Anyone else use a poishing/burnishing steel?

[Timm]

I have one of these: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product.asp?productID=8871 that I picked up at a yard sale years ago. It does an incredible job of finishing a sharp knife and for touch-up as I go. Non-abrasive so it doesn’t change the blade profile at all, just gives it a mirror burnish.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Timm.

[Timm]

This is a burnishing steel, not a sharpening steel.

I’ve seen far too many knives ruined by having the belly of the blade hollowed out with a sharpening steel to use one. Flat stones or nothing for me.

[Timm]

I appear to have been confused about the difference between “honing” and “sharpening”. My apologies!

[tcmeyer]

In my experience, honing and sharpening have been used to describe the same thing, although I think that maybe honing has evolved to mean the final stages of sharpening.

I think of burnishing to mean a process which treats the surface of steel by using the malleability of the steel to smooth out surface scratches and burrs as a means of polishing or refining an edge.  The “steels” I’ve used have been more like longitudinal files than burnishers, but I’m sure that some steels could be burnishers.  I think of stropping as a burnishing process.  Take a rough piece of steel to a powered wire wheel and you’ll see the effects of burnishing.

[Author]

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