Blade Steel Defect or Sharpening Gone Wrong?

I appreciate everyone's opinion.

I posted - not to sway people to say I was right - but for a jury of opinion. If I was wrong I wanted to know so. I appreciate everyone's response. What a great pool of knowledge this forum has.
 
I got some blades which the 'flat' grind is not truly flat. Solution: flatten them.

Price has it's place though, up to 50$, is my limit. If I buy a 100$ knife, it better be perfect. This is after I've gone though Sanrenmu & Enlan that is sub 20$ (most are sub 15$) and have almost perfect out of the box F&F, still blade grind can have 'wavy' areas.

In this case (50$), I'd just sand them down & satin / mirror it, even though I don't have any power equipment. As long as there's no other major flaws (warped blade, stripped screws, cracked insert) that is not within user repair without buying replacement parts.

This is from a buyer perspective & a tinkerer as well.
 
I have a bead-blasted Kershaw with those lines... not as pronounced, but you can easily see them. They were there from when I took it out of the box... didn't care too much though.
 
Goosey said:
I have a bead-blasted Kershaw with those lines... not as pronounced, but you can easily see them. They were there from when I took it out of the box... didn't care too much though.
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Yeah and bead blast finishes are commonly used to cover up tooling/machining marks on the surfaces of the knife. It's a cheaper finish than grinding and polishing the blade to a bright shine.
 
Thats not a defect... thats a lack of knowledge in proper shaperning issue... trully user error.
 
Iyonk said:
Thats not a defect... thats a lack of knowledge in proper shaperning issue... trully user error.
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That is what I was thinking. It also looks like the more pronounced lines are the result of inconsistent passes over and over against a diamond stone. That is something that can possibly be fixed with a belt sander.
 
I know this is an old thread, but I just bought one of these. After reading this I was examining mine, it "HAS NOT" been sharpened but has factory edge. Tilting the edge just right to get light reflections reveals several vertical lines just not as pronounced as the Ops picture. I believe it is simply another example of China's fine quality control.
 
You can clearly see the "ripples" going all the way down the blade to the plunge line and not just at the area he points out. As mentioned already it was left over from the grinding of the blade. His "sharpening" of the knife just highlighted the high spots that were there already and are probably on every other knfe like that as well. It's a low cost knife with low cost production methods and low cost finishing. I would tell him to ski personally as he's just trying to play the game and get a replacement for a knife he scratched up all by him self.

ProductionKnives said:
crkt.jpg
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Shorttime said:
Looks like a defect from the factory.

Before I had to pack away my equipment, I tried my hand at some stock removal. Some times, heat treatment causes, well, ripples, in the metal.

These ripples are not a defect. But if the knife is not ground flat on the first pass, those ripples become harder and harder to remove.

If somebody rushed the grind on that blade, maybe it was near quittin' time on a Friday, they could have gone unnoticed until exposed to a very flat surface, like a diamond stone. Then, they showed up as these tiny high spots that got ground down first.
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^^^^^ Nailed it.
 
"I am a semi-pro knife sharpener", well, after looking at that job I'd say it's back to the farm league for you pal. :rolleyes:

That pic makes me cringe. Here's a little tip for those of you starting out with knife sharpening (or all you "semi-pro" knife sharpeners)- if you want to avoid scratching your blade in such a way, put a strip of masking tape over the top of the grind, this way if you get the angle wrong the tape will contact the hone rather than the blade. I've been sharpening knives free-hand for decades, and although I can do a good job of it, when I sharpen someone elses knife I use tape on the blade to avoid any possibility of accidentally scratching the blades finish. And it works. People get their knives back scary sharp and without a single scratch in the finish.
 
Looks like machining marks and his "honing" just polished the ridges. You polish enough knives from different brands and you get used to weird machine marks. :D
 
The customer should be embaressed to ask for a replacement, due to a botched sharpening job. Send him your regrets, along with the address of CRKT customer service.

Sometimes the 'best' customer, is the one you send to the competition. ;)
 
(not a business owner, but here is what I would do, and what service I would expect)

I wouldn't accept return on that per defect, due to the fact those marks are machining marks. Had he not messed up the blade sharpening it, I would have willingly refunded his money.....

HOWEVER

The customer messed up the knife. He just doesn't know what he is looking at. I would likely offer to buff it out, but that's as far as I would go.....and that would depend on how he treated me when I called him up to inform him that he would not be getting a refund, and why.
 
I agree with fortytwoblades and shotgun. Looks like the blade was flat against the stone and got "polished" which exposed the slightly uneven factory grind.

Ric
 
Those are grinding marks from machine grinding. They showed up because he sharpened, polished, finished, whatever, in the other direction.

You get ripples in steel bar stock, if you buff at right angles to that you will see them and it will look ugly. If you buff with the grain they will disappear to the eye (but still be there.)

You could carefully buff that edge in the same direction and they would "disappear".
 
Anybody who does that kind of "work" to a knife then wants to send it back is not playing with a full deck.

Ham-fisted modifications like that means the buyer owns the knife, don't look for your money back.




Big Mike
 
"Sometimes the 'best' customer, is the one you send to the competition."

Years ago when I owned a service company, and was interviewing prospective employees, I would evaluate them and if they were not up to my standards or needs, I would tell them: "We are presently full up and are not hiring today. Perhaps XYZ company is short on technicians, have you tried there? My motto was to let the competition have them and let their poor judgement put THEM out of business. Worked great for me.

Omar
:rolleyes:
 
They're just machining marks.

The scratches the user put in don't even look to be that bad.

It's a knife, it's not to cut hair from a unicorns butt (I love that). CRKT knives are users if I'm not mistaken, not drawer queens.

If I had that knife I would stick some fine emery cloth to a flat surface and take the scratches out, wouldn't worry about the machining marks. Then I would blend the flat to the secondary bevel, "convex" it I guess.

If you are a "collector" then you know that if you sharpen a knife, good job or bad job, you greatly reduce its value. That's the issue here. The seller can't recoup his money and shouldn't have to eat it. The knife was just fine. It still is just fine for what it is, a user knife.
 
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