I'm going to give you a little help in determining how far you need to lift the spine of your knife off the stone to reach a desired angle, the math (sine) works, trust me.
Lets say you have a 2 inch wide knife, measured at the heel, always measure it at the heel to make this math work.
Ok now you want a 15 degree angle on the edge, that is 15 deg per side of course.
You take the width of the heel which in this case is 2 inches and divide it by four.
So 2 which is the width of the knife divided by 4 is .5.
To get a 15 deg angle you raise the spine by 1/2 inch.
You can make a 1/2 guide from stacked quarters until it reaches .5 inch or the better way is to get a wine cork, so pull the cork, drink the wine and cut the cork at 1/2 inch and there you have a little guide.
What if you have a big knife, and it is 3inches wide at the heel and you want a 20 degree angle.
In this case, for a 20 deg angle measure 3 by 3 so the height to raise the spine is 1 inch.
If you want a: (Width is the width of knife at the heel)
20 deg angle divide the width by 3
15 deg angle divide the width by 4
12 deg angle divide the width by 5
These are the common angles and a two inch wide heel is a common width for many knives.
I got this info from a very good book called An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward, I just thought I would share it.
Peter
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