Thanks for all the help you three. I think I'm beginning to get the theory a bit more--i like understanding that part first or else i feel like I'm shooting in the dark.
I just went down to my local kitchen supply store and held the UX10 and loved the handle. The angled "bolster" reminded me of my Forschner handle, where I have grown quite comfortable resting my pointer finger while using. They also have Macs (which are possibly on my long term wish list, in addition to some sort of carbon steel blade...this stuff is addictive) and i compared the two, and despite people talking up the mac handles, I much preferred the bulkier handle of the Misono. The Mac handle was just too small for my taste, or hands.
I haven't touched the Masamoto yet, but I sense that I will agree with you on the flexiness.
I don't have an issue doing frequent steeling, I have a Kyocera ceramic steel which kept my Forschner quite sharp until I messed it up yesterday...But due to the relatively soft steel, it seems an 18-20 degree edge is more practical for this knife. Which brings me to my next question.
Since I've already taken at least some metal off at a 15 degree angle, and I decide now that I want to use a 20 degree angle, I will have some kind of a double bevel (or is that a single bevel?). Is this a good idea? or should I reprofile all that I had done yesterday while trying to make a 15 degree edge? I'm tempted to put a 15 degree edge on it first, before I put on the more permanent 18-20 edge, just to see how sharp I can get it. But I'll wait for advice.
Ok, that makes more sense to me. I'm a mechanical engineer, so I like terms like "fatigue"--and I like numbers. I stumbled upon this website comparing different grits numbers which was quite helpful sorting out the whole India and Arkansas business:
Abrasive grit sizes of belts, wheels and stones used in knifemaking, sharpening and woodworking
This may be obvious to me once I get my hands muddy, but how does one go about removing the burr before moving to the next stone? Once you have a burr on one side, then you switch sides, creating a second burr on the opposite side, wouldn't you just go back and forth removing burrs from either side? Or are you saying to remove the first (or second?) burr without creating a new one?
Indeed. I think the hardest part for a beginning sharpener is the fact that there are many correct techniques, but mixing and matching doesn' always work...
When I was out today, I was hoping to pick up the Coarse India by itself, but the kitchen store only had the combination coarse and fine. I thought the fine was around 1000 (but it's actually 320 JIS according to the website above), so I didn't want to double up with an 800 and 1000, and instead I got a Norton Coarse Crystalon oil stone. According to that website the Coarse Crystalon is 150 JIS.
questions:
1) Since the Crystalon is an oil stone, I should just sprinkle water on it, correct?
2) Is it a good idea to use this new 150 JIS to profile the blade, and then jump to the King 800? Am I creating a LOT of extra work by not using a 300 or 400 grit stone in between, as Chris suggests (I'm ok with a little bit of extra work)? I'm thinking I will pick up that Combi IB-8 soon, but I can't until later in the week.
That's it for now, I really appreciate the time you all have put in to helping a beginning sharpener. I think a lot of these basic questions will help others who are just starting out also. There is a lot of info already in these forums, but I feel like there should be an organization of threads within cooking knives. When searching for things like "sharpening" or "Misono" or "Mac" or whatever, it seems that the results bring you to every single post ever made in the knife forum since those words are thrown around in basically every thread. Although browsing aimlessly has actually been a lot of fun for me and very informative, it seems that this forum will grow to have an overwhelming amount of info for a beginner. Creating new categories like sharpening and knife selection etc. would be less intimidating (hint hint administrator). And I imagine BDL et al. will get tired of answering the same questions over and over again...if they haven't already!
time to go braise some pork butt!