Here you can find everything you need to know about sharpening knives with a ceramic sharpening stick (rod). Ceramic sharpening sticks are basically used to retain the sharpness of knives rather than to sharpen very blunt knives. For sharpening blunt knives we recommend the use of a sharpening stones.
Using a Ceramic Sharpening Stick
This video demonstrates how to use a ceramic sharpening stick. The length of this stick makes it ideal for sharpening kitchen knives..
In this video, Sal Glasser demonstrates the famous Spyderco Sharpmaker.
Note: When he refers to 'coarse stones', he means the coarser pair of the 2 pairs of sharpening sticks that come with the Sharpmaker. Actually the 'coarse' sticks are fairly fine and the 'fine' sticks are extremely fine.
For restoring an edge on blunt knives, coarse diamond-coated sticks are available. However, we prefer to use coarse sharpening stones for this because they work much faster and last longer.