I'm Brazilian and I love your channel—definitely the best knife channel on YouTube. Wishing you all the best!

I think this is the curviest moritaka I have ever seen! lol

Love the thin grind on it ❤

The rustic style of Moritaka is amazing, it’s simple and instantly recognizable 😍

Before you level the stone, draw crosshatch marks on the surface with a pencil.  When all marks are gone, it’s level.

I cant understand when you try to create the burr , in one side you sharp the shinogi and in the other part you sharp the hasaki

Learning to sharpen with both hands (ambidextrous) is a great thing to learn and master in sharpening. I am a Maker/Sharpener and learning to be ambi. is most beneficial in my processes.

I have a feeling you are a knife geek

My first Japanese knife was a Moritaka Nakiri that I bought in Tokyo. Didn't know anything about Japanese knives at the time or even who Moritaka was. I just thought it looked really cool 😂

Wound up learning the fun way that you need to oil them before storing. Now it has wierd marks from removing the rust and learning to sharpen, but I think that gives it character

Firstly, I love this series, it makes me think about things in my own sharpening too. One note on the frustration you were facing, on the side you are struggling with, your finger placement is higher up towards the spine which seems to introduce that wobble and that lift you feel towards the heel of the blade. Try adjusting your finger placement nearer to the edge, hopefully that might help with reducing the lift you are feeling. Cheers!

Good job with the Kitayama, a little soak ;-)

Nice vid mate. What i love with sharpening is one can always always Improve 🎉❤. No not all whetstone/sharpening stones are splash n go. Some are soakers like can be permanent soaked or very long. Other especially magnesia bonded will be ruined if soaked so yeah

Also on the jnat diamond plate slurry if the plate is coarse can se the edge back more than do good. I like a little slurry but from another nagura 😊

Also after all that should very easily cut free standing magasine paper and slice clean trough rizla sigarett paper both sides at once 😊

I’ve been following along and doing hand sharpening with you as well. Previously I’ve tried a few fixed angle systems and the results are nice, but it’s a pain the butt to set it all up. The hand sharpening feels super zen. I’ve just got a Shapton rockstar 500 and 2000 so far. Like you I was struggling with forming the burr on the second side super quickly and moving on, not realizing I wasn’t fully apexing. Looking at the scratch pattern has really helped. It will eventually reach up to the edge and has been a good indicator for me that I’m apexed or close to it. Cheers!

I just watch a guy who I’ve never met sharpen a knife that I’m never going to buy for the last 27 minutes (I go 2x speed.)

I also watched him cut cherry tomatoes and do the robot dance…….

Not bad for a fairly new sharpener! You may consider getting a loupe or a strong magnifying glass to see the burr and any microchips. You kinda get what you pay for. Best bang for your buck is the ones connected to your phone camera. Enjoy the journey! I might be purchasing a knife or two from you in the future.

Great video! I recently came across your videos and its been nice with the slow pace and the hands on with the knives. Just a few things I have to say, this is from my experience sharpening knives. I use a sharpal dual sided diamond and rockstar 2000 & 8000 and I sharpen in one full stroke which differs from your technique. What I've found is that, aside from the lowest grit establishing the angle, you don't need much pressure to refine the scratch of the previous stone, so long as you can keep the angle consistent. I can even jump from the 2000 to 8000 with low pressure on the knife and only a few passes ~20-30 max including burr minimization. I move on to a strop loaded with 1micron diamonds which refines just the edge even further, smoothing out all those tiny teeth and makes it scary sharp, and it also coincidentally helps polish the scratch of the 8000 further to a nice shiny polish.

As for the lifting of the handle, if the knife has a curve towards the tip, it is normal to lift the handle to have a consistent angle throughout the edge. Its hard to explain but if you lock your elbow and wrist and follow the curve of the knife while keeping the angle consistent, you will realise that you either need to twist your body or lift your elbow to reduce the twist. The lift towards the heel of the knife though, I found the if I relax my arm and consciously allow the blade to flow into its natural curve the problem mostly goes away. Which is why I've started applying less pressure on the knife on all but the lowest grit, the higher you go the less pressure you need until just the weight of the knife is enough. You can also tell if your edge is wonky if the shine on it isn't consistent but has a ton of lines. And lastly I like to test my knives on a paper towel, it cut without much effort and shouldn't catch on the edge at all. If it doesn't I usually go for a few more passes on the strop which does the trick. Hope this helps!

For really hard steels, you could try to use a diamond stone at the coarsest level. Diamond stones tend to care less about the hardness of the steel. Could be a bit faster. But maybe faster isn''t your goal here...

I believe you may be considering the serrated edge of the knife in an inverse manner. It might be helpful to conceptualize it like the serrations on a bread knife. As the grit increases, the serrations become finer and closer together, as they are essentially microscopic scratches on the edge. Similar to polishing, the goal is to increase the grit size to achieve progressively smaller scratches.

Have you ever used the Sharpie method to see where metal is being removed during sharpening? I’ve used it and found it provides useful information.

To answer why to not run the apex along wood is: you may rip out the remaining burr and when it's removed like that it can take little microscopic chunks of the apex wirh it, leaving behind microships.  Burr should be removed on each stone as much as possible while progressing through your stones so that once you hit the leather strop, it's just cleaning the remnants.  I also recommend diamond emulsion on the strop, bare works but diamond works better.

I have a couple of Moritakas. It is a fantastic knife but the shinogi is pretty low, and I find the kireha or primary bevel should be routinely thinned with every 2 or 3 sharpening sessions to maintain thinness behind the edge.

Is it Cater Cutlery that you’ve seen soaking his whetstones?