Getting very frustrated trying to sharpen

learnme said:
yes, I too have found love for the hard wool felt. I have been using it plain as my finish and the .25 diamond slurry on the horse leather. sick results... i never get bored cutting and chopping things up now...

Gotsouthern, are you able to do the hanging hair test, i still cant quite get there just yet.

ALSO, for Flamtnbkr, light lighter lightest strokes ;p a heavy hand does no good.
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The hard wool is not for final finishing though :confused: are you using the wool plain?
 
FlaMtnBkr said:
As far as the edge pro I have 220, 320, and 800 with some polishing tapes. It didn't come with a 120 grit. This is the main reason I haven't started from the beginning is because it seemed like it was going to take forever trying to reprofile with the 220 grit. I think I will just put it up until I get a better assortment of stones.
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If you are going to use it again, I think the 120 is absolutely essential, the 220 takes a lifetime. If you want to try one, I might have an extra one laying around.

If you are wanting nice edges, start with the 120 and work your way up. If you are sharpening a beater, use the 120 to knock down the relief, and micro bevel with the finer stones, just like Hardheart was saying.

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Gotsouthern said:
I can't really comment on the EP as I have never laid a hand on one, Im a long time "free hander", but just recently invested in proper equipment to put to use all that time spent playing and learning and getting cut growing up haha.

What I did want to contribute to this discussion, relative to stropping, some of you guys who are having trouble dulling knives on your strops, have you tried hard pressed felt/diamond slurry? Ive been playing with such for the last month or so, and it seems VASTLY more forgiving in both angle and pressure as compared to leather. Not to mention 1 micron diamond on hard wool felt will flat out POLISH an edge, like FAST!! Ive been going 1 micron diamond on felt, to .5 micron CrO on brushed leather, .25 Micron diamond on felt, then hard pressed horse leather finish strop. I have to pay MUCH closer attention when on the two leather pads as opposed to the felt to not destroy my hard work. But when I get it right....oh son. My gf said if I pull one more of her hairs to show her how i can split curley cues and cork screws off of them....lol...yeah shes a keeper :D
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I don't know what is funnier, your unhealthy obsession ;), or that fact that nobody here thinks it odd you are splitting her hairs:D. You can also get them from her brush - less pain! :eek:
 
The wool should be used between stones and just before the start of stropping, its a de-burring tool.
 
sodak said:
I don't know what is funnier, your unhealthy obsession ;), or that fact that nobody here thinks it odd you are splitting her hairs:D. You can also get them from her brush - less pain! :eek:
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Indeed I am among friends here!! Yeah her brush is never handy seems like, and its so much more fun just to say...ok now...hold still...yes yes I'll make sure its only one.... :D
 
sodak said:
Sorry Dog, it was the whiskey talking!!! :eek::D
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No problem. If Hardheart hadn't caught it, I doubt I would have even realized it. Wish I could blame it on the whiskey, but in my case it's just failing ... uh ... ummm....
 
It looks like some more great info, thanks everyone!

I think I definitely need to get a 120 grit stone because I did start to try to reprofile with the 220 and I think I would have been going for an hour at least to get it done. I was hoping to find a course diamond stone for it to really remove metal quickly but they are very expensive and I can't afford one right now and not sure I want to spend that kind of money on one. It cost almost as much as I got the whole edge pro for. So when I finally do get a courser stone I will try from the beginning. If I had something to flatten the stones on, I would see if someone had an old stone that was dished out I could try but I guess that is another item I need to buy when I get some money saved up.

I ordered the hand american diamond spray almost 3 weeks ago and haven't heard anything. I sent an email and still haven't heard back. I know he has been redoing his website so hopefully he will get caught up and I will get to try that. He also is supposed to send a sample of the felt and it sounds like it works really well.

Since I completely dulled my new knife I went ahead and sharpened it on the paper wheels and it is now tree topping hairs. I wish I could figure out how to use it without removing so much metal. When I do use the grit wheel I raise a very small burr so it doesn't seem like it should be removing that much metal as I raise just as much burr with a lansky angle sharpener. And I do most of my touch ups on the polishing wheel which is somehow the culprit for wearing down the edge. It doesn't form any kind of burr and puts a mirror polish on so I'm a little confused about how it is taking that much metal off.

I see it was suggested to use the ceramic sticks but I have had bad luck with them as well. I can take a nice sharp edge that has been used a little and not quite as sharp as fresh off the paper wheels, and very lightly use the ceramic sticks and dull the blade. It is similar to a sharpmaker and is a V setup. Using the white fine rods and very light strokes alternating sides with each stroke, the edge will shave much worse than before I started. Again, very frustrating since others can have such good luck with a similar device.

Thanks again for all the tips and hopefully one day I will get something figured out. And I had a gift card for radio shack and went and picked up one of the pocket microscopes. Hopefully that will help me out and works surprisingly well for a 10 dollar gadget. It's on sale right now for 9.99 in case anyone is interested.

