Warning: I was sharpening my boning knife at the wrong angle for years and a $9 sharpie showed me

Shane Martinez · 2026-10-27T06:45:09.284606+00:00

For about 5 years I ran every boning knife I owned across a steel at what I figured was 20 degrees, eyeballing it like everybody does. Then a retired guy named Walt who does sharpening out of his garage over in Fresno told me to color the edge with a sharpie and take one light pass, and when I looked at the marker I saw I was only hitting about half the bevel on one side. Turns out my wrist rolls a little when I reach the tip, so the back third of the blade had never really been sharpened since I bought it. That one sharpie trick showed me more in 10 seconds than a decade of guessing did, and my trim got cleaner the same week once I fixed it. So here is the argument I keep having with the young guys: is freehand muscle memory the real skill, or is a guided system or angle block the honest answer for most people? Half the crew says a jig makes you lazy and you lose the feel, the other half says crooked freehand edges cost us money on yield and nobody wants to admit it. Where do you all come down on it, and did anybody else find out their angle was off by coloring the edge like that?

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Warning: I was sharpening my boning knife at the wrong angle for years and a $9 sharpie showed me | Butchers - Chatter Central