- Joined
- May 1, 2013
- Messages
- 844
EDIT: I think I found a thread that kinda goes over it...thanks for looking though.
Hi guys,
Tried searching through the forum with nothing conclusive, so wanted to see if I could borrow a moment of your time.
So I just bought a brand new Council Velvicut Bad Boy's Axe. The vendor was very nice to pick the one that was hung well with good head/handle alignment, with the grain pattern that's above average.
The bad news is that it came with absolutely no edge from heel to the center of the bit (I mean, I could push my finger against it and slide along the so called "edge" and I'd be perfectly fine), and the top half wasn't anything to write home about either.
Looks like the vendor offers free sharpening of this model. Part of me was regretting I didn't opt for that option, but I was apprehensive that it may impact the tempering assuming they'd use some sort of high speed belt sander (I should probably e-mail them and confirm).
In the end, I received it on the weekend and the trooper in me was like, I never refurbished an axe before, so I'll try it with this axe...which is new.... Up until this point, I had only done touch ups on my axe bits for honing or repair micro-chips as they'd always came sharp from the manufacturer (GBs in my case). So I spent about 4 hours on Saturday working to develop an edge. Most of the work was spent trying to grind down the fat cheek on one side of the head as it was thicker with a 120 grit Japanese water stone, then developed an edge with progression to 220, 800, then 3000 water stones. I pretty much developed the edge as I would with a knife with a secondary bevel that I would regrind to convert it to a convex zero (well, near zero) edge. I think the fat side could still use a little more grinding, but I wanted to use it couple times to get some "feedback" before I take more material off.
So all this background info to ask....I was watching the US Forest Service (An Axe to Grind) video (after this 4 hours of work that I put in) that I'm sure many of you have watched, and the gentlemen in the video refers to sharpening the edge with the primary bevel having a half-moon shape. Can you guys tell me the purpose of that? Does that mean the cheek of the axe head is fatter than the heel and toe side? (or the other way around?) Does that apply to all types of axe heads and/or applications? I have the GB Wildlife, Outdoor, and the SFA, and none of them seem to have this grind (or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough). I'd greatly appreciate any feedback. Thanks for your time!
Josh
Hi guys,
Tried searching through the forum with nothing conclusive, so wanted to see if I could borrow a moment of your time.
So I just bought a brand new Council Velvicut Bad Boy's Axe. The vendor was very nice to pick the one that was hung well with good head/handle alignment, with the grain pattern that's above average.
The bad news is that it came with absolutely no edge from heel to the center of the bit (I mean, I could push my finger against it and slide along the so called "edge" and I'd be perfectly fine), and the top half wasn't anything to write home about either.
Looks like the vendor offers free sharpening of this model. Part of me was regretting I didn't opt for that option, but I was apprehensive that it may impact the tempering assuming they'd use some sort of high speed belt sander (I should probably e-mail them and confirm).
In the end, I received it on the weekend and the trooper in me was like, I never refurbished an axe before, so I'll try it with this axe...which is new.... Up until this point, I had only done touch ups on my axe bits for honing or repair micro-chips as they'd always came sharp from the manufacturer (GBs in my case). So I spent about 4 hours on Saturday working to develop an edge. Most of the work was spent trying to grind down the fat cheek on one side of the head as it was thicker with a 120 grit Japanese water stone, then developed an edge with progression to 220, 800, then 3000 water stones. I pretty much developed the edge as I would with a knife with a secondary bevel that I would regrind to convert it to a convex zero (well, near zero) edge. I think the fat side could still use a little more grinding, but I wanted to use it couple times to get some "feedback" before I take more material off.
So all this background info to ask....I was watching the US Forest Service (An Axe to Grind) video (after this 4 hours of work that I put in) that I'm sure many of you have watched, and the gentlemen in the video refers to sharpening the edge with the primary bevel having a half-moon shape. Can you guys tell me the purpose of that? Does that mean the cheek of the axe head is fatter than the heel and toe side? (or the other way around?) Does that apply to all types of axe heads and/or applications? I have the GB Wildlife, Outdoor, and the SFA, and none of them seem to have this grind (or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough). I'd greatly appreciate any feedback. Thanks for your time!
Josh
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