Recommendation? Establishing an edge on new knife

[younkster]

Hey everyone,
I am new here and had a question. I have recently got into knife making and I am having issues getting a sharp edge. I have tried the belt grinder, stones, Lansky, Work sharp, and the paper wheels, but cannot get a razor sharp edge on the knives. I can get them to the point where I can run them along my fingernail without slipping, but cannot shave hair or cut paper very well.
Any recommendations, or ideas what I might be doing wrong, or what I might try next?

 

[Mo2]

Are you apexing the edge and removing the wire edge aka burr?

 

[miso2]

Like said above, I guess it has be one or both of the two below.
(1) Not hitting the apex (not raising a burr).
(2) Failing to remove burrs.

To address the issue (1), you should make sure you raise a burr on each stone from coarse to finish.
This also makes you to work enough time on each stone.
After setting the edge bevel, this is not necessary for maintaining the edge with a guided system like WE..

For (2), you need to remove a burr on each stone as much as possible using very light strokes on each side of the edge.
For the final burr removal, you can find a variety of methods on this forum.
Most common ones are the double angle method and using a burr removal block (hard rubber, cork, hard wood, etc.).

I use a combination of a burr weakening method taken from @bluntcut and a burr removal block (hard wood).
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/durable-sharp-edge-sharpening-impromptu-video.1533612/

Stropping with a compound also helps to refine the edge and remove a remaining small burr.

Hope this helps.

 

[kreisler]

have recently got into knife making and I am having issues getting a sharp edge. I have tried the belt grinder, stones, Lansky, Work sharp, and the paper wheels,

You could check the edge with a cheap plastic portable microscope to understand what's going on. What to look for? Well, first of all, the edge should look like a perfect straight line at 100x or 200x magnification.

What really makes sharpening challenging is the lack of a good live close-up view of the edge, while we're sharpening. Maybe that's stating the obvious lol. Today i tried to make a simple 100% straight 100% perpendicular cut (with my Stanley cutter, freehand) through a 1 inch diameter standard garden water hose. I tried several times, it was ridiculous how i couldn't get the tiny task done! Super frustrating. My cut was maybe "clean" (because the cutter is super sharp), but the cut ended up curved and also not perpendicular. Since i could see live with bare eyes what the blade was doing, namely cutting at some angle and with a curve, i could understand the situation and try to change the angle during the cutting, i.e. try to correct my cutting movement live. Who would have thought that making a perfectly perpendicular 2-D cut through a hose is so challenging?

I could understand only, because i could see. Same with sharpening. Real understanding comes from seeing the close-up. You see what's up with the edge, then you fix it. Otherwise you won't know what needs to be fixed and in which direction. The good thing is, you'll know by yourself how to fix it, once you see the close-up ... same as i knew how to improve my hose cutting, because i saw the cutter going slightly the wrong way.

The principles of sharpening are, in theory, very simple: 1. raising a burr along the entire edge, 2. reducing the burr, 3. completely removing the burr, 4. polishing the sharp apex. Holding a steady angle is helpful but not mandatory, as long as you create an apex along the edge: if the apex has a less acute angle along the edge, it is still sharp per definitionem.

Assuming that you've managed to completely remove the burr, if the edge still isn't super sharp, then it's probably because the apex line is still microscopically zig-zaggy and not microscopically a perfect straight line.

But why assume? It's better if you shared a close-up photo (at 100x magnification or higher). Then there is no more room for guessing and assumptions, and you'll see and know how it can be corrected.

kreisler. out.