Thread: Eggington shepherds sharpening steel

What ever angle you sharpen at you steel at. Ceramic steels are good but are brittle and don like being bashed around diamond steels are knife reackers and generally to coarse and strip the edge of your knife. You need to match your steel the knife ie low carbon soft stainless needs a fine steel and will be easy to sharpen but needs more steeling to maintain. A high carbon steel takes a bit more to sharpen and needs a coarser steel to push the edge back straight. Disadvantage of high carbon is it doesn't like to flex much and shatters easier. The small steels like the rabbiter/eggington are generally coarse and need to be rubbed down with a green scouring pad or wet and dry sand paper. The ultimate is to rub it down on your stone do it matches the stone. you can get away with a piece of stainless rod but they tend to be a bit soft and dent after awhile. Another option is to cut a full length one down if you have a few around the house