Ryan
 
PM your address to me. I've got an old 120 and 180 that I'll send to you. They are dished, but you can flatten them on a smooth sidewalk with some sand. They will reprofile 10 times faster than the 220. I consider everything from the 220 up to the tapes to be polishing anyway. They also take 10 times more water to wash away the slurry.

Verhoeven also reported a great deal of metal removal with buffing wheels, and in his paper, they left a very highly polished, yet coarse edge. Very interesting...
 
FlaMtnBkr said:
Since I completely dulled my new knife I went ahead and sharpened it on the paper wheels and it is now tree topping hairs. I wish I could figure out how to use it without removing so much metal. When I do use the grit wheel I raise a very small burr so it doesn't seem like it should be removing that much metal as I raise just as much burr with a lansky angle sharpener. And I do most of my touch ups on the polishing wheel which is somehow the culprit for wearing down the edge. It doesn't form any kind of burr and puts a mirror polish on so I'm a little confused about how it is taking that much metal off.
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If you are using an 8" wheel on a 3450 rpm motor, then one second on the wheel is the same as 180 passes on an 8" strop or stone. The edge will only support so large a burr at any given grit, no matter how much total metal is removed, and the white compound will not form a large burr because of how small the scratches are that it creates.
 
hardheart said:
If you are using an 8" wheel on a 3450 rpm motor, then one second on the wheel is the same as 180 passes on an 8" strop or stone. The edge will only support so large a burr at any given grit, no matter how much total metal is removed, and the white compound will not form a large burr because of how small the scratches are that it creates.
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I'd think that the amount of pressure has a lot to do with it. I tend to use very little pressure per pass and my grinder is running at 2000 RPM.

I get a decent edge, but I can't consistently get a hair whittling edge. I need more practice, I guess. My real breakthrough came when I started using very light pressure.
 
I found that quite a bit of pressure is what gets me the tree topping sharpness. But it is probably what wears down the blade so fast. I just don't get much of a edge with light pressure although I would think it should work fine.

Has anyone spoke with the fellow at Hand American? I have not heard from him and have sent emails asking about my order that was placed about 3 weeks ago? Just wondering if I am the only one?

Sodak made me a very generous offer and has sent me a few Edge pro stones. What a great forum with great people! As soon as they get here I will start trying to re-profile and sharpen a knife. I will post my results here which hopefully are good. I wish I had the diamond spray to finish up on but will have to wait for that.

Thanks again for all the replies!

Ryan
 
fujita yuji said:
How about trying a microbevel trick?
Just slightly change the angle, with small amount of pressure on a fine grit stone/strop.
This is what I do to add more sharpness on a already sharp edge.
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yeah, me too. You probably get 5 strops to shave sharp before you need to sharpen again.
 
HA has been terribly slow for years. I think everyone gets their stuff, but time and communication are generally problems - from my experience and what others have said.
 
hardheart said:
HA has been terribly slow for years. I think everyone gets their stuff, but time and communication are generally problems - from my experience and what others have said.
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+1. You just have to keep after Keith like a pit bull on crack.
 
FlaMtnBkr said:
I found that quite a bit of pressure is what gets me the tree topping sharpness. But it is probably what wears down the blade so fast. I just don't get much of a edge with light pressure although I would think it should work fine.
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Heavy pressure is the arch enemy of fine, durable edges. What it sounds like is you're producing a wire edge -- a "fin" in straight razor parlance -- which can be very sharp, but doesn't last. With straight razors this isn't so much a problem since you're stropping all the time, but with practical knives that cut stuff like wood, rope, meat/flesh, cardboard, plastics, etc. you want to do all you can to first minimize the formation of a wire edge, and second, get rid of any wire edge that was produced in earlier stages.

Again, Ryan, if you're having these problems, I really think you need to get down to basics. Before stropping can even be considered really useful, you need to have a high quality, refined edge already. And using a loaded strop is a real skill in itself. FWIW I've never much favored what seems to be Hand American's overall approach to sharpening -- in fact, their advise to raise the blade angle just to the point where it bites the leather, then back off a little, never worked for me. So to me it sounds like you're trying to take on the whole range of sharpening skills, basic to uber-advanced, all at once ... and I think many here will tell you, it usually takes many years of patient trial and error.

Just my opinion, o'course. And all any of us want is for you to enjoy the satisfaction of blazing sharp edges. :D
 
Dog of War said:
Again, Ryan, if you're having these problems, I really think you need to get down to basics. Before stropping can even be considered really useful, you need to have a high quality, refined edge already. And using a loaded strop is a real skill in itself. FWIW I've never much favored what seems to be Hand American's overall approach to sharpening -- in fact, their advise to raise the blade angle just to the point where it bites the leather, then back off a little, never worked for me. So to me it sounds like you're trying to take on the whole range of sharpening skills, basic to uber-advanced, all at once ... and I think many here will tell you, it usually takes many years of patient trial and error.
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This seems like pretty good advice.
 
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