Naniwa Super Togeru Sharpening Guide

Made in Japan.

High quality knives should always be sharpened on stones, but many chefs feel insecure about their stone sharpening skills. Here’s a clever little aide that can help perfect your sharpening. Whether you’re using diamond stones, oil stones or water stones, if the knife is sharpened correctly, you will get a sharp demarcation between the bevel of the sharpened edge and the side of the blade. This sharp demarcation prevents slices from riding up the side of the knife and helps them fall off in neat piles on your cutting board. Holding a consistent bevel is the most important and difficult part of knife sharpening, and here’s where the Super Togeru comes in.

The Super Togeru is a clip that snaps on to the back of the knife so you can work with a consistent angle. It’s deceptively simple, a traditional design that’s been updated with new materials for better performance. The Super Togeru works great success on knives from 4 1/2" long up to around 8" long, but it can be used on longer knives if you move the guide around or use multiple guides. Older versions of this design were all metal and would wear the stone prematurely and also scratch the surface of the knife. The clip on this model is made of plastic, so that it doesn’t scratch the knife, and its wear surface, the part that bears against the sharpening stone, is very smooth hard ceramic that won’t wear easily (except maybe on diamond stones), or wear a hollow in your sharpening stone.