Tips and tricks for keeping blades sharp and always at the ready.
The first step in ensuring that you’re ready for another season of processing the fish you catch is ensuring that your cutlery is in order. With that said, one of the first pre-qualifiers for putting a sharp edge on a knife is the quality of the steel. If your blade won’t take an edge and/or loses it quickly after cutting up a few fish, angling life can get frustrating very quickly.
Suffice to say, those $10 bargain basement knives at a big box retail outlet or flea market might seem like a great deal, but you should expect less than efficient cuts, frequent broken tips and/or nicked blades at the fillet table.
Tip one is invest wisely from the start.
Choose Your Weapon
Before we get into some specific sharpening techniques from myriad sharpening systems, let’s first talk about the grind or bevel of your knife, which plays a big part in how to sharpen it. According to the folks at webstaurantstore.com:
“Bevel is the surface that has been ground down to create the edge of the blade. It determines how sharp, strong and durable a knife will be. Knives can feature different bevels depending on their material and their intended use. A standard bevel forms when there is an angle on one side of the blade, while a double bevel forms when there is an angle on both sides.”
The majority of fishing and sport utility knives will typically use one of three types of grinds, specifically a hollow bevel (most common type for fillet knives), sabre bevel (typically for heavy-duty utility knives) or a chisel bevel (a single bevel mostly found in serrated knives).
The angle measurements for a fishing knife relate to the slope of the two edges of the blade as they come together at its apex. Lower angles (15 to 23 degrees) indicate increased sharpness like the blades found on many fillet knives, while higher angles (24 to 30 degrees) represent a stronger and more durable blade that while slightly less sharp than a lower angle blade it carries more mass to cut through tough skin and bone with less effort.
Types Of Sharpeners
I have been collecting fishing and sport utility knives since my early teens in Boy Scout camp, along with dozens of interesting and eclectic sharpening tools of all types to keep an edge on these blades. In a nutshell, knife sharpeners can typically be broken down into a handful of general categories.
Handheld knife sharpeners typically come in a few different models, the moving slotted, a stationary slotted, and slightly more complex. The moving slotted type handheld sharpener may have either pre-set angled tungsten carbide and/or ceramic rods that you draw across the stationary, upturned blade of a knife that is held in place, typically on a flat surface. These types of sharpeners, like the Dexter Edge-1, the Smith’s Jiffy-Pro and the Dexter Sport handheld, all feature a textured handle for a secure hold, along with a protective finger guard.
Stationary slotted sharpeners may either rest or are held on a stable flat surface where you draw the knife through a series of rough, medium and fine slots that are set at either fixed (18 to 25 degrees) or user-selectable adjustable angles. The material in these slots can be a combination of tungsten carbide inserts, ceramic rods, diamond coated rods or any combination of these in multiple slots. While most handheld stationary sharpeners are designed for classic straight edge knives, some feature the unique ability to sharpen serrated blades.
Complex multiple angle sharpeners like the EZE Lap and Smith’s 6 Stone Precision Kit feature a folding angle guide with multiple sharpening angles to choose from. The Smith’s kit allows users to select 20, 25, 30 or 35-degree angles, with a V-Lock Vise that holds the knife at consistent angle during the sharpening process, with six stone bars that range from 70 to 1,200 grit. I would also include rolling/tumbling sharpeners in this category, where the knife is held with the blade upturned on a flat surface at a user-selectable pre-set angle by a magnetic block, while the tumbler rolls along the blade with either a medium or fine grit wheel to create or hone an edge.
The whetstone, or sharpening stone, employs its abrasive surface to sharpen or hone your fillet or utility knife. Sharpening stones can be made from either natural or man-made materials, and come in various grit sizes depending on the application. It’s always a good idea to use a cutting fluid like water or a light machine oil to smooth the process and to prolong the life of your stone. Natural stones are frequently called Arkansas stones and are made from novaculite (microcrystalline quartz), offered in a variety of medium and fine grit sizes. The unique crystalline structure of the quartz gives Arkansas stones their superior honing abilities.
Artificial made-made stones like those made from either aluminum oxide or silicon carbide are typically offered in grit sizes from 200 to 5,000 depending on the status of your blade. Most of these natural and artificial sharpening stones are offered in both 4-inch and 6-inch sizes. Based on my experience, the 6-inch varieties are the easiest to work with and offer more surface area, which is a plus when sharpening longer fillet knives.
