paper sharpening wheels - when your time is important to you

[tknife]

I was in need of some professional help with my poor Emerson edge. I don't know much about paper wheels, but I know that Richard did one awesome job putting a conventional grind on it and sharpening it up like a razor

Two before pics:
Here you can see the multiple angles that I had put on over time. The asymmetrical grind that Emerson does is supposed to be easy to sharpen, but it was hell for me!


And on the non-sharpened side, I had another angle going


The after pics:
Now both sides are even, sharpened to the same angle at 120 grit


This sucker cuts better than when it was brand new. The blade is thick for such a small knife though. I still may have him thin it down a bit, but it seems pretty perfect for my use now.

[aephilli]

Please forgive if this has been covered before, but in reading this thread (and most of those linked herein) I want to say I got the impression that the belt sander to sharpen and then the slotted wheel to finish/polish/strop would give a very good convex edge?

I ask because the edge I end up with when using a felt belt loaded with the white compound for stropping after sharpening on the belt sander will "only" shave arm hair, not "tree top" it.

[dsmegst]

dan, i need to get you to explain stuff for me . much better explination.

It's all part of the learning experience for me. I'm just trying to get things straight in my head.

[richard j]

aephilli, thats the neat thing about the paper buffing wheel. i have compared it to the leather wheel of a tormek, a leather strop, and a felt wheel. all 3 of these items do a good job but the wheel seems to put a better finish on. a friend had a tormek and had just sharpened his wood chisels that day.

i showed him some knives that i had sharpened on the wheels. he said the knives felt sharper than his wood chisels that were done on the tormek. i had my portable sharpener with me so i touched up his wood chisels. he said there was a noticeable improvement in the edge after i touched them up.

i used to work in a factory that built aircraft lights and they had a buffing department for polishing the reflectors. one of the buffing room workers was a friend and he came to visit and to get some knives sharpened. he used to sharpen on the buffing equipment at the shop and gave me his view on the edge. he was a believer in the wheels after that.

i made a knife for a member here a few years ago but he wanted to put his own scales on it. after a few years he finally finished it. it would treetop hairs when i sent it and he said it stilil does. here is the link to his thread http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...hp?t=800946the

a lot has to do with how the edge is ground and the final finish of the edge. take the knife above that i sharpened. i used a 120 grit abrasive to work up the burr yet i finished the edge on the slotted wheel. if that edge were thinner, it would be a whole lot sharper.

[aephilli]

Thanks for the quick reply, now I know what to do with this Amazon gift certificate - Woodcraft, here I come!!!!!

One more question, I should be able to use the white compound I got from Supergrit, right?

[richard j]

the grit that comes with the wheels is a medium grit. you can try it and see how it works. i have experimented with different compounds just to see what they would do.

[aephilli]

Thanks again for the help!

[grease-man]

i had a friend call me up a while back wanting to know what all he needed to get in order to put a convex edge on his knfe using his belt sander. he went through this list of belt grits from coarse grits for starting out to fine belts for finishing. when he said that he was going to order about $50. for micron belts i asked if he had planned on putting a mirror finish on an entire blade like the one i put on kalama.

he said no, that he was going to use it to finish the edge. i asked him why he wanted to get belts he didnt need. when he asked why, i told him the finest belt he needed was a 400 grit jflex and going any finer was a waste, that an edge like that is what i consider to be a wire edge (novelty edge) and it will roll unless all he wanted to do was whittle hair.

he said he cuts a lot of heavy duty cardboard and what i told him about the wire edge made sense. i told him to try a 320 grit and finish it off on the slotted paper wheel and he should be good to go. i told him k II can chop down trees, shave hair and push cut newspaper or free hanging newspaper with the same edge finish i told him to use.

This is has been my experience as well Richard. Those hair whittling edges aren't good for much everyday/utility use. I've tried both kinds of edges, and it seems that finishing from 400 grit or sometimes even lower will hold the edge quite a bit longer. OMMV... just my experience. -Matt-

[richard j]

try 80 grit and buff with the wheel. on h1 it works great.

[stevenkelby]

It's about time I posted here too. Richard put a convex edge on my Hinderer XM-24 a few months ago and I was so impressed I bought a set of wheels.

The XM-24 has been used an awful lot since then and the edge hasn't needed anything but stropping, it seems to have held up brilliantly. The steel is CTS-XHP.

A couple months before that, I had knifenut1013 sharpen my Gayle Bradley. The edge was very impressive at first, but didn't seem to last long. It was especially bad when cutting anything sticky like cardboard boxes with adhesive labels or tape on them, the edge would get gummed up real quick and not cut until cleaned.

The edge Richard put on the XM-24 just lasts a lot longer. I think there are 2 main reasons for this.

First, it's convex, and therefore undeniably stronger. There is more steel behind the cutting edge, supporting and giving it strength. Convex is the best edge profile for an edge that lasts, no question in my mind.

Second, the edge, while polished to the eye, does have what I guess you would call micro serrations, so it digs in and keeps slicing through material where the polished edge slips over the material. I noticed the difference a lot with pallet wrap. If the knifenut1013 edge is not perfectly clean, from previously cutting through something that leaves a residue for example, it slides over the plastic wrap. The paper wheel edge always slices into it.

