Help & Support
Direct support and the in-app help guides, in one place.
Questions, bug reports, feature requests, or anything else about your sharpening practice with Togi: write to us. We answer within two business days.
Please include your iOS version and a short description of what you were doing when the issue happened. Photos or a screen recording are welcome.
First sharpening
Before you touch a stone, scan the edge. Hold the knife flat under good window light, spine toward you, and let Togi frame the bevel. The first score is the baseline you will compare against for the life of the blade. Soak a medium stone, around 1000 grit, for ten minutes. Set it on a stable, non-slip base, low enough that your elbow can ride above your wrist. Begin at the heel. Lay the bevel onto the stone, find the angle Togi suggested for this knife, and lock your shoulder, not your wrist. Push away with even pressure on the cutting half of the stroke; lift on the return. Ten strokes per side, then re-scan. You are looking for a burr you can feel with a fingertip drawn from spine to edge. When you have one along the whole length, switch sides. Finish on a fine stone and a few light, alternating strokes. Re-scan, save the session, and let the coaching plan suggest the next step. The first session matters less than building a repeatable posture.
About steel types
Togi groups steels into four working families, because the differences that matter at the stone are about carbide structure, not exact alloy. Carbon steels, the hagane core of a traditional Japanese knife or a forged European carbon, are reactive and take a fine edge quickly on natural and synthetic stones alike. Stainless steels in the AUS-8 / VG-10 / 14C28N range hold an edge longer and resist discolouration; they need a slightly coarser starting grit because the chromium carbides slow the cut. High-alloy stainless, including SG2, R2, ZDP-189, and powdered metallurgy steels, holds an edge for a very long time but demands harder stones with friable abrasives; soft Japanese natural stones glaze on them. Tool and high-vanadium steels, including S30V, S35VN, S90V, and M390, are bushcraft and folder territory; vanadium carbides are harder than aluminium oxide, so use silicon carbide or diamond plates. Togi sets the recommended grit progression from the steel family on the knife record. Override it if you know your stone behaves differently on your specific blade.
Working with your own stones
Togi does not sell stones and does not require any particular brand. Tell the app what you own and the coaching plan will route through it. Open the Bench, tap Stones, and add each stone with its true grit and its character: splash-and-go, soak, or oil. If a stone behaves a grit coarser or finer than the label says (most do), set the effective grit, not the printed one. A 1000 Shapton Pro behaves closer to 1200 by JIS, while a Naniwa Chosera 800 cuts more like a 600. For naturals, set the family (Aoto, Awasedo, Tomo) and a working hardness band rather than a number; the plan will use it for finish steps only. The app picks the smallest progression that gets you from current score to target without skipping more than 1000 grit at a time on hard steels. If you only own one stone, that is fine: Togi will plan a longer session on it and ask for a strop or a loaded leather at the end.
Why my score dropped
A score that drops between sessions is almost always honest news about the edge, not a measurement error. Run through these in order. First, lighting. The scan needs diffuse light from a single dominant source. Direct sun or a harsh overhead bulb produces a glare line the app reads as edge damage. Try again near a window, in shade. Second, rolled edge. After a few weeks of board work, a thin apex bends rather than dulls; the fix is a few light alternating strokes on a fine stone or a clean strop, not a full progression. Third, micro-chipping. Rocking through hard contact on a cutting board, or a single bone strike, leaves a row of tiny chips that scatter light dramatically. The score will look much worse than the feel suggests. Open the knife detail, look at the edge photo from the last scan, and you will usually see the chip line. Fourth, board and storage. A glass cutting board or a magnetic strip can drop a knife five points overnight. None of these are bugs. The score is doing its job: telling you the edge changed.
Restoring a damaged edge
A chipped or rolled edge is not the end of the knife. Togi's coaching plan will switch into restoration mode when the score drops below 40 or when you mark the knife as damaged on the detail screen. The plan starts on the coarsest stone you own, usually 220 to 400 grit, and works the bevel until the chips are below the new apex. Expect to remove a visible amount of steel; this is normal and the only honest fix. Hold the angle a degree or two higher than your finish angle so you reset a clean bevel rather than chasing damage along the existing one. Work both sides evenly to keep the apex centred. When the marker test (a permanent marker stroke along the bevel, then a few stone strokes) shows the ink removed from the whole bevel, climb the grit ladder: 1000, 3000, finish. A micro-bevel at the very end, at your normal angle plus two degrees, two or three strokes per side, gives a forgiving edge that will resist the same damage next time. Re-scan and save the session. The new baseline takes over from the old one.