Getting from sharp to scary sharp...

B

BIG45-70

Joined
Aug 29, 2010
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Over the last few weeks I've been working on my free hand sharpening. I have the falkniven diamond/ceramic stone, a smiths fine diamond stone and a generic larger course/fine combo stone.

With this setup I've manage to put a pretty good edge on all my knives, I can shave with all of them with a bit of pressure and going over the same spot a few times.

How do I get to that effortless shaving sharp I see some guys get too? Specifically on my Ezno Scandi grind folder with D2 steel?
 
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A strop can be a big aid in pushing your edge that much farther. I highly recommend stropping.
 
Stropping will help as long as you have good technique. Bad technique can actually dull an edge.

Truthfully its all about practice and having a VERY light touch on your finishing stones.
 
You can use paper wheels or free-hanging barber strops (canvass & leather). -At least that's what I use to get my knives to hair-whittling sharpness.
 
BIG45-70 said:
With this setup I've manage to put a pretty good edge on all my knives, I can shave with all of them with a bit of pressure and going over the same spot a few times.
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what do you mean by shaving, is this facial or body hair
 
Arm hair specifically. I've used an old leather belt a few times, I do believe I was using to much pressure and dulled my knife. Practice makes perfect I guess.
 
Arm hair I can do free hand. It's the vids I see of splitting hairs that makes me wish I had better technique.
 
if you are still working on clean shaving arm hair, then I would say stick with your coarsest stone and progress no further until you get the results at that level. It is possible to treetop arm hair with a ~120 grit edge, so I wouldn't go to a finer stone until you are at least removing hair in clean patches at a very coarse grit. Once you have that down, you can just use the same technique and light touch on foner stones to get more refined edges. You get the knife sharp on a coarse stone, you make it sharper on fine stones. You should be able to split hairs with the ceramic side of the DC3/4 when you have the technique down.
 
BIG45-70 said:
Arm hair specifically. I've used an old leather belt a few times, I do believe I was using to much pressure and dulled my knife. Practice makes perfect I guess.
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Same here, I need an edge pro for the hair splitting thing. Once a knife is reprofiled though, I can put it on a sharpmaker and get hair splitting.
 
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