- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
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Just read through some of the recent posts and felt it might be helpful to some...hopefully many...to see what people "prefer" by way of edges on their knives...
There obviously are a large number of collectors of Busse's and for them the factory "mint" edge is not worth tampering with as it loses value on the exchange...but nearly everyone will have one or two users...
For me I personally think that the edge and the profile of a knife are at the "heart" of what makes the knife function....from a users input...which means that the other key issues of "steel"..."Rc hardness"...and "heat treatment" are "as a given" in their importance to the knife but cannot be altered by the "user"...
For me the Rc hardness essentially dictates how thin a profile you can give an edge and still have it functional. Higher Rc enable a bit thinner edge to still have "good edge retention" in my experience...so for smaller EDC 4 to 5 inch blades I like a higher Rc hardness than on my chopping/hard use knives but from my experience so far I find that whilst the profile can be thinner and that this gives a better slicing ability....I still find that it is best to keep the edge angle in the 20 to 23 degree ( single side ) or 40 degree to 46 degree inclusive range.
Sometimes I hear of guys taking their edges down to 15 degrees ( 30 degrees inclusive ) but they are the ones who are often "disapointed" with edge roll or burring....
I have a lot of time for Spyderco and particularly their Sharpmaker sharpening system as it is very portable and versatile...and Spyderco came up with 20 degree either side ( 40 degree ) inclusive as being the best edge angle for their knives and allowing for a small EDC blade doing the same type of work as a folder I have found after experimenting myself on edge angles that this holds true....what have others found? This seems to be true for me regardless of Rc hardness once you have a knife at Rc58 and above...the only difference to me is that edge retention sometimes lasts longer on the harder Rc knives which go above Rc60...my best results come in at Rc64...in this smaller size of knife.
To be honest in this size of knife my best profile can be one of two....a flat profile with a convex edge...or a hamaguru style convex edge...which is a style of fully convex which has a thinned shoulder to give less cutting resistance...almost like using a more acute secondary bevel...and then rounding the two into one curve...
On my chopping blades my best edge and profile is a "fully convex" blade which depending on the hard use has perhaps more meat or depth in the shoulder but is not too steep and too thick going from the shoulder to the spine...giving less resistance to the blade when biting in deep as opposed to a wedge effect from too thick a spine...or a wedge effect from a Scandi type edge or a thick Sabre grind edge...good examples for me are the NMFBM and the NMSFNO size of depth on a fully convex grind...the Basic 9 and the SAR8 are also good in this respect...as is the Killa Z although on mine I took a bit out of the shoulder behind the edge as that was more than I needed for "hard wood" in my experience...infact I seem to have found that "less can be more" in terms of biting deeply into wood in terms of the thickness of the shoulder area behind the edge...as an example...I would find a Scandi grind Leku to definately not chop and bite as deeply as a comparable SAR 8 fully convexed blade.
It's interesting too how easy it is to get these edges right if you are new to profiling your knife...what I did was take the time and "hours" to do a Skinny Ash with a Lansky system to mirror the Sharpmaker secondary and primary bevel grades...the diamond stones removed the steel quicker than the Sharpmaker could do with ceramic rods...then once done I used a magic marker to colour the edge and using a very light polishing belt so as to limit mistakes and removal of steel...I practised getting the angle and approach right on a belt sander to mirror the correct edge created by checking the removal of the ink under a magnifying glass.
After sharpening and using the Skinny Ash a good few times like this I was fairly able to go straight to the "sander" and create the same effect using different grit belts in less than half the time needed by using "stones"....
This anyway lead to me getting the hang of what worked best for me and particularly with Infi...
To test the edges and find what worked well I did a mixture of cutting up Junk Mail...cutting through old phone directories....and cutting and whittling wood for fuzz sticks for my stove...nothing "scientific" but it served me well on "testing" and I am fairly happy that I could tell differences in performance...
On my chopping knives I would say the edge angle at 23 degrees is still the best for chopping....at least for "wood" it is....I have'nt done cinder blocks etc and doubt I would do so unless some emergency dictated it...
So what do others find? Anyone happy going lower than 20 degrees per side? Anyone find a more obtuse angle such as say 30 degrees per side is best?
