Yesterday I wrote a short post called "A different method" in which I talked about how for the past few days I had to change positions at work due to some people getting sick and how, because of that, I had to cut vegetables with a bunch of knives that were all dull.
I also mentioned how I tried to sharpen some of them with no success. Because of that, and the dangers involved in cutting anything with a blunt knife, I decided to try a different method - to try to sharpen a knife using a whet stone that I had in my room.
The point of the article was to show that there are other ways in which to achieve the same result, so I didn't talk about whether my attempt at using a whet stone proved a good idea or not, simply because I didn't have time to try it when I posted the article. I only did it after.
So now, a day after that article and after I tried to sharpen the knife using the whet stone that I have, I can finally share the result: it worked!
I actually took a knife that could not be sharpened with the tool I had at work and managed to get it back in good shape using a completely different method.
After that I actually learned that what I was using at work wasn't the right tool for sharpening. I was using a "hone" or "steel", which is used mainly to maintain an edge that was already sharp. So, no matter how hard I tried to sharpen my knife with that tool, I was merely trying to get to a result that was not possible.
A whet stone is what you'd use to actually get a knife sharp. It takes a bit of practice before you can get a decent result, but after around an hour and a half of trial and error I managed to sharpen the knife.
This is a very simple example of what can happen if you change the method you use to achieve a certain result. Doing this can help you get what you want faster, while also learning more about both the new and old methods in the process.
