- Joined
- Sep 7, 2006
- Messages
- 6,211
I am fairly proud of my sharpening skills. I have two kits, a Lansky crock set with gray and white rods and a Spyderco Sharpmaker. I use the Sharpmaker almost exclusively.
If I get a new knife its usually no problem to keep them sharp. I buy mostly prodos from top companies like Emerson and Spyderco so no probs there. However, used knives are another story...
My first real challenge was a Busse Battle Mistress. A mother of a knife! Now the Sharpmaker was designed mostly for folders, so how do you sharpen a brute fixed blade like the BM with it?
I ended up freehanding it with the gray stones and then touching up with the white. I wasn't really satisfied with the results until I drew the BM out a while back and sliced myself nicely on the thumb. It smarts doesn't it!
I guess I was expecting it to get as sharp as a Spyderco folder but its a different animal, made for chopping and other hard tasks. You dont want too fine an edge on such a blade.
I will say the edge has held up very well since I sharpened it. The rep that Infi has seems to be well deserved.
My other challenge was another used knife, this time a custom - a magnificent framelock Crawford Kasper with a satin finish S30V blade.
The knife was sharp - up until about half an inch from the tip. I think the dude must have been practising moves on a cardboard target and had neglected to resharpen.
S30V is a great steel and I have great respect for it. But it is a bitch to sharpen if it has gone blunt.
I again had to resort to freehand with the gray rods to get this edge back. This is nerve-wracking stuff on a $700 knife! (OK I didnt pay that but thats what they sell for new.)
The main problem was where the knife was blunt. The tip and near it is the hardest part of a knife to sharpen in my experience. The edge profile at the tip was also not as thin as the rest of the edge.
In any event I managed to achieve a result that I am 98% happy with. I decided not to send the knife back to Pat for a resharpen as a) it would expose it to an international return journey through the postal system and b) it would be quite expensive!
I am fairly proud of my ability to successfully sharpen knives in this way. I am not an expert by any means but given my limited resources and that I am entirely self-taught I can safely say that my knives are sharp enough to do the job!
Anyone else have a sharpening challenge they would like to share?
If I get a new knife its usually no problem to keep them sharp. I buy mostly prodos from top companies like Emerson and Spyderco so no probs there. However, used knives are another story...
My first real challenge was a Busse Battle Mistress. A mother of a knife! Now the Sharpmaker was designed mostly for folders, so how do you sharpen a brute fixed blade like the BM with it?
I ended up freehanding it with the gray stones and then touching up with the white. I wasn't really satisfied with the results until I drew the BM out a while back and sliced myself nicely on the thumb. It smarts doesn't it!
I guess I was expecting it to get as sharp as a Spyderco folder but its a different animal, made for chopping and other hard tasks. You dont want too fine an edge on such a blade.
I will say the edge has held up very well since I sharpened it. The rep that Infi has seems to be well deserved.
My other challenge was another used knife, this time a custom - a magnificent framelock Crawford Kasper with a satin finish S30V blade.
The knife was sharp - up until about half an inch from the tip. I think the dude must have been practising moves on a cardboard target and had neglected to resharpen.
S30V is a great steel and I have great respect for it. But it is a bitch to sharpen if it has gone blunt.
I again had to resort to freehand with the gray rods to get this edge back. This is nerve-wracking stuff on a $700 knife! (OK I didnt pay that but thats what they sell for new.)
The main problem was where the knife was blunt. The tip and near it is the hardest part of a knife to sharpen in my experience. The edge profile at the tip was also not as thin as the rest of the edge.
In any event I managed to achieve a result that I am 98% happy with. I decided not to send the knife back to Pat for a resharpen as a) it would expose it to an international return journey through the postal system and b) it would be quite expensive!
I am fairly proud of my ability to successfully sharpen knives in this way. I am not an expert by any means but given my limited resources and that I am entirely self-taught I can safely say that my knives are sharp enough to do the job!
Anyone else have a sharpening challenge they would like to share?
My HI Everest Katana is one, mostly because of a botched earlier attempt at using japanese waterstones on it, at what I would later learn was at too obtuse an angle. Another blade that was challenging, mainly due to its sheer size was the Valiant Trading Company UL-13... getting around 4 feet of blade sharp with ceramic rods and diamond sleeves ain't easy!
:grumpy: 
