Do Maintain: How to sharpen knives, scissors and garden tools.

by Gareth Heaton

144 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

While I found this to be a good reference/how to book on the subject of sharpening, I did have some issues. The author is friendly and personable and there are photographs and illustrations to help ensure competency. You will find yourself knowledgeable in the subject. But I had some problems with the book that created frustration and confusion.

Of note, the book relies fully on whetstones, which the author considers the best option for sharpening. So mechanical sharpeners and 'steel' sharpeners (the round sharpener on a stick) are not discussed here. He goes beyond knives: scissors, gardening tools and serrated edged items are discussed, as are tips for fixing chipped, scratched, or knives with tips broken off.

The first issue I ran into was that the author was not consistent in the terms he used. E.g., whetstones are described as low/high, course-fine, or their grit size interchangeably. This became frustrating when I looked online for a whetstone since I'm not sure if course is low or fine is low. I had to use grit size and compare to the terms he used to figure it out (e.g., he says, "as long as your whetstone is low/medium, you're fine." - But is that course/medium or course/fine or what?). I would have preferred a chart that says something along the lines that course is xx grit to xx grit and medium is xx grit to xx grit, etc. And not to use "low" or "medium" at all.

Another issue when buying the stone (for us beginners) is understanding things not mentioned like the whetstone base, etc. He gives advice on not buying the cheaper whetstones due to durability issues and gives four brands that he trusts. Not one of those brands had a combination that he recommends on Amazon US. Buying a whetstone was very blind feeling and difficult no thanks to the limited recommendations in the book. That is one downside to the author being in the UK, I guess.

For flattening the whestone, there are no images despite it being a process. Once again, it's all in blocky paragraphs that are not separated by steps. Then he says he prefers a powder and we should too and then as a throwaway statement that we need marble or hardened glass to use the powder - not something I have hanging around my house and kind of important to mention at the beginning since it is a further expense.

I also found the book harder to use than it should be. The steps are just in paragraph form and then on another page, a bunch of pictures with numbers on them. A better approach would have been to have the photograph and the text describing that step right next to that photograph. That way you don't have to be going back and forth in the book all the time trying to understand what is being said. Additionally, arrows on the photographs to show direction would have been very useful. The text really needed to be steps that each were in a single numbered paragraph for ease of understanding and referencing when doing/using.

The book was harder than it had to be at times. The author is very knowledgeable but the book feels like it was written by someone who is quite used to showing in person so didn't quite think through how to tell someone how to do something in a book, where he doesn't have props. A lot of steps are 'go by feel, you'll get that feel the more you do it" which is fine when you can show someone but frustrating for a reader when you cannot. The author acknowledges that but it still makes the process daunting.

The above issues aside, it is a solid book and with a few edits, I would easily give this a 5 star review. I appreciated the friendly tone of the author and his depth of knowledge about the subject. Revised from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.