Hey all of you,  what's the best angle at which to sharpen a knife to make it razor sharp?  Because I want to make some guides out of wood to help me have good angles for various angles of sharpness,  is 45 degrees the starting angle or what?  Whats the smallest angle i should use,  because sometimes I always end up dulling some of my knives,  lucky my older brother is an expert sharpener.

18 to 20 degrees works for me ....

here is a nice article http://sharpeningmadeeasy.com/Juranitch1977Feb.htm

and here http://www.caseyspm.com/Knives.html

soo would it be better to use a bigger angle for the coarse stone,  then use a smaller angle(s)  like u just mentioned for the finer stones?

Smaller angle on the coarser stones until very sharp and then a couple of degrees larger for the edge finish on very fine stones (burr removal). This makes it just the slightest bit duller but the edge stands up much longer.

Jabames wrote on Sep 28^th, 2010 at 6:15am:

Hey all of you,  what's the best angle at which to sharpen a knife to make it razor sharp?  Because I want to make some guides out of wood to help me have good angles for various angles of sharpness,  is 45 degrees the starting angle or what?  Whats the smallest angle i should use,  because sometimes I always end up dulling some of my knives,  lucky my older brother is an expert sharpener.

You're lucky you have an expert in the family. Why not watch him, and ask him? He's probably familiar with the uses you have in mind for the knife, the kind of knife you have, and the sharpening stones you've got.

It seems he sharpens with a large angle idk,  maybe 20-30 and he doesnt grind it all that hard, not too hard not too soft,  one motion for each side of the edge,  in our house we have lots of sharpening systems,  those fixed ones that u just run the edge through,  and old fashioned 3 stage sharpening stone, diamond hone, ceramic, steel,  I just have to learn proper technique

I sharpen knives all the time, and usually do not worry about angles at all.  I just make them sharp.  Basically the angle should be as small as possibble, as the point after all is to cut as effective as possible.  If th edge do not hold up for your use, then that knife with that steel and whatewer need to be sharpened, or maybe better, as Steven says, finished, at an steeper angle.
And, take your time, I`m in my fourth decade of practice and think I`m beginning to be reasonably good now.
timann

i sharpen knives by rubbing them against a whetstone till it's sharp. i don't give a damn about angle, stropping, etc. if it removes metal in the direction i want it to, it's sharpening it.

Click on this link for the best sharpening advice I have ever seen

I read this article years ago -- probably around 2001 or so, and it has guided me ever since.  It's popped up in various places on the internet.  I first saw it on bladeforums.com.

Essentially, the "best angle" is going to depend on a number of factors, including the use to which the blade will be put (a razor has a very small angle, a utility knife has a larger one, and an ax has a larger one still).  Remember to be sure about whether you are talking about the total angle, or just the angle at which you hold the spine of the blade off the sharpening stone.

I don't want to belabor the point, here:  Just read the article by Joe Talmadge in my link (above).  It will provide all you really need to know about sharpening.  Trust me.  I get my knives so that they shave hair off my arm with ease, and friends come to me begging me to sharpen their knives.

edit:  As was mentioned by Timann, it takes time to become any good at it.  Be patient!

My father was a master knife sharpener/maker.  Sadly, I never quite got his touch, but I have improved gradually over my lifetime.  I can get a quality knife sharp enough to shave my arm with,  which is good enough for me.  There's one thing that I've found that would probably be helpful to everyone.  Slow down.  You can apply the exact same pressure to identical knives on identical whet stones, using identical angles, but if one knife is moving quickly over the stone and the other very slowly, there will be a world of difference. You have to move your knife slowly enough to feel a heavy drag on it as you sharpen.  If you go just a tiny bit too fast that drag will instantly disappear completely.  The slow knife will sharpen in much less time and better than the one that's moving quickly over the stone.  This tactic can make all the difference in the world.

The sharpening advice in peacefuljeffreys link is by the way really as good as he says it is.  
timann

can someone explain what the burr is? when i sharpen knives i never get it, but occasionally i get a fuzzy line of metal- like all the metal has collected on the edge. sharpening the other way doesn't even come close to removing it, so i just wipe it off.

i think the burr is the metal that is being removed and collected at the edge,  its necessary to remove it to make the edge last a lil longer plus a lil sharper.

The "burr" is a wafer-thin strip of metal that appears at the edge of the blade when you're sharpening, once you have made the bevel on each side meet at a V.

I'll tell you a little about how to detect a bevel.

Imagine you have been sharpening the left side of your knife. Holding it by the handle, you've been making a left-to-right motion like you're trying to slice a piece off the top of your sharpening stone.

Still holding the knife by the handle in the "saber grip" (with the blade coming out of your fist like a thumb), bring it up so that the edge is to the ceiling and the point is toward your face. (Be careful, of course.) You're staring at the tip of the blade, with the edge up.

The burr that you will have raised will be a very thin wafer, bent away from the vertical toward the right.

Now, look at the right side of the blade with the spine toward your face, edge away. (The point will be pointing left.) Look down at the flat side of the blade at an angle, and from where your eyes are, shine a white or blue LED flashlight down at that same angle. Make sure that you don't reflect the light straight back off the flat of the blade into your eyes. Since the burr will be flipped up from the plane of the blade, it will reflect back a thin, halo-like edge at you.

Your next step will be to lightly grind the right side of the blade, at a slightly steeper angle than before (i.e. you pull the spine a little higher off the stone) to try to strip away this little wafer of metal. The burr will feel to your finger as though it's razor sharp, and it is, but it's just a weak wafer, as I said. Try cutting with it and it will either fold or break and your knife will be dull again.

It takes very gentle pressure to grind off the burr. Too much, and you will just create a burr on the other side! What you need to do is grind it very gently on one side, then very gently on the other, back and forth, one stroke per side, lighter each stroke. Eventually the burr gets shrunk down to nonexistence. Use the LED trick to check your progress. You'll know you're finished when you look closely at the edge as I described, and instead of seeing the reflected light from the burr, the light just drops off the edge of the blade into the distance. The actual edge bevel should not be reflecting light at you.

sharpened my KA-BAR,  mann its scary sharp  :o,  thnx guys   ;)

Well, the good thing about a KA-BAR is that even if it's not sharp, you can still beat someone to death with it!  ;D

hey man I love my KA-BAR its soo easy to sharpen,  its like the perfect knife coupled with a book called sharpening for dummies  ;D

i scraped off a lot of that outside layer of skin just testing if my mora is sharp, and i didn't notice till i looked at it.  :o

for me i found the burr the same way i test if it's sharp- gently stroking my thumb across the blade. the burr side catches, whereas the other side doesn't.

That's true, the burr side catches your finger, but your finger slides smoothly off the non-burr side.