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My grandpa needs to practice how to sharpen knives with his Shapton Glass Stone 1000 Grit 5mm. So he compiled these 9 dull, but cheap and fully expendable, knives. Which ought he practice on? Please don't hesitate to pick more than one, and rank them in order.

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    All of the serrated knives can be excluded as possibilities. Your grandpa will want to practice on a knife with a plain edge – AMtwo Jul 11 '20 at 06:01
  • @AMtwo Thanks! It's bizarre that he possesses just Serrated Knives, and he doesn't know why. –  Jul 11 '20 at 06:02
  • It looks like 5 & 6 might be the only knives with plain edges? 1 looked plain at first, but zooming in shows a jagged edge as well. It's either very beat up, or serrated and just difficult to see? Perhaps a new photo with close up of the knife edge for just the non serrated knives. – AMtwo Jul 11 '20 at 06:04
  • You should have mentioned the fact that your grandfather is trying to sharpen serrated knives in your earlier questions. – Johannes_B Jul 11 '20 at 06:10
  • @Johannes_B His primary goal was to sharpen his WÜSTHOF Classic Ikon 8" Cook's Knife as in the linked question. But he failed to do so, and users here kindly recommended him to practice on cheaper knives. –  Jul 11 '20 at 06:36
  • Wusthof professional knives are not cheap #6 is a good knife. – GdD Jul 11 '20 at 07:46
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    6 says Wiltshire, btw, not Wüsthof. https://i.stack.imgur.com/LbIyC.jpg – Tetsujin Jul 11 '20 at 08:17
  • @GdD Please see Tetsujin's comment above on knife #6. –  Jul 11 '20 at 12:20
  • @AMtwo It depends on the knife. Some have the scalloping only on one side of the blade. these can be sharpened on a flat stone, one side only. – J... Jul 11 '20 at 15:42
  • I'm not sure why you've added a picture of a kit you didn't mention anywhere in your question. it appears to have no relevance, other than to show us what a set of whetstones looks like. The only thing it really tells me, after a quick google, is by the time you've bought all that lot, it would have been actually cheaper to get the electric i was talking about. – Tetsujin Jul 11 '20 at 16:01
  • By the time a serrated knife needs to be sharpened you're better off just buying a new one. I got one of [these](https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Knife-Sharpener-Sharpening-Cut-Resistant/dp/B079WWFZY6) and once I learned how to hold the knife straight while going back and forth I was happily slicing tomatoes with ease. – MonkeyZeus Jul 11 '20 at 16:58
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    @MonkeyZeus - I wouldn't dream of using one of those. I have done so in the past, but it takes quite some effort to recover them from the damage they cause. – Tetsujin Jul 11 '20 at 18:03
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    @Tetsujin Thanks! Apologies. I copied and pasted the wrong URL. Grandparents haven't bought any other whetstones. –  Jul 11 '20 at 20:07

2 Answers2

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Practise on the cleaver from your other question.

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It's big enough to handle, which makes it easier to keep at a constant angle. It also looks to have just about no edge remaining, so there's no chance of making it worse.

Of the ones pictured above, only 5 & 6 look really suitable candidates; 6 I'd guess only has that hard chamfer on one side, making it too lop-sided for a beginner.
They're all going to be pretty fiddly as a practise knife.

When the idea of a practise knife was first raised, the intention was that it would actually be something vaguely similar to the one the practise was for. I'd assumed spending $£€ 5 on a cheap new one would be the solution.

TBH, you could use all of the above. Each would be a different challenge.
You can take the serrations right off a serrated edge knife & turn it into a regular knife [my favourite skinny parer started life this way]. 1, 7 & 9 might be candidates for that. The others I wouldn't bother, they're variants on the 1970's steak knife theme. The others will make better steak knives once they're sharp.

Using 1000 grit, this is going to be a very long journey. I'd have bought a dual-grit whetstone, 400/1000
The 400 is coarse enough to recover a bad profile or set a new one, with some patience; the 1000 is to set the final angle.

Having done all this myself, badly, many many times, I'd still go for the electric I mentioned in one of my earlier answers.
You could do the whole lot in an afternoon, perfectly - even the serrateds.

Tetsujin
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#6 (the Wursthoff professional) and #5 don't look to be serrated, which is good. Go with them. But you don't want to use it on a serrated blade, there are some specialty sharpeners for them but they're rarely worth it.

hrokr
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