Diagrams?

A

Aelius

Joined
Sep 18, 2006
Messages
94
Warning: Noob alert. If ignorant people make you want to scream, avoid this thread please.

I'm completely confused about the angles of blades and bevels and all that. In numerous instances on these forums I've inquired about it, and if people don't reply with laughter "Pfff, is this for real?", they usually reply with technical terms beyond my understanding. "This is done on most knives intentionally to make the bevels have the same width to compensate for a uneven primary grind." Good intentions, but too complicated for me.

So perhaps the only way for me to understand is with pictures and diagrams. Is there any? Or perhaps could someone make some for me? None of this makes sense to me...

Such as Joe Talmadge's sharpening guide. Many people recommended it to me, but it's way beyond my understanding, such as this paragraph:

If you want to determine if you are sharpening at the same angle that the blade already has, try this easy trick. Mark the edge bevel with a magic marker. Then go ahead and do a stroke or two on the stone (or take a stroke with your Lansky, or whatever). Now pick the knife up and look at the edge. If you have matched the edge angle exactly, the magic marker will be scraped off along the entire edge bevel. If your angle is too high, only the marker near the very very tip will be gone. If your angle is too low, only the marker near where the edge bevel meets the primary bevel will be gone.
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First of all, what's a Lanksy? And what is a primary bevel? From what I understand, a bevel is the angle of each side of the knife. But according to the above paragraph "Now pick the knife up and look at the edge". Why would I look at the edge if it told me to mark the bevel? Should I not examine at the whole bevel, and not just the edge?

Also, when I was inquiring about how to lower the angle on a knife, I was told various things, I'll give you one conversation in particular that still doesn't make sense to me.

Other person: "Think of the edge as a "V" all you want to do is turn a wide v into a thinner V (\/ into V)"
Me: "I'm supposed to thin the back of the blade?"
Other person: "Why would you grind the spine??"
Me: "To make the angle of the blade lower. The only way to lower the angle is to shave the spine of it. Shaving the edge only sharpens the current angle. If you want another angle, you must sharpen the spine, no?"
Other person: "NO!!! NEVER!!! DO NOT THIN OUT THE SPINE TO CHANGE THE BLADE ANGLE!!!!

Search the other forums to find out about sharpening a knife."

I did get a guide to sharpening a knife, dammit! It didn't do anything but confuse me even more!

Check out this reply which was directly after the previous one: "If you want to grind down the flats or reduce the primary grind by grinding against the spine that is perfectly fine but it will take a very long time on benchstones."

What's a primary grind?
What's a benchstone?

Or this one, from the same person: "For example if you are just using the blade for cutting relatively soft materials (no thick metals) and some wood chopping you can sharpen at about ten degrees per side and then add a small bevel at about 15 degrees."

This just changed my perception of a bevel. According to other people's explanations a bevel is one side of the blade. But now this person is basically saying to "make both bevels 10 degrees. And then add another bevel." What the hell? How can you have 3 bevels?

So can someone please provide a diagram or something to help a clueless person understand this? Experienced people are probably laughing hysterically at my stupidity, but you were all once this stupid about knives, weren't you?

If you got this far without hitting the back button while saying "Christ, what an idiot", then thank you. :)
 
Bwwhahaha.

If a knife had no primary grind it would be a perfect rectangle.

Some knives have a continuous and straight grind from the top of the blade to the bottom. Thease are called flat ground knives and there is no secondary beval (or grind).

Most knives though are not flat ground. so there are :

1) a primary grind starting at the spine
2) Which changes angle to a secondary grind (or bevel) near the edge.
3) Some knives may have even another bevel even nearer the edge or more likely there is a continous curve from the primary grind to the actual edge.

Lanskey is a sharpener.

You marker the final bevel near the edge, if your sharpening angle is to shallow, the "shoulder" or point where the seconday vevel meets the primary belvel (or grind) will be worm away leaving the edge untouched.

If you sharpening angle is too steep, you will make the transition between the primary and secondary bevel short and steep whcih may reduce sharpness as well.

depneding on the thickness of the blade and the angle of your bevels you could have a infinite number of bevels. Realistically speaking there's only 1, 2 or a continous bevel.
 
DaveH said:
Bwwhahaha.

If a knife had no primary grind it would be a perfect rectangle.

Some knives have a continuous and straight grind from the top of the blade to the bottom. Thease are called flat ground knives and there is no secondary beval (or grind).

Most knives though are not flat ground. so there are :

1) a primary grind starting at the spine
2) Which changes angle to a secondary grind (or bevel) near the edge.
3) Some knives may have even another bevel even nearer the edge or more likely there is a continous curve from the primary grind to the actual edge.

Lanskey is a sharpener.

You marker the final bevel near the edge, if your sharpening angle is to shallow, the "shoulder" or point where the seconday vevel meets the primary belvel (or grind) will be worm away leaving the edge untouched.

If you sharpening angle is too steep, you will make the transition between the primary and secondary bevel short and steep whcih may reduce sharpness as well.

depneding on the thickness of the blade and the angle of your bevels you could have a infinite number of bevels. Realistically speaking there's only 1, 2 or a continous bevel.
Click to expand...

I don't understand anything, I mean absolutely nothing from your response. I'm sorry, but it would have been the exact same to me had you said that in spanish, as it just doesn't mean anything to me :confused:
 
grinds.gif
 
mabye you can post your location, and hopefully you can meet up with a forumite in person and they can help you out.

sorry that most of us have given you a hard time.
 
