When sharpening a knife, what exactly does honing do?
In: Engineering
Honing, stropping, ultimately all the steps are about trying to achieve a suitably keen and durable edge.
Part of this depends on the metal the blade is made from, part of it from the macro profile of the blade, and part from the edge geometry – the micro-convexing going on within around 1 micron of the edge.
Some excellent SEM images of what honing does can be found at https://scienceofsharp.com/home/ if you want to take a look.
You generally hone a blade with a set of stones of decreasing roughness, until you have achieved a suitable profile, and then strop until you’ve achieved the right microconvexity. A great deal of trial and error is involved, and a great deal of “feel” of the end result.
My own approach is to use a handful of stones to set the edge, then progress to a loaded leather strop with quarter micron diamonds, then a clean leather strop.
For a kitchen knife this is probably overkill, but for a straight razor its barely sufficient.
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