They didn't treat sharpening at all, which is at least as treacherous a swamp of science and of misinformation. They tested only knives that were new and one presumes, factory sharpened. I sharpen my own knives aftermarket, using the Japanese style (controlled angle, two-hand scrubbing on different graded…

I'm using Cat6A cables on all but the link from my router to my Cable Modem. This is a recent upgrade though, and I know for certain that my consumer electronics are only utilizing the Cat6 standard. Oh, and my printer and my 802.11g WAPs (for extra signal) are on Cat5e. That's all well within spec, though.

The guidance I have is that stone/ceramic are more likely to actually sharpen (by removing metal to form a new edge) and steels (even filed steels) are for honing (reshaping/conditioning the existing edge).

Spyderco is awesome, but with a Japanese knife or a higher quality knife of any kind, be careful not to blow away the finer 15 degree edge with Spyderco's 22 degree edge.

"harder" is equivalent to a finer grain, "softer" is equivalent to a coarser grain. Synthetic stones usually have a harder and a softer side. Natural stones usually are one grade on both or all sides. But know your tools - this guidance doesn't always apply.

I think the source of that is probably two-fold: (1) implied by upalindromeu, folks have trouble keeping the angle consistent if they go in both directions and (2) if you draw the knife like a razor blade (so that the back of the blade is moving forward, not the edge), you will draw a burr. If your other direction of…

It's ever so slightly more difficult to sharpen at a tighter angle (like 15 degrees instead of the usual 20 to 25) on a stone because you might be more used to the 20 to 25 degree angle, but with practice it's fine. This is assuming a free stroke. If you are trying to use the guides, which are usually set to a…