Can't get anything razor sharp... at my wits end

[tiguy7]

tiguy.

send the dimensions, and your permission to copy to Sal at Spyderco. If you're not interested in a new business, perhsps Sal will be interested in that tool.

Or maybe Ben Dale art Edge-Pro.

I showed the jig to Sal at the Blade Show. He was not interested.

 

[jimcon11]

:
What I mean by that is alternating the scratch pattern, edge leading always, on your light passes 90° to the stone, the move your hand(the one with the handle) forward until the blade is 45° on the surface of the stone(leading with the heel) then move your hand Backwards to the other 45° (leading with the tip of the knife).
I usually hold the stone in hand for this passes because it helps lightening up the pressure to the utmost level
Hope it helps

Thanks, think I see what you mean now.

Compounds of all types are very fine making this tendency much reduced which is why a lot of people find them so useful for the final deburring. If you do a good enough job on the stone you would get the same result from bare hanging leather.

To your last point the answer is maybe. There is a difference between sharpness and refinement. You can imagine the edge gained off a coarse stone akin to the edge of a saw blade. The finer grit you sharpen at the smaller the tooth size, the more refined it is and the smoother the cut, hence why straight razors have very polished edges. Sharpness on the other hand ultimately comes down to the width of the apex at the pointy end of the ‘v’

I think if you tried it out and gave the blade large amounts of passes on the strop you would dull the knife due to apex rounding

The saw analogy makes sense. I'm just confused because the Bark River compounds are advertised as all you need to sharpen your knife, and I originally bought them after seeing tons of recommendations on forums like this. I really thought they were meant to sharpen not just reduce a burr you create with something else.

Anyway, I ran into a huge problem tonight. I decided to continue my sharpening adventures with an old Camillus rigging knife, since it has a nice straight blade and fits in the Honemaster. Should be easy.

Well, something is seriously wrong. I think the blade has a bow in it or something because there is literally no bevel being created in the center of the edge. Whatever bevel it had, I must have scraped off. And I'm not feeling any burr forming except at the very base of the edge. I've already taken off what seems like a ton of metal and I really dont want to keep going if I'm doing something wrong. How do I deal with this?

 

[Ben Dover]

I showed the jig to Sal at the Blade Show. He was not interested.

Well, you tried. Too bad, because that jig would be light years better than his Sharpmaker.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Thanks, think I see what you mean now.
...
Anyway, I ran into a huge problem tonight. I decided to continue my sharpening adventures with an old Camillus rigging knife, since it has a nice straight blade and fits in the Honemaster. Should be easy.

Well, something is seriously wrong. I think the blade has a bow in it or something because there is literally no bevel being created in the center of the edge. Whatever bevel it had, I must have scraped off. And I'm not feeling any burr forming except at the very base of the edge. I've already taken off what seems like a ton of metal and I really dont want to keep going if I'm doing something wrong. How do I deal with this?

That uneven edge bevel on the rigging knife's sheepfoot blade is a very, very common occurrance with straight-edged profiles like that. I see it on virtually every sheepfoot blade, to varying degrees. It's because the blade is not perfectly straight, so there's almost always a 'bow' or warp in one direction or the other. So, when sharpening on one side, only the heel & tip portions will make contact on a flat stone. And when sharpening the other side, the center portion makes contact while the heel & tip portions are off the stone.

On the side where only the heel & tip make contact, it's easier to sharpen the the central portion using a radiused (rounded) edge on a bench stone. OR, you could also use a rod-type sharpener with either a round or oval cross-sectional profile. With either the rod, or the stone with a radiused edge, you can focus your sharpening only on the portion of the edge needing attention, instead of trying to maintain full, flush contact with the whole length of the edge, which results in unnecessary metal removal from the heel & tip portions and neglects the central portion.

 

[kwackster]

Or you could regrind the blade to (almost) zero by hand using wet & dry SiC paper on a piece of glass, then apply a microbevel.
This would solve the warped blade problems, while at the same time make for a significantly better cutting blade that will also be much quicker and easier to resharpen.

 

[jimcon11]

Thanks for the help guys. I tried just putting some extra force on the center area and bending the blade a bit as I sharpened, eventually it made contact and a bevel was created. I managed to get the edge pretty sharp. It's more of a collection knife than a user so I don't want to attempt regrinding the whole blade. It's crazy how much nuance there is in the simple concept of making an edge sharp.