They’re fantastic if you keep your blade maintained, it’s honing, not sharpening.
Whetstones by themselves will get your blade sharp real fast, but by themselves all you’re really doing is making a micro-serrated edge every time, and it dulls fast. Smoothing your edge after whetstone with a honing rod smooths the cutting edge and reforms the edge shape after regular use.
If you lose your edge you have to start over from the whetstone, so maintaining the edge with a honing rod will save you time and not take as much material off your blade.
Also, a lot of households have utterly worn-out honing rods in their knife blocks, as the household often will try to use it for actual sharpening and scrape off a lot of the honing texture, and eventually will get so smooth they do nothing.
Great post, but I think it is worth mentioning that how long a knife retains its edge after being sharpened depends very much on the material(s) the blade is made of.
They’re fantastic if you keep your blade maintained, it’s honing, not sharpening.
Whetstones by themselves will get your blade sharp real fast, but by themselves all you’re really doing is making a micro-serrated edge every time, and it dulls fast. Smoothing your edge after whetstone with a honing rod smooths the cutting edge and reforms the edge shape after regular use.
If you lose your edge you have to start over from the whetstone, so maintaining the edge with a honing rod will save you time and not take as much material off your blade.
Also, a lot of households have utterly worn-out honing rods in their knife blocks, as the household often will try to use it for actual sharpening and scrape off a lot of the honing texture, and eventually will get so smooth they do nothing.
Great post, but I think it is worth mentioning that how long a knife retains its edge after being sharpened depends very much on the material(s) the blade is made of.
And the angle used, and the materials it’s used on (though that last part was contained in what you said tbh)