Educate me on sharpening knives

[Joe13]

I would encourage anyone that feels like they don't have the muscle memory to use flat stones to grab a crappy knife and spend 10 min a day trying to get it sharp.

It won't take that long until you become a pro and it is emensly satisfying to be able to sharpen a knife without gadgets.

If it helps motivate you, you can't use survival tricks like a coffee mug, window top or a log with fine sand if you don't have the basics down

 

[ikemay]

Research some books and see if they are available at your local library. I read the Razor Edge, agreed with some of it and disagreed with some of it. He was also using it to sell his sharpening products, which is fine but just a heads up. Anyhow, there are good ones out there besides that one just do a little research.

Practice and patience are your friends. It's just steel, if you can dull a knife by trying to sharpen it, then you can sharpen it to.

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I can hand sharpen my knives pretty well using a variety of stones.

1 - Vintage 11 inch long tri-hone that my wife picked up 38'ish years ago at a garage sale for use at her culinary school.
2 - Spyderco 8" ceramic bench stones.
3 - DMT 11" diamond plates.
4 - Crystolon 8" coarse/fine grit bench stones.
5 - Two sided 8" coarse crystolon - fine India stone.
6 - Lansky puck for my axes with spit or water

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When I don't hand sharpen, I use the following methods.

For my wife's kitchen knives and customer knives I use an Edge-Pro Pro model as it gives very consistent edges and is pretty quick once set up. Though I find it cumbersome to use on pocket knives. Their Apex model would be perfectly fine for personal home use.

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For my pocket knives I use a Spyderco Sharpmaker. It's easy to setup and does a good job of getting a decent working edge on pocket knives, and touch ups are quickly done. Only caveat being is your edges better be close to the angle of the Sharpmaker or you will be there awhile. Having said that, my Swiss Army knives, old Camillus TL-29 (electrician) knives, Mora, and Buck pocket knives to name a few take to it really well if not perfectly right out of the box.

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I use ceramic rods for my "steels". They actually take off a little bit of material and realign the edge. As opposed to a "steel" steel which burnishes (smears) the edge along with realigning it, it works fine I just prefer a ceramic rod. I place the tip of the rod on the counter top, with the rod slightly angled towards myself. Then start the knife edge (angle approximate to the angle the knife was sharpened at) at the top and slide the knife down the rod, moving the knife re-ward to get the entire length of the blade done.

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I have tried the Lansky clamp system and just never cottoned to it, though others have found it works well for them.

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I have wowed 8th graders using the bottom of coffee mugs for knife sharpening when nothing else was available.

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Beware of re-profiling or "thing" the edge to much or you could wind up with rolling your edges. I generally tell people new to knife sharpening to stick with the angle that the knife came with from the factory. This is until one gets competent with sharpening.

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Don't agonize over the perfect angle, don't go crazy with polishing the bevels/edge.

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If you have a whetstone and it has never had oil on it, consider using water. If it comes pre-oiled, or had oil on it before, stick with oil.

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Sharpening and touching up are two different categories, just so you know.


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Ok, that's enough. Just very, very humble opinions.

Mike

 

[ikemay]

Couple more items, sorry.

For freehand sharpening, the "burr" is your friend. It lets you know when you are at the edge of your edge. Once the burr is raised evenly along the entirety of one side, do the other side. Many times people get frustrated because they cannot raise the burr. Take a sharpie and mark the edge of the side you are working with. After one or two passes, examine it under and magnifying glass to see if you have removed the ink at the edge of the blade. If not, then you simply need to increase your angle until you do.

Ok, I'll stop now.
Mike

 

[Certaindeaf]

Didn't re-read thread but to clean ceramic rods, use an eraser.. works like magic, unlike soap and hot water which does zilch.

 

[ilikegunspdx]

Didn't re-read thread but to clean ceramic rods, use an eraser.. works like magic, unlike soap and hot water which does zilch.

Good info thx. I use the spyderco sharpmaker ceramic rods a lot and can never get all the color back off. I'll try the eraser method.

 

[Captain O]

If all else fails

Good info thx. I use the spyderco sharpmaker ceramic rods a lot and can never get all the color back off. I'll try the eraser method.

If all else fails, take them to the kitchen sink and use Comet and a sponge to scrub off the metal. (It works every time).

 

[Capn Jack]

These seem to get good reviews, but I'm not sure if it's what I need: http://www.amazon.com/Smiths-PP1-Pocket-Multifunction-Sharpener/dp/B000O8OTNC/

I may as well add this one to my, "Magic" collection of sharpeners.
I never could sharpen a knife, or splice 3 strand into an eye.

 

[Dr Prepper]

Depends on the edge profile that you want.
I've gone to using scandi grinds almost exclusively for my fixed blades and convex for my EDC floders because they are the easiest profiles to hand sharpen and maintain along with being effective.

To convex the best way I've found is this -

Sand paper is cheap and effective. Some of the finest wood working tools in the world have never seen anything but that for sharpening.

For the scandi grinds I use a water stone -

If you maintain your knifes and don't abuse them then stropping is what you should be doing most of the time to maintain the edge -

I'll strop my knifes after 20-30 minutes of use and only have to sharpen on a stone rarely. You can make a strop with some scrap leather from some place like Oregon Leather and glue it down to a flat piece of wood with a couple of other pieces of flat wood and clamps. Saves a lot of money that way.

A piece of balsa wood glued to a another piece of hard wood (or recessed into a block of wood also works pretty darn well for a strop! Can be much much cheaper as well. And kinda nice that you don't need to stretch it out like a traditional hook strop. I like the waxy Dovo strop paste works pretty well too!

Edit: also doesn't dry out or need conditioning etc. Easy peasy!

 

[ilikegunspdx]

Just an FYI on a new to me reprofiling method that worked well. Got a Xmas tree knife and horrible grind on it one side had massive edge and other side tiny tiny edge.

UseD a Plug in hand orbital sander with 120 grit. did the job really well reprofiling to 30 degrees inclusive. Stabilized with standard wood working clamps. Took longer than I thought but really easy to do compared to doing it on a hand sharpener.

Finished it by putting micro bevel at 40 degrees with spyderco triangle sharpener (grey rods on triangle edge only). I would give this blade (for machete type workI mean) a 0 or 1 out of 10 before and a 10 out of 10 now. Also did my bushman cold stee knife thing and a regular harbor freight machete (no spyderco sharpener used on that, that total POS is literally going in the garbage as it's not worth sharpening) the same way which worked well.


Also passing along info on Xmas tree knives from my research if anyone is interested so you don't have to spend the time. bushking makes two kinds german stainless steel which is thinner and not as wide and usa made which is thicker, wider and carbon steel. The one shown above is usa version. Much lighter alternative to machetes for lighter brush/blackberry work. Not for heavy branches though. They also make serrated blades and various handle lengths. Blade lengths are all 16" I think. Made short work of blackberries ivy, bushes. Didn't cut anything over 3/8 diameter for woody bushes though cuz didn't want to push it (blackberry of course can be bigger than that but not woody). My understanding is the handles often break where the 3 rivets are that's why on this one they added shrink plastic/rubber over that areas that often breaks. These are not full tang handle length varies a lot from maybe 6"?-20"? The one above has 8" handle which seems fine to me. 11" handle might give a bit more reach.