DaveH said:
Did you look at the picturesin the article?
Click to expand...

As I said, "The diagrams there show various styles of knives, but don't give much info on my inquiries". So yes, I've looked at them, but they don't mean anything to me, they're just knives.
 
Aelius said:
As I said, "The diagrams there show various styles of knives, but don't give much info on my inquiries". So yes, I've looked at them, but they don't mean anything to me, they're just knives.
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Why not take it one step at a time? Look at the diagram provided by DaveH again, let's just concentrate on the first diagram for now (flat primary grind). Look it over, and identify what parts of it don't make sense to you and maybe somebody can explain it a little better. Then the others might start to make more sense.
 
Aelius said:
"To make the angle of the blade lower. The only way to lower the angle is to shave the spine of it. Shaving the edge only sharpens the current angle. If you want another angle, you must sharpen the spine, no?")
Click to expand...
Maybe the words "lowering the angle" are confusing. Think about angles for a minute. If you cut out a 25 degree angle slice of pie, it is thinner and pointier than a 45 degree angle slice of pie. Since 25 is lower than 45, when they say "lower the angle" they mean make a smaller, sharper, pointer angle. Think of the slice of pie as a knife blade that you're looking at with the point pointing right at your face. You'll see the blade is essentially triangular, the top (spine) is the flat part, or the crust of the slice, and the edge is the much thinner bottom part. The edge is the angle that is shaped like the pointy side of the slice of pie. So, instead of a fat slice of pie, you want to "lower the angle" by sharpening away the metal of the edge on each side until it is thinner when you're looking straight at the point. When your edge (seen straight on) is narrower, you will have "lowered the angle". Did that made sense or am I making it worse?
 
TorzJohnson said:
Maybe the words "lowering the angle" are confusing. Think about angles for a minute. If you cut out a 25 degree angle slice of pie, it is thinner and pointier than a 45 degree angle slice of pie. Since 25 is lower than 45, when they say "lower the angle" they mean make a smaller, sharper, pointer angle. Think of the slice of pie as a knife blade that you're looking at with the point pointing right at your face. You'll see the blade is essentially triangular, the top (spine) is the flat part, or the crust of the slice, and the edge is the much thinner bottom part. The edge is the angle that is shaped like the pointy side of the slice of pie. So, instead of a fat slice of pie, you want to "lower the angle" by sharpening away the metal of the edge on each side until it is thinner when you're looking straight at the point. When your edge (seen straight on) is narrower, you will have "lowered the angle". Did that made sense or am I making it worse?
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That's exactly what I thought of it. So to make that slice of pie a lower angle, you must cut off part of the back portion, or "shave the spine" of the knife. According to that person I quoted, I should never shave the spine... but that's the only way to lower the angle as far as I know.

Why not take it one step at a time? Look at the diagram provided by DaveH again, let's just concentrate on the first diagram for now (flat primary grind). Look it over, and identify what parts of it don't make sense to you and maybe somebody can explain it a little better. Then the others might start to make more sense.
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It's just the terms they use.

Flats
Grinds
Primary Grinds
V-Grinds

and a slew of other terms that I feel people expect me to know.
 
Assuming you are not yanking our leg, you have a question about what's a v-grind. the first pic shows a v grind, says right on it v-grind. So that's what it is.

I'm begining to think this is a Borat movie episode.
 
Aelius said:
but you were all once this stupid about knives, weren't you? :)
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Sorry but No. I'm not trying to be rude either... Send the nighthawk to Buck and they will sharpen it for $5.00...

http://www.clawhorn.com/storefront/deptpage.aspx?deptid=5

Go here and buy one of these KNIFE SHARPENERS any one of these, it is simple and can't possibly be screwed up...

Good luck

http://www.clawhorn.com/knife-sharpening-procedure.aspx
(if you still have problems here are the instructions for the Knife Sharpener.)
 
wh4f said:
Send the nighthawk to Buck and they will sharpen it for $5.00...
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My Nighthawk is new. I've hardly used it, it's in near perfect condition.
Go here and buy one of these any of these, it is simple and can't possibly be screwed up...
Click to expand...
I don't want a new knife, it's just prolonging the inevitable. Eventually, I'll have to know this stuff, so I'd like to know this stuff now. And I'm tired of people making fun of me and thinking it's a joke.
 
The link he posted was to a SHARPENER NOT A KNIFE!

I think you are a psych experiment for a class or something, testing us to see our reactions to someone who refuses to think.
 
Get out your knife and look at it. You will notice most of the blade is ground at an angle toward the edge. It's thick at the spine and a little of the blade near the spine is flat but then it angles down and gets thinner as it gets nearer the edge. That is the primary grind. That was ground by the manufacturer and you don't want to change that.

Then there's the edge grind, at a steeper angle right at the edge. That is where you will grind to sharpen the knife.

Sometimes some of us put an even steeper grind right at the very edge, so thin you can barely see it. We call that a microbevel. Your knife didn't come with that from the factory, and you don't necessarily have to add one.
 
Aelius said:
:confused:
I don't want a new knife, it's just prolonging the inevitable. Eventually, I'll have to know this stuff, so I'd like to know this stuff now. And I'm tired of people making fun of me and thinking it's a joke.:confused:
Click to expand...

Did you even click on the link I posted? This has got to be a joke. Seriously,
Buy a new knife and throw the old one out when it gets dull. I honestly cannot believe this...
 
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