating.
It doesn’t soften the steel as and ruin the knife as machine sharpening, wish means that they will stay sharper longer.
It also doesn’t grid away excessive material, so it will give your knife much longer life
Also the extreme edge finish means that it will stay sharper much longer.
More environmentally friendly, as in that your knives will have much longer life time, no electricity will be use for sharpening and no weird chemical compounds from sharpening abrasives will be released. Ever wondered why your sharpening guy use a mask while sharpening?
If you still are not convinced why hand sharpening is better, check out this link till Global knives testing of knives for sharpness and performance. Their testing shows that knives sharpened on whetstones always are sharper and last longer than the factory edge no matter what brand of knife you use. Check out the table at the bottom of the page “CATRA Cutting Test to ISO 8442.5”
Ok I guess we could agree on that you need to have your knives hand sharpened now, if you actually plan to use them. So where should you have you knives hand sharpened. I would say that the best thing would be if you get some stones and learn how to sharpen them yourself, but I understand if that isn’t an option for you. So if you live on the Westside of Los Angeles, you could either have me sharpening your knives or let the only other guy that I know that does hand sharpening locally “Japanese Knife Import” do it for you.
I don’t know of any other one that provide freehand sharpening in Los Angeles, but if you know of someone else that does hand sharpening in LA, let me know and I will add them here. For other places I don’t know, but I know that http://www.japaneseknifesharpening.com/ offers mail order service for sharpening.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
This knife was given to me by a good friend, at first look it doesn’t look to bad except for the big chip right there the heel starts. After a closer look I realized that the primary bevel was concave and parts of the edge was folded over, I also realized that the secondary bevel was way wider in the back and at the tip. Look at that tip I could have folded it by hand, it was thin as aluminum foil. At the moment I just saw two different ways to fix it, one was to leave the primary bevel concave and try to give it a new edge on the side of a sharpening stone, or regrind a new flat primary bevel and give some sort of compound edge. I decide to give it a new primary bevel to get rid of all edge damages and big scratches on shinogi.
Illustration of edge before and after regrinding
Above is a little illustration what it look like before and after, and what I would like to achieve. First I went to work with a large blacksmith file, because of the amount of material that I needed to take off, just to realized that it didn’t give me much precision, tried a bunch of different coarse stones, the one that eventually seams to do the best job was Beston #500. With this stone I worked until I got an even flat primary bevel all the way to the edge, I also used it to set the secondary bevel. After that I changed to King #1000 to smooth both bevels out and did some initial sharpening. After that just a fast brush with Bester #2000, before starting with my favorite stone it’s a man made blue Aoto rated to #2000 but feels much finer. This blue Aoto gives that perfect mist to the soft steel on the primary bevel, its super soft and have great feedback; the only thing is that if you don’t want your hand to look dirty for days after, use glows. For final sharpening and finishing on the secondary bevel I use Kitayama #8000 also a great stone, after this just some light stropping, before setting the micro bevel with Shun #6000 wish gives a nice bite to the edge.
I also did some clean up and light polishing just to make it easier to clean, I’m using it daily now, and its one of my favorite knives. I realized that I’m not good at always cleaning and drying the knife after use, so it started to get some stains/rust on the pretty mist on the primary bevel, so I gave it a light polish with #2000 sandpaper and all is good now. Yes of course its sharp, not hair popping sharp, but sharp enough to shave with or to slice cigarette paper into small strips. Pictures of the knife after regrinding below.
Knife after repair, regrinding and polishing
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
As you see in the image of the knife, the edge just make contact at heal and tip, with a big gap between the surface and the edge in the middle. This is a common damage for knives that has been sharpened on small electrical counter machines. The easiest way to fix this is to grind the edge down till it makes contact all the way on the side of a coarse sharpening stone.
The bow edge is know fixed and in contact with the whole edge
This is after the edge grinding, as you see the edge makes contact with the surface all the way. Time to start to recreate the bevel, for this I used a coarse DTM (steel plate with diamond particles embedded. After that I started the sharpening on Beston #500 until I got a good burr, to follow up with a no name #1000 stone, #2000 Bester, #5000 Naniwa and finally Kitayama #8000 stone.
The Global knife once again has its edge straight, sharp and smooth
The edge is straight, smooth and shiny, and you could see that it make contact all the way after the sharpening job.
The edge in x15 magnification after the sharpening job
Well the edge doesn’t look to shiny magnified x15 in real life it looks mirror polished.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
Santa Monica knife sharpening is a blog about hand sharpening quality knives,
shears, scissors, tweezers and razors.
Why you should spend a little more and have your good knife hand sharpened
Never take your expensive knife to a so called “professional” knife sharpener, that doesn’t use water stones to sharpening it by hand or at least use water cooled rotary stones. Most often they will sharpen your knife on a machine that looks like a belt sander or on a grinder, and sparks will fly. These machines are very abrasive and will apply excessive heat to you knife, and ruin the tempering. This over heating of the
edge while sharpening it will actually “de temper” the steel of the edge and
make it softer, and the knife will go blunt very quickly.
Also avoid kitchen supply stores, mall shops and so on that use machines like “chefs choice to sharpen their knives. These machines also over heating the edge, and they seldom have the correct edge angles. Please don’t use these machines at home either, because you are ruining your knives! Anyone who has ever tried to put a decent edge on a kitchen knife with an electric grinder can attest to this, a grinder is the quickest way to ruin an expensive knife.
I have been fixing knives from people who have taken their global’s, mac’s, shun’s and other really expensive high quality knives to places that use these kind of machines. The only way for me to fix them is to grind the knives down past the “de tempered” and damage steel, until I get back to the hard steel.
Machines have a few advantages like; Perfect angles, uniformity, and speed. But the downside is that; it could over heat the edge, it can’t adjust for minor variations and imperfection and grid down way more material than needed, wish shortens the life of your knife. If the blade doesn’t need it, grinding off excessive material is just throwing
money away.
I hand sharpening all knives on Japanese water stones, because I think a good hand sharpened edge beats a machines sharpened edge. The blade bevels come out smooth polished without rough grinding marks, and the hand sharpening also allows just the right amount to be taken off to provide a superior edge. Blades with sweeping curves, such as kitchen or restaurant knives, really shine with a good hand sharpening job. The edge is certainly less mechanically precise, but the sharper edge and polished bevels more than compensate, requiring less effort to get through the same material.
Why you need a sharp knife:
1. A sharp knife is important in order to
preserve the true flavors and beauty of fresh ingredients. Cutting with a dull
knife will damage food on a cellular level and alter its taste and appearance.
2. A sharp knife is also important for
safety. A dull knife is more prone to slip on food and may result in bodily
injury.
3. A Sharp knives are also important for
kitchen efficiency. It will take more time and effort to cut with a dull knife
than a sharp knife.
4. Using a sharp knife is also undoubtedly
much more enjoyable to work with.
Santa Monica knife sharpening recommend
If you like your knives sharp, I recommend you buy a few water stones and learn how to sharpen your knives yourself. If you are not able to or not having the time to sharpen your knives yourself let a professional hand sharpener sharpen your knives for you.
Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.
