Have KME and diamond stones, should I look at the WorkSharp?

[jfindon]

I probably already know the answer to this thread, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I have a KME sharpener with the kit stones and the diamond stones, but I can never seem to get the hang of sharpening. Sure, I can get them to easily shave and cut zigzags in paper, but I can never get them to that next level. I also don't have much faith in my ability to keep the bevels even, it seems that I'm too dumb to figure that out when the factory edge is uneven itself. That results in my secondary bevel being higher on one side than the other.

I was wondering if the WS Ken Onion edition would be a more foolproof method for me, I've done some reading and it sounds like the opinions are pretty mixed.

 

[sickpuppy1]

Actually it could very easily make it worse as it can remove metal much faster.And from what I've read around here is it seems to have a higher learning curve than what you have now. My first question is about expectations and what stones you have. Are you wanting to go to a high polish edge?

 

[Mo2]

Don't think so. You still have to learn how to use it. You don't just run the blade through it and it's all good. It does have an easier learning curve.

Have you tried bench stones and going that route. I learned this before going to kme and then edge pro/hapstone. Still use stones without the system to touch up my edges.

If you want to save some money depending on how often you sharpen... You could send it to someone to sharpen it for you. Shipping + 20-40 per blade is the average costs.

 

[jfindon]

Honestly I think I would be fine if I could just make my edges look "better". I'm always worried about messing them up to the point of it looking ridiculous, I probably just need to buy some more beater knives to practice on. I've made threads here in the past where guys try their best to explain things and I get them in theory but then have issues producing the results and go too long between practicing.

I would like to get mirrored edges but I know the stones I have aren't really capable of that. This is a picture of my Olamic that has a much lesser example of uneven bevels, but you can kind of see what I mean on the left side of the tip.

My biggest fear is this happening again:

Granted that is a total POS, but if I keep the angle the exact same on the KME when I flip the knife over and that happens, what went wrong? The factory bevel being that bad? How would I even go about compensating for that?

 

[CasePeanut]

I have both the KME and the Worksharp Ken Onion (with BGA)

It sounds like your goal is precision: to go beyond shaving sharp and to even out bevels. You should stick with the KME.

The KME is about high polish and precision vs the Worksharp which is a mini belt grinder that enables a very good, but less precise edge in a fraction of the time.

It’s not uncommon to have uneven bevels on a knife, especially if it’s ground on a belt. You can even out the sides, but it can be a lot of work. This would be an easier task on the WSKO than the KME, but one slip with the belt grinder and you can ruin the knife.

 

[Mo2]

Goto Walmart and get some of those really cheap knives. Single digit stuff. Then practice on one. Try and match the stock angle.

After a few of these those knives, the stones will break in. Also don't use too much force and keep the amount of weight on the nob even across the blade. Don't focus too much on one spot. Look at the edge periodically through to check the size of the edge and the apex. A sharpie can help find the angle. Leave yourself some time. Make a snack and take a break for a moment if you're having some trouble. Careful of the tip.

Next knife go just a tad lower for a reprofile. Don't go crazy low until you got it down right after a few.

Have you seen Dean O on YouTube? He has some decent tips. Also knife krazy

Going too low an angle and new stones will leave scratch like that. Also when you wipe off swarf it's scratches it. A spray bottle with soap and water in it helps. It sprays the swarf off,good if your close to a sink or bucket. The more you use the stones the less they will scratch it as much. Also you can put tape on your blade. It may not help if your stones are too low though.

 

[Ripcord 82]

I use the KME and I need to use a good magnifying lens to be able to see that I am on the edge, that and the magic marker trick. My biggest problem seems to be aligning the blade in the jaws so that I don't get a wider grind in the belly of the blade. I just can't seem to get that part right. I don't know if I should position the blade close to the tip in the jaws or closer to the heel and should the blade be straight or should it be skewed. I can get the edge hair shaving sharp on any folders just from my diamond stones that come with the KME and using Dawn dish soap and water to coat the diamond plates with , for moving swarf.
I considered the WS but that contraption scares me.

 

[Eli Chaps]

I wouldn't even consider that second knife. Those bevels may have been totally skewed before you touched them and your work