Editorial Standards

Knife sharpening is full of folklore. Some of it is true. A lot of it is wrong. This page exists so you know how we work — and how to push back when we get something wrong.

How we research

Every claim we make about steel composition, heat treatment, or material behavior is sourced from one of three places:

• Manufacturer datasheets — Crucible, Latrobe, Hitachi, Bohler-Uddeholm, etc. The actual published metallurgy.
• Peer-reviewed materials science — for hardness behavior, grain structure, abrasive mechanics.
• Bench testing — what we observed sharpening it ourselves, with documented stones, angles, and steel.

We cite. If a number is in an article, you can trace it.

How we test

When we test a stone, a knife, or a system, we publish:

• The exact unit tested, with batch or production date when relevant.
• The steel(s) we tested it on, including hardness when measurable.
• The angle we worked at and how we measured it.
• What we did, in order. No skipped steps.
• What worked, what didn’t, and what surprised us.

We don’t test everything. There are people on this planet who have sharpened more knives than we ever will, and we point to them when their work is better than ours.

Affiliates and sponsorships

We currently use no affiliate links and accept no sponsorships. If that ever changes, this page changes first, and every affected article gets a clear disclosure at the top.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it in place, note the correction at the bottom of the article with the date, and — if the original error materially misled anyone — say so plainly.

Found something wrong? Tell us. Bring receipts.

AI disclosure

We use AI-assisted tools for research, drafting, and image generation where it serves the work. Every article is reviewed, edited, and signed off by a human before publication. Claims are verified independently. AI is a tool here, not the author.