My chef's knife is a Elephant-brand carbon-steel sabatier. It gets five strokes each side on a steel, every few times I use it. The steel is ancient and worn; a

My chef's knife is a Elephant-brand carbon-steel sabatier. It gets five strokes each side on a steel, every few times I use it. The steel is ancient and worn; and I'm sure it's never been near carbide or diamond. Every few months it gets a few strokes on each side on a coticule. I have a coticule because I got into shaving with a straight razor. I have a leather strop for the razors (it's never seen any kind of paste!) My understanding is that stropping is to re-align the edge of the blade, which tends to 'flop over' in use. I don't strop kitchen knives; I don't think the edge is thick enough to flop over. I only strop razors. Neither stropping (on clean leather) nor steeling should be removing metal; no metal or abrasive particles should be produced, and it's perfectly safe to do it in the kitchen. Sharpening with the coticule does remove metal, but the particles are captured in the watery sludge, and don't escape as dust. [Edit] My chef's knife is not Elephant; it's Richardson Steel of Sheffield (from before they sold out). I bought an Elephant paring knife, though, and Elephant chef's knives for each of my kids.