finish sharpening by hand?

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reiko1078

Joined
Sep 1, 2011
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I'm in the home stretch of completing my first knife. Everything is done by hand.with files and sand paper. I heat treated it in my one brick forge and I have it sanderd to 600 grit. My question is how do I put an edge on it with out power tools? My edge is thinner then a dime. I've found a lot of threads on how people do there final sharpening but they always seem to use some sort of grinder . Any help is appreciated. Thanks
 
The way I do mine are grind them down to .005-.01 after heat treat then sharpen on a stone. only takes a couple minutes. I don't use a grinder anymore
 
You might be amased at the damage that can be done to the edge and especially the tip using a grinder . Final sharpening on a stone is a good idea. !!
 
You can also do damage pretty quickly with a coarse stone by hand if you're not careful. you can use a coarse 220-320 grit stone eg. Shapton to establish edge bevels relatively quickly. Probably if you follow that with a 500 grit stone it should be good enough for the end user to start with. PM me if you have an question on technique with stones.
 
I do my initial edge bevel on an extra coarse DMT brand diamond stone, then a coarse, then a medium, fine, and extra fine. Unfortunately that ends up being a high initial expense for stones, but I bought all but the extra coarse 15-18 years ago and they still work beautifully, I had a side business for a couple of years sharpening knives with them for restarants,

Here's where I get my DMT stones, Howard is one of us

http://www.theperfectedge.com/diamond.shtml

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I do initial sharpening on the grinder, but always work it on the stones for final sharpening. Basically a Norton Fine India stone, which is about 320 grit, and a fine Arkansas stone. If nothing else I figure the customer can replicate the edge, but most don't have belt grinders.
 
Xmtgx: how thick is .005-.01 compared to the thickness of a dime ?

I know stones are a lifelong investment but money is super tight right now. I found a Norton India combination stone on sharpening supplies.com it says it has a coarse and fine sides but does not specify grit. 17.99$ seems doable and for an extra 10$ I can get a little stand for it and oil. Sound like it will work?
 
The Norton will get you started, they are a little too coarse for my tastes as far as sharpening goes and kinda slow (and they wear away quickly when you sharpen properly hardened blades on them) but until you can afford better go with the Norton

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I just watched SR Johnson do his initial sharpening on his 2x72" and final polish on his buffer with green compound. However I myself wouldn't do this without substantial practice.. as it would be so easy to slip and mar a blade badly, or at least have uneven grind lines for the edge. I've seen Tai use a scraper of sorts that he made.. its a flat hardened steel blade with a handled prong out either side like a draw knife.. he clamped the blade and scraped back metal with it to basically create the edge before final sharpening. I've not tried that method but it looked effective.
 
reiko1078 said:
Xmtgx: how thick is .005-.01 compared to the thickness of a dime ?
Click to expand...

A dime is roughly .05. so around 5-10x thinner. Cuts much better and as long as your heat treat is good the blade will hold up just fine.
 
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