You Sharp Little Thing ......

Every tried to cut a piece of meat or vegetable with a dull knife?  What happens? You are not efficient. You work way too hard at it and it is not safe ... a dull blade slips.

A high-end chef's knife and a dental hygiene instrument share common characteristics - they have a handle, they are balanced and weighted, are made with high-grade stainless steel, and have multiple cutting edges.  The blades are sharpened from heel to toe, but generally the toe is the business end of the tool.

There are many sharpening gadgets for dental hygiene instruments, some electronic and some manual.  Electric gadgets that have been invented can produce amazingly sharp instruments in a short amount of time, but they are designed to sharpen clean, sterile instruments.  If you have been extensively hand scaling tenacious tartar, however, you will need to stop and touch up your instruments with a manual stone that can be sterilized after use.  

This post is about free-hand sharpening of dental hygiene instruments.



 Dental hygiene students are still taught how to sharpen dental scalers using a moving stone-stationary instrument technique.  The only advantage to this technique is that it allows the operator to clearly see the face of the blade against the stone.   Recent studies have shown how this is NOT the best method and results in multiple bevels and angles created along the length of the blade. It is also a dangerous method to teach students who are yet developing fine motor skills and good instrument control because the stone is held without a fulcrum in midair while trying to maintain the correct angle during the sharpening strokes.


To see a commentary on this study, please visit: http://www.rdhmag.com/articles/print/volume-30/issue-10/features/manual-instrument-sharpening.html

Think of how a chef's knife is sharpened - what culinary instructor in the world would teach students to use a moving stone in the non-dominant hand against a rigidly-held knife blade ?  I think there would be plenty of gouged chefs in the kitchens ....

The preferred method for free-hand manual sharpening is moving instrument-stationary stone.

The instrument is held in the dominant hand to allow for the most natural eye-hand coordination and movement.  This method affords the most control and is therefore the safest technique.    The blade is pressed lightly against a lubricated stone and careful attention is paid to moving the instrument at the correct angle on the stone with consistent pressure down the length of the blade.




A helpful student exercise is to "paint out" the blade with a black marker, practice moving the instrument along the stone, and then observe how the markings are removed.

Sharpening is a skill that takes time to learn and master. Like many things, this gets easier with practice!