Some of these stones are offered in a unique triad design like my 30-year old Cabela’s unit that is set in a cedar wood triangle cradle and features a coarse aluminum oxide stone, plus medium and fine natural Arkansas stones, along with a 23-degree angle guide augmented by a pair of sharpening steels that plug into the bottom of the stand. More modern versions of this triple stone style layout are offered by Smith’s, Mercer and Amazon. Some of the next-gen types feature various diamond grits embedded into the stones to make quick work of bringing dull knives back to life.
The sharpening steel, also called honing steel or butcher’s steel, is a type of rod used to touch up the edge of a knife that is already sharp. These steels are typically not used to make a dull knife sharper, but intended to realign or deburr the edge of a knife that already has a finished edge. There are at least four categories of rods that fall into the “sharpening steel” group (and some of them are not actually steel).
- Classic steel rod manufactured from either carbon or stainless steel that features a series of raised edges running parallel around the perimeter of the rod from the heel to the tip.
- Diamond sharpening steel, with fine diamond grit glued onto a steel, aluminum or composite rod that is either round or oval in shape.
- Combination grit oval sharpening steels with a medium diamond grit on one side and a finer grit surface on the other.
- Ceramic rod, featuring a single textured round rod surface to align the edge of your blade to bring it to maximum sharpness.
Finally, and perhaps in a category all its own, is the electric knife sharpener. I’ve owned a Chef’s Choice electric knife sharpener for over 30 years and it’s still running. This unit, and others like it, features a trio of orbiting wheels that grind down, sharpen and polish the edge of your knife. My unit offers a total of six operating slots, two each for restoring/shaping (taking out chips and dings from the steel, a requisite precursor to the sharpening process), sharpening and honing the edge of each side of the intended knife.
Electric sharpeners can also include grinding wheels and belt sanders, but these are typically used at the factory to create the grid or bevel of the blade, not for everyday sharpening or honing, since the incorrect technique can quickly remove too much steel and damage a knife.
I thought electric knife sharpener would be the ultimate sharpening tool for my dozens of fishing and utility knives. But honestly, I’ve never had much luck with my Chef’s Choice electric knife sharpener and actually prefer some of the more simple and less costly handheld types when it’s time to put an edge on a knife.
Reed The Fishmonger’s Advice
You’ve probably seen a fillet video or two on YouTube of Reed the Fishmonger, the Dexter knife ambassador who works out of his family’s Florida-based fish store. His videos of cutting up tuna, swordfish, wahoo, snapper, fluke, halibut, golden tilefish, etc. are all very instructional and I have learned a lot from watching his technique and listening to him explain the surgical process for each species in clear language. Reed has also published a YouTube video titled “how a fishmonger sharpens his knives”. Interestingly, Reed prefers a plain vanilla two-sided, man-made whetstone that he states “costs about $10.”
Cabela’s sells an Offshore Angler two-sided, 6-inch whetstone and base stand that looks like a dead ringer for the one in Reed’s YouTube video and it’s priced at only $10.49. Reed soaks his stone in a tub of freshwater for a few minutes to get the stone’s pores to absorb some lubrication and allows the knife to glide over the stone’s surface during the sharpening process. I employ the same “soaking the stone” approach and you can actually see bubbles emerge from the stone as water displaces the air in the rock’s open pores. His sharpening approach is a very rhythmic push/glide movement with alternating strokes on each side of the blade.
According to Reed, the most important aspect of the knife sharpening process is to keep a consistent blade angle with each swipe and his precise hand and finger positions when gliding his knife along the whetstone tell the story. When using a whetstone, be sure to dunk it into the water every so often to keep it moist.
With the dozens of knife sharpeners that I own, have reviewed, borrowed and sampled over the decades, my own personal tool preference has boiled down to some basic requirements – the sharpeners need to be simple, compact, durable, easy to use, portable and effective. My current favorite fillet knife that handles 90% of my saltwater catch is a Dexter Dextreme 7-inch Dual Blade which features a small serrated section on the forward spine (top) for cuting through gills, skin and bones, with a traditional hollow bevel edge on the bottom side with a medium flex shaft that is absolutely razor sharp.
I will touch up this blade after every use and the primary tool that I prefer to restore and then hone its edge is a two-slot Dexter Edge-2 unit that features both coarse and fine ceramic stone wheels set in twin pre-angled V-grooves. I augment this with a no-name, handheld twin rolling steel block that features two spring-loaded stainless steel rods set in a V-groove that will align my knife’s edge to uber sharpness. I occasionally employ a Diamond brand aluminum rod that’s coated with a fine diamond grit to deburr and realign the Dexter’s edge after filleting a few fish.
These are my preferred tools, proven trip after trip, and they have served me well over the years. Whatever tools you choose to sharpen your knives, learn how to use them properly and remember, a sharp knife is a safe knife; dull knives cause accidents.
