How do I sharpen TradaFor single bevel vegetable knife?

[Griller]

Hey folks. I’m relatively new to the WE but so far I’ve been able to get all my kitchen knives sharp. But now I’ve tried to sharpen a TradaFor vegetable knife that I received as a gift and it’s just not working. This knife is different than all my other Wursthoff and Chicago Cutlery knives in that it is flat on one side and beveled on the other. I first tried to just sharpen it just like all my other knives thinking that I could draw a burr and make a bevel on both sides. Didn’t make it very sharp. Tried just sharpening the one side. Didn’t work either. What am I missing here? Tried to attach a couple pics but the files are too large. Thanks in advance.

[Marc H]

Welcome to the W. E. forum, Griller.

This may help:

Clay called this knife a Nakiri. A Nakiri and a Usuba are very similarly shaped Japanese style vegetable knives.  The Nakiri is a double bevel knife, whereas the Usuba is the single bevel counterpart.

Clay used Naniwa Chosera whetstones to sharpen the Shun knife, in this video. Depending on the type of steel in your knife, it’s hardness, and the sharpening stones you have in your collection, the choice will be yours on which stones you to use.

The Shun Usuba, (in the video), has a slight dished or concave profile to the backside of the blade.  After you watch this video for the sharpening technique it shares, if you have specific questions relating to your particular knife’s profile, if it differs from the knife in the video, we can try to help you more specifically.

Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)

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Griller, 000Robert

[tcmeyer]

Single-sided, or “chisel-grind” kitchen knives are intended for cutting solid foods, like carrots, radishes, turnips and such.  Like a carpenter’s chisel, the design cuts straight down the line of the non-beveled side, which is intentionally positioned to the inside of the hand holding the knife.  The “off-cut”, or the part just cut from the main stalk is pushed away from the blade by the bevel.  The advantage is that the blade will always follow the flat side without deviation.

A feature of the chisel grind is that the included angle is the same as the bevel angle for the side being sharpened.  A 20 dps bevel angle produces the same included angle (20 deg.) as a knife sharpened with 10 dps bevels on both sides.  Very sharp!  Sharpening both sides to 20 dps bevel angles will produce an edge with a 40 dps included angle and will, by comparison seem quite dull.  Unfortunately, restoring a chisel grind which has been reprofiled to double bevels will require a LOT of work.  If you find yourself in this situation, remember to return the bevel to the correct side.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by tcmeyer.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Griller, 000Robert

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