I use a straight razor to shave and for that, I want the edge as highly refined as possible, I hone up to 12'000 grit stones and spend ages carefully stropping on horse leather. For shaving I'm in the "highly refined/polished is better" camp, no question. Highly refined is best for push cutting certain things like face hair.

For pretty much every other task I use a knife for, an edge that still has some microscopic texture to it gets through the material better.

I put them both under my microscope and Richard's edge is not as highly polished as one by knifenut1013, but cuts better as a result.

I'm talking about slicing through cardboard, plastic packing tape, pallet wrapping, rope, hose, string and thin soft wire. Hair and thin paper are fun to test with, but who needs to split hairs and toilet paper in the real world? To be fair I still do that for fun and to test the edge is sharp though

I've had the wheels for a couple months and have become so confident/competent that I have sharpened every knife I have on them (100+, some of which are $1000+), plus every knife owned by most of my family, friends and co workers. I've had to regrit the wheels recently. Must be over 500 knives I've done. Everything from a Spyderco Bug up to an ESEE Lite Machete.

I haven't used the edge pro since I got the wheels. I still think about using it to get that awesome looking mirrored bevel we all love but can't bring myself to spend 2 hours when the wheels will do it in 2 minutes and produce an edge that lasts longer for me, even if the wheels won't give that impressively perfect mirror polish, just an extremely good polish.

The edge produced on wheels certainly can split hairs and toilet paper if you finish with a very light, controlled touch.

The wheels do need respect though, you can ruin a knife if not careful, you need to be at least semi "good with your hands".

The 6" benchgrinder cost me $54 and with a £28 speed controller I can run them as fast or slow as I want. I do have a belt sander to but if you're really god it's possible to put a convex on a blade using just the wheels. Light pressure moving back and forth at slightly different angles does it.

So yeah, I love the wheels, thanks Richard!

[richard j]

thanks steve for that post. if a lot more people listened to me they would have found out a long time ago what a sharp knife REALLY is and what it will do. look at what i have done with k II. i can chop down a tree, shave hair from my arm and cut free hanging newspaper. every member that comes over gets to check these things out in person. its not all about a "pretty looking edge" its all about what that edge can do.

[Wildog007]

Yeah, Richard is a good dude. I spoke with him for a while on the phone yesterday. An extremly nice and helpful guy. I'm waiting until tommorrow when the local Woodcraft store is open. I'm going to give the wheels a whirl.
Is anyone else using a speed contoller for their bench grinder? Are there any brands to look for? I have a bench grinder rated at 3500 rpm. The variable speed option looks really interesting to me.

[richard j]

a motor must be dc voltage in order to run a variable speed control. there was a discussion on this a few pages back. i would check into it more before buying anything. you can always get a variable speed buffer.

[Wildog007]

I see. I'll do some more looking around then. Thanks again.

[richard j]

a buddy is going to bring me his straight razors for fine tuning with the slotted wheel. i will try to make the vid under 20 mb if possible and anyone wanting to see it will need at least a 20 mb attachment limit. gmail and yahoo are good.

a straight razor is not sharpened like a knife. if there are any chips, i take them out by hand on a sheet of wetordry abrasive paper in the grit needed to get the chip out.

[richard j]

here is a test for you guys to try if you have the wheels and a belt sander. get an old knife for this test and work up a burr using an 80 grit belt. finish the edge up with the slotted wheel. then progress up to a 400 grit testing the edge after each grit belt. use the same number of passes for each grit. post your results here.

[thegeek574]

First of all, thanks to richard. he has been a great help. he is the one who convinced me to buy the wheels in the first place.

Second, the paper wheels are awesome. i finally scraped together them money and bought one, and they are nice, if used correctly.

Third: READ THIS! be extremely careful. i was sharpening and i, like an absolute genius, was distracted listening to something, and had the paper wheels spinning toward me. i go to sharpen, and all of a sudden the handle of the knife had made a dent in my shoe, the tip had taken a chunk out of the concrete, and i had torn a hole in my couple of week old wheels. praise God that it was the handle that hit my shoe....
to sum it up, BE VERY CAREFUL. do it slow, do it right, and keep your eye on it. we would rather that everyone kept all the body parts that they have right now.

[230grains]

I'd mirror what was said above about being careful. Not everyone is very "natural" around power tools, and sometimes it bites them. A LOT of beginners are trying this system, many of which have never held a power drill, nevermind operated a bench grinder with soft wheels. If the edge goes INTO the slotted wheel, it WILL catch and there is a VERY good chance you will be seriously hurt. I've seen knives HUCKED by buffers, paper wheels are the same idea.

[CrimsonTideShooter]

When the fiancee and I finally buy a house my edge pro will probably fall to the wayside. Paper wheels will be the first addition to the garage I'll have, hopefully.

I hope that I can grasp the concept over the phone Richard!

[richard j]

a member who goes by electric called me up one day to ask how to use them. after talking to him for 15 minutes he said he was ready to give it a try. about 15 minutes later he called all excited that he finally had a bald spot on his arm from a knife he sharpened. search for his posts and check out what he says.

i taught cjpgeyer in a few minutes how to use the wheels but he needs some more practice. his first try was pretty good.