It’s Important to Keep Your Professional Fillet Knives Sharp When Cutting Meat and Even More Important to Sharpen Safely.

Fillet knives are among the most difficult to sharpen. The professional fillet knife is narrow and extremely flexible making it challenging to hold steady and difficult to get a consistent edge. To develop your technique as you learn the best way to sharpen a fillet knife, we recommend starting out with a knife that’s easy to sharpen. Kitchen knives that have a large flat surface to rest on are the easiest to develop your technique. Getting past your initial learning curve on an easy knife, will save you time and frustration. Below is an example of a perfect knife to begin practicing your sharpening skills when you are sharpening a fillet knife with a stone:

Once you feel comfortable sharpening an easy knife, you’ll be ready to tackle something more challenging like a fillet knife. Learn how to sharpen a fillet knife correctly with our Professional Model knife sharpening systems below.

5 Tips to Help Eliminate Common Mistakes When Sharpening a Fillet Knife

TIP #1

Remove the guide clip. The sharpening angle guide clip will help make sharpening most knives a little easier by giving you a larger surface to rest the back of the knife against. But when you’re sharpening at low angles, or really narrow knives the guide clip can interfere with the fillet knife sharpening stone, and prevent it from contacting the edge. So keep an eye on the guide clip and make sure to remove it if you’re getting any interference.

TIP #2

Set your fillet knife sharpening angle around 18 to 21 degrees. When you lay a fillet knife across the blade table and rest on the face of the blade it usually cancels 1 or 2 degrees out. The lower the angle you put on a knife, the longer it’s going to take to sharpen. So if your angle is set at 15 degrees, then you’re probably sharpening at 13 or 14 degrees, and that’s going to take more time, and give you a fragile edge.

TIP #3

Sharpen the section of the blade that’s supported by the blade table. Anytime you’re sharpening a flexible blade you want to keep your stone operating directly above the blade table. This is going to give you a more consistent angle, and it’s also going to keep the blade from flexing while you sharpen.

TIP #4

Slow down. Slowing down is going to make it easier for you to hold the knife steady on the fillet knife sharpener, and it’s going to allow the stone to cut better and stay cleaner. You should be able to feel the stone cutting. If you can’t feel the stone cutting you’re probably going too fast.

TIP #5

Polish the edge. This has been tested over and over again, and there is no doubt about it, that when filleting a fish, a polished edge on a sharp fillet knife performs the best.

Practice Makes Perfect. Watch Us Demonstrate These 5 Helpful Sharpening Tips for Fillet Knives