Frustration starting to set in

[Eager]

Stopping works really well for this for me! I recently got this strop and Chromium Oxide bar from Lee Valley-Veritas Tools. It's real easy to do and works wonders for me.

 

[AntDog]

I cut some cardboard with both knives and they would both shave hair really easily afterwards. Would that suffice?

Yup. If they'll shave, they're sharp.

When I'm getting a wire edge the thing that works best for me is to strop it on some leather with some silicon carbide compound. If you get a wire edge, the knife is already sharp! If you have a wire edge don't keep grinding off more metal, just strop it like crazy until it comes off.

Once you stop off the wire edge it should be razor sharp.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

If you can look at the edge under magnification you can tell if you removed all the burr, otherwise just as you noted, cut something and see if the sharpness remains.

-Cliff

 

[Crayola]

I find that tilting the knife a degree or 2 from vertical and using a lighter stroke for 1 or 2 strokes gets rid of the burr, just as Cliff said. But for the past year or so I've just been hutting my blades on a strop I made to get rid of the burr. Just the other day I re-sharpened the 2 blades on my Swiss Army Knife. One blade I sharpened on a 800 grit waterstone and then stropped a lot (with green CrO buffing compound on my strop) to get the edge nice and polished for push cutting. The other blade I set the bevels on a 200 grit waterstone, did a few strokes at a slightly higher degree with the 800 grit stone and then stroppe dthe knife maybe 6 times per side. The strop does a great job at the end of a sharpening job.