Expensive lesson learned

Kaibab270

Kaibab270

Joined
Jul 20, 2019
Messages
154
I'm going to treat this as a two purpose post.

1. Frankly this one is embarrassing. To other beginning sharpeners like myself, pay very close attention to any variation in grind thickness changes such as the ZT 0450 included here as by the sharpening choil it widens up quite a bit. I decided to try for a reprofile to a thinner edge with a polish and went to work without really thinking about it. I ended up with a big old ugly eye sore in the thick spot mentioned. I won't make that mistake again and hopefully some of you wont now either.

2. If anyone has any ideas how I can fix this, short of buying a new knife, I'm all ears. It is a user knife an has some other small blemishes anyways so it's not really that big of a deal. But then again, the OCD side of me isn't going to forget about it any time soon.

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This (vid) and you will need to match the scratch pattern on the main grind of the bevels (as much as possible). Experiment with different grits of wet or dry sand paper or other grinder belt material recommended by these guys (?250, 350, 400, etc) on some other knife or hardened steel until it looks right / similar.

 
I may end up getting a replacement at some point i didnt know they were that cheap. But until then I carefully and slowly went the choil grinding route. It's kinda silly how big I had to make it to remove all the nasty scratching but I think it kinda works in it's own wierd way lol

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I've done a lot of ZTs and always want to lower the angle on em. Some are over 20 degrees/side.

You can only go so far without a full regrind before you'll start grinding up the plunge line, a couple degrees,four at most.
 
Yeah it was sharp. It is what it is. To some they'd keep the scratches. To some like myself, I'd rather look at the funky modification. If those scratches were there because of normal use it would be a different story and they'd still be there. Personal conviction I suppose.
 
Kaibab270 said:
Yeah it was sharp. It is what it is. To some they'd keep the scratches. To some like myself, I'd rather look at the funky modification. If those scratches were there because of normal use it would be a different story and they'd still be there. Personal conviction I suppose.
Click to expand...

Understood. For me, it isn't a visual thing but a functional thing. I don't like choils back there as I find they catch a lot. But many do and that's cool.
 
ive fixed some scrathes before with a scotchbrite belt i use purple for satin finishes
 
I made my natrix CF a recurve because of that stupid plunge line. I'm still new to sharpening but I was super green then. It's ugly, but the knife is very sharp (hair whittling) and I know I can fix it later if I really want to, but I keep it as a reminder that Kershaw/ZT can have some stupid plunge grinds. I like that choil mod on the 562...i may have to do that to the Natrix.

My other Kershaw/ZT knives have come out fine, but I've been much more careful with them. But man did I feel dumb when I did that to my natrix!
 
Reprofiling is hard, but necessary skill. Reprofiling freehand is especially difficult. Most factory edges are total abortions; uneven, obtuse, lopsided, wavy, microbeveled calamities. I'm getting better, but there's only one way to learn; trial and error, practice, and destruction.
 
I've only done freehand so far. It is definitely difficult for me and not something that comes extremely natural. But I am getting much better relatively quickly. And learning from mistakes like this is part of it.

I decided to give the finger choil mod a go and I think it came out pretty decent. Better looking than the sharpening choil anyways imo. Made sure to keep it wet and relatively cool during the process.

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