Benchmade edge grind

[NozhScrap]

It came time to sharpen my 583 for the first time a few days ago. I setup my Sharpmaker and was not able to get any kind of edge. I know I'm doing things fairly correctly because I'm able to get my Spyderco's shaving sharp. I did a little research and find out about the Sharpie trick and I found that I wasn't sharpening the edge at all, merely grinding down the shoulders.

I'm guessing now that my best bet is to just re profile to 30 degrees and then sharpen at 40.

This is my first Benchmade and I have to say I'm quite disappointed. The knife was dull out of the box, the edge grinds were horribly uneven(especially near the tip), and now when i go to resharpen I learn that I'm gonna have to re profile a brand new knife. The few Spyderco's I own all came with beautiful even grinds that were razor sharp and easy to maintain.

Is this just a fluke? I really like the quality of the knife but I'm hesitant on buying another BM because of this.

 

[Cait_Sith]

You've got the right idea. Benchmade has been known to have knives with really short relief edges and obtuse angles. You'll definitely want to re-profile the knife to a shallower angle though I hope you have some course stones/abrasives to remove that much steel. Once you have a shallower relief edge (say 15 degrees which would be 30 inclusive), then it would be a good idea to add a microbevel at 20 degrees (40 inclusive). With a microbevel that is more obtuse, you'll have a more stable edge geometry and will be able to continue sharpening with the 40 degree setting with the Sharpmaker for touch ups.

Don't let the grind let you down too much.

 

[Chris Pierce]

Yeah, a lot of the time benchmade won't put a good edge on their knives out of the box.
I have been happy with their sharpening service though. But it seems like who ever is doing the sharpening gets to decide edge angle.

 

[Kai Winters]

I have two BM's and while both were sharp out of the box, they were not sharp enough for me. I too used the Sharpie method but was not able to find the correct angle using my Lansky system so I reprofiled to 20 degrees inclusive and my edges are now scary shop. I like that Kershaw and ZT both give angle info...nice of them. Wish BM was a bit more standard and did the same.