No, whétstone. With an H.
Although the stone is made wet, the name does not stem from wetness, as much as it does from "whetting" the instrument. The process of sharpening itself.
A whetstone is a flat stone, on which I drag your knife.
The stone itself has a coarseness to it and by the power of repetition, I'll slowly remove bits of metal from the cutting edge of the knife, in a controlled fashion.
Every edge has an inherent angle at which it was made. The art being, of course, to find (and hold) that angle whilst sharpening. This way the bevel stays true to the design of the knife. Many European knives have a symmetrical bevel, where both sides of the bevel have been ground at an identical angle. There are knives with a-symmetrical bevels, single bevels and so called zero-bevels. In exceptional case the actual belly of the knife (i.e. the big flat surfaces on the sides of it) needs to be thinned out. But that deserves be a blog-post in and of itself, I guess.
The lower the grain-value (grit) of the stone, the coarser. Think of sanding paper.
The fold and the burr
While (subtly) manhandling the bevel in a one-sided manner, something called a burr emerges along the entire cutting edge. This is actually a form of metal fatique which will fall off of the knife. Sometimes easily, sometimes not so much. By frequently flipping the knife to the other side, I manipulate both sides of the cutting edge and the burr will have to wave a white flag eventually.
The hardness of the steel (HRC52 to HRC60) determines how easily grinding and de-burring will be. Very hard steel types are laborious to grind, but will de-burr quite effortlessly. The softer steel types tend to be easy to grind into shape, but the burr will often stick around like an unwanted guest at a party.
Coarse stone
The 120 to 300 grit stones (roughly, no pun intended) are used to remove lots of material quickly. When conditioning your knife, I will use such a stone to get back it's intended shape. These stones tend to remain cupboarded because, happily, conditioning is not needed all too often. However, should you encounter large chips in your cutting edge, a broken tip or a cutting edge that won't connect to your cutting board properly then it's shape is the first thing I'll get to work on.
Medium-grained stone
In between 300 and 1000 grit should cover most of ones grinding wants and needs. Using a 400 grit stone gets a chefs knife so sharp that it will effortlessly glide through a tomatoes skin. Following up with 800 to 1.000 grit refines that feeling a bit further. On these stones I will spend most of my time. Can't make mistakes now guys... Your cutting edge improves remarkedly here and will even start to beam with pride a little.
Fine stone
As is often the case, once you start moving towards the end of the spectrum, things can get out of hand a little. Ranging from 2.000 to upwards of 15.000 grit is used to ultimately refine the edge (more commonly called polishing).
Once finished on a +4.000 grit stone your bevel will gleam more fanaticly than Sugar Lee Hooper's head after a round of Jo met de Banjo (if you are not familiar with the force of nature that is this woman, 10/10 recommend watching) and one can actually see one's own reflection in that tiny sliver of polished edge.
Interestingly enough in the kitchen, more polish isn't more better, necessarily. Many products will put up a little less of a fight when you have a little micro-serration in your cutting edge. It's used to grip that first bit of tomato/bell pepper skin, for instance. This in sharp contradiction (okay, pun intended this time) to a razor blade, in which the ultimate goal is to get it so sharp that the hair on your beard/mustache/leg spontaneously surrenders, even looking at that cutting edge.
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