Dealt With a Warped Blade Today

Trout Hound

Trout Hound

Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
693
Howdy Y'all,

I want to relay something I experienced today and see if there is anything else I should know about it for the future.

Okay, so my Christmas present to myself this year was a new Case 6318 Medium Stockman in CV. Great knife, beautiful, and the fit and finish is well above average for Case. I definitely see myself carrying it a lot.

The fun part started when I went to sharpen it. I'm not a big fan of Case factory edges, so I usually just go ahead and reprofile to 15 dps. I started with the sheepsfoot blade, thinking, "This will be the easiest blade to sharpen." Wrong. As I got into it, I started getting some really "creative" bevel lines. Now, I'm certainly not the world's greatest sharpening expert, but I know my technique is better than this. It was looking like I had given my seven-year-old nephew a half-round mill file and told him to have fun. I was using a coarse DMT, so no chance the stone was dished either.

Upon closer visual inspection, I soon realized that this blade wasn't just crinked, it was more, well, crunked! It was not straight in any way at all. First, looking at it edge on, with the ricasso straight up and down, the blade is visibly twisted from heel to tip. Also, the edge is not even uniformly concave or convex on either side; it's more "wavy." Finally, the edge itself even had a high spot about 3/8" or so forward of the heel. It wasn't so much recurved as it was just not straight.

I finally put a Sharpie on it and realized that, although the blade felt like it was flat on the stone, I was really only making contact with a portion of the blade on each side. Up to this point, I had been working it straight up and down, because, ITS A SHEEPSFOOT! So, I started working it in an arc across the stone, and sweeping the edge off the side at the end of each stroke. That gave me considerably less drunken-looking results.

Anyway, I still had to do a good bit of selective grinding, and it took forever to get the edge to apex, but I finally got the thing shaving newsprint. It's not the most beautiful bevel in the history of the world, but I was planning to force a patina on the blade soon anyway, and that will cover a multitude of sins.

I know that a blade like this can be sharpened on a rounded surface, such as a radiused stone edge, ceramic rod, dowel with sandpaper, etc. I just couldn't bring myself to go that route with what should be a completely straight edge. Any other tips or tricks I should know if/when I run into this again? Thanks, and Happy New Year!
 
Welcome to Case's Medium Stockman sheepsfoot. I have several (6318 and 63032) and they all have that "feature". It's straight from the heel to about 1/2" from the tip, then slightly bent near the edge. the thing is, you can get a very sharp edge even though the bevels look a little funky out near the tip.
 
jc57 said:
Welcome to Case's Medium Stockman sheepsfoot. I have several (6318 and 63032) and they all have that "feature". It's straight from the heel to about 1/2" from the tip, then slightly bent near the edge. the thing is, you can get a very sharp edge even though the bevels look a little funky out near the tip.
Click to expand...

Thanks. It's good to know I'm not the only one, although I figured as much.
 
Alox Victorinox blades are a bit strange too, almost twisted to clear the other tools
 
"What should be a completely straight edge" is sort of a contradiction oftentimes, with a sheepsfoot blade in a crinked 2-spring stockman pattern. It's a sad truth. Crinked blades create an issue from the start (and the sheepsfoot is almost always the one to be crinked); then the 'warp' often seen as a result of heat treat or uneven grinding adds another dimension of 'anything but straight'. I've yet to see a truly dead-straight edge on any sheepsfoot blade in a factory knife.

I have some noticeable warp in the sheepsfoot of my Case '75 pattern stockman knives (all of them). The kicker with these is, the 'crink' itself is the least of the problem, as they're crinked at the rearmost portion of the tang, just forward of the pivot, taking an immediate 'left turn' just beyond the edge of the bolster. Almost all of the bend in the blade is just warp in the primary grind, either from heat treat or grinding the primary unevenly, or both. All of that said, the blades are beautifully thin and amazing slicers. The 'creative sharpening' techniques employed on these blades, such as sweeping over the edge/corner of a stone, or using a round/oval rod, are just a by-product of owning them, as I see it. I've decided not to worry about it anymore.


David
 
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(Tried to add this as an edit to my earlier post, but the BF editor seems to be choking on it right now, and not updating it...)

With Case's sheepsfoot blades, I believe most of the issue is just the warp in the very thin hollow grind itself, and less about the actual crinking. Even Case's '47 pattern stockman, currently with 3 springs and NO NEED for crinking, still has issues with a 'curved' edge on the very thin sheepsfoot in that pattern.


David
 
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