Another Spyderco Sharpmaker thread...

[Kamoe]

I decided that I wanted to run my Zero Tolerance 0560 on the fine and ultra fine rods on my Sharpmaker, just to give it a more polished edge. I did the sharpie trick and found that on the 30° side, the sharpie rubs off of the entire edge, but only on the left half of the edge. I'm sharpening with my right hand, which is my dominant, and the left half of the edge is being sharpened just fine, the sharpie rubs off and that half of the edge is completely clean. However the right half of the edge, only about half of it is being sharpened. The sharpie is rubbing off more towards the middle of the blade up to the tip, but before that, it's almost untouched. So I moved down a step and put the blade on the coarse stones, same thing, the sharpie is still sticking to that half of the blade only. After giving up I decided to test sharpness again on plain printer paper, and now it's more dull than it was when I received it.

Just to make sure, I tested further on other knives, and just so happens this is happening to every one of my knives as well. So I'm guessing there's something wrong with my technique when sharpening up the right half of the edge. Any tips? I took a refresher course by re-watching the DVD I got with the Sharpmaker, and I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right, but if I'm having a problem like this, then I'm having some pretty reasonable doubts about that.

 

[rpttrsn]

Slow down on the strokes and have someone watch you from the front to see if you are holding the blade 90 degrees to the base. Use the sharpie as you will now be more aware of the position with your strokes. I have found many who are not square with the base on one side. Good luck.
Ron

 

[Kamoe]

Well, I can't get someone to watch for me cause everyone in this house is afraid of my knife-collecting habits, but I can probably put my setup in front of a mirror to keep an eye on it that way? It's not as good as a second pair of eyes, but I suppose it'll have to do.

 

[Kamoe]

So the problem was I wasn't using the full surface area of the right-hand stone. While using the flat of the stone, my edge wasn't making full contact with the stone, only part of it, because of how my hand naturally goes to that side, the knife was still facing partially to the left. After correcting that I was able to fix my problem, and the sharpie is gone. Slowing down my strokes really helped me figure that out, too, so thanks a lot, Ron.