Hopefully threads like this might assist those delving into sharpening and making their first "profiling" of Busses...:thumbup:
There obviously are a large number of collectors of Busse's and for them the factory "mint" edge is not worth tampering with as it loses value on the exchange...but nearly everyone will have one or two users...
For me I personally think that the edge and the profile of a knife are at the "heart" of what makes the knife function....from a users input...which means that the other key issues of "steel"..."Rc hardness"...and "heat treatment" are "as a given" in their importance to the knife but cannot be altered by the "user"...
For me the Rc hardness essentially dictates how thin a profile you can give an edge and still have it functional. Higher Rc enable a bit thinner edge to still have "good edge retention" in my experience...so for smaller EDC 4 to 5 inch blades I like a higher Rc hardness than on my chopping/hard use knives but from my experience so far I find that whilst the profile can be thinner and that this gives a better slicing ability....I still find that it is best to keep the edge angle in the 20 to 23 degree ( single side ) or 40 degree to 46 degree inclusive range.
Sometimes I hear of guys taking their edges down to 15 degrees ( 30 degrees inclusive ) but they are the ones who are often "disapointed" with edge roll or burring....
I have a lot of time for Spyderco and particularly their Sharpmaker sharpening system as it is very portable and versatile...and Spyderco came up with 20 degree either side ( 40 degree ) inclusive as being the best edge angle for their knives and allowing for a small EDC blade doing the same type of work as a folder I have found after experimenting myself on edge angles that this holds true....what have others found? This seems to be true for me regardless of Rc hardness once you have a knife at Rc58 and above...the only difference to me is that edge retention sometimes lasts longer on the harder Rc knives which go above Rc60...my best results come in at Rc64...in this smaller size of knife.
To be honest in this size of knife my best profile can be one of two....a flat profile with a convex edge...or a hamaguru style convex edge...which is a style of fully convex which has a thinned shoulder to give less cutting resistance...almost like using a more acute secondary bevel...and then rounding the two into one curve...
On my chopping blades my best edge and profile is a "fully convex" blade which depending on the hard use has perhaps more meat or depth in the shoulder but is not too steep and too thick going from the shoulder to the spine...giving less resistance to the blade when biting in deep as opposed to a wedge effect from too thick a spine...or a wedge effect from a Scandi type edge or a thick Sabre grind edge...good examples for me are the NMFBM and the NMSFNO size of depth on a fully convex grind...the Basic 9 and the SAR8 are also good in this respect...as is the Killa Z although on mine I took a bit out of the shoulder behind the edge as that was more than I needed for "hard wood" in my experience...infact I seem to have found that "less can be more" in terms of biting deeply into wood in terms of the thickness of the shoulder area behind the edge...as an example...I would find a Scandi grind Leku to definately not chop and bite as deeply as a comparable SAR 8 fully convexed blade.
It's interesting too how easy it is to get these edges right if you are new to profiling your knife...what I did was take the time and "hours" to do a Skinny Ash with a Lansky system to mirror the Sharpmaker secondary and primary bevel grades...the diamond stones removed the steel quicker than the Sharpmaker could do with ceramic rods...then once done I used a magic marker to colour the edge and using a very light polishing belt so as to limit mistakes and removal of steel...I practised getting the angle and approach right on a belt sander to mirror the correct edge created by checking the removal of the ink under a magnifying glass.
After sharpening and using the Skinny Ash a good few times like this I was fairly able to go straight to the "sander" and create the same effect using different grit belts in less than half the time needed by using "stones"....
This anyway lead to me getting the hang of what worked best for me and particularly with Infi...
To test the edges and find what worked well I did a mixture of cutting up Junk Mail...cutting through old phone directories....and cutting and whittling wood for fuzz sticks for my stove...nothing "scientific" but it served me well on "testing" and I am fairly happy that I could tell differences in performance...
On my chopping knives I would say the edge angle at 23 degrees is still the best for chopping....at least for "wood" it is....I have'nt done cinder blocks etc and doubt I would do so unless some emergency dictated it...
So what do others find? Anyone happy going lower than 20 degrees per side? Anyone find a more obtuse angle such as say 30 degrees per side is best?
Hopefully threads like this might assist those delving into sharpening and making their first "profiling" of Busses...:thumbup:
