Freehand sharpening?

Triforge

Triforge

Joined
Sep 3, 2012
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So I'm not able to get my knives as scary sharp as I like them to be, I freehand sharpen with japanese waterstones, and I have heard that the edge needs to "burr" before you move on. How can you tell?
 
When the edges form a burr you will notice a very thin bright sliver of metal on the edge. You can feel it by carefully and slowly dragging your fingers down the side of the blade toward the edge. The burr forms by a thin sliver of metal folding over to one side or the other when the edge gets thin enough. By sliding your fingers down the side of the bevel towards the edge you can feel this "fold-over" on the side to which it folded. After you have formed a burr along the entire length of the cutting edge you knock the burr off in various ways. You can gently run the cutting edge through a piece of soft wood or a hard felt block. Running the edge through a piece of cardboard works too. Everybody has their own method. Then strop the edge by dragging the edge over the stone with the edge trailing. Then you can do finish stropping on a leather strop or the cardboard on the back of a legal pad etc. There are many ways to do it. But you don't want to put much force on the edge. Basically just the weight of the knife. Many people use a buffing compound like Green Chrome or similar to "charge" their strop. This means they are rubbing the compound onto their strop surface. This embeds the abrasive particles into their strop surface and helps to refine the edge.
 
i4Marc said:
When the edges form a burr you will notice a very thin bright sliver of metal on the edge. You can feel it by carefully and slowly dragging your fingers down the side of the blade toward the edge. The burr forms by a thin sliver of metal folding over to one side or the other when the edge gets thin enough. By sliding your fingers down the side of the bevel towards the edge you can feel this "fold-over" on the side to which it folded. After you have formed a burr along the entire length of the cutting edge you knock the burr off in various ways. You can gently run the cutting edge through a piece of soft wood or a hard felt block. Running the edge through a piece of cardboard works too. Everybody has their own method. Then strop the edge by dragging the edge over the stone with the edge trailing. Then you can do finish stropping on a leather strop or the cardboard on the back of a legal pad etc. There are many ways to do it. But you don't want to put much force on the edge. Basically just the weight of the knife. Many people use a buffing compound like Green Chrome or similar to "charge" their strop. This means they are rubbing the compound onto their strop surface. This embeds the abrasive particles into their strop surface and helps to refine the edge.
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Very good response! I would also suggest learning to free hand sharpen on high carbon steel, not stainless. Some crappy stainless is gummy on the stones and quality stainless is very abrasion resistant, so there is much less feedback. Once you get it down you can put a scary sharp edge on anything in a few minutes.
 
When the burr forms you can feel it with your fingers. For me it always catches on the nails, this way you can feel very small burrs.
 
The finer the stone, the smaller the burr. In an see a 220 pretty easy, 2000, now that takes some looking!

Oh, and on my water stones, I have to do edge trailing to get em sharp. Not sure if it's me, or soft stones, but I had no success edge leading.
 
Good thread and good responses. I use a Chosera 1000 and a Norton 4000/8000 when I want to get scary sharp or for my razors. I usually just finish on a soft arkansas stone for my daily carry, then strop. 8000 is incredibly sharp though. I use edge leading, but I might try it with edge trailing once to see if I like that better.
 
I have higher grit stones, so should I just keep sharpening, while alternating sides until I see a burr form?
 
radio shack has a little pocket microscope that works great are seeing where your edge is hittig the stone. change the angle of the sharpening so you can see the grit lines (jsut liek when you grind the main bevel)
 
One other thing that can lead to mysterious results are stones that are out of true flat. Especially on long fine edges. Sharpie helps.

Nothing beats routine practice with your chosen gear. The value of careful observation is often underrated. Especially in the sales catalogs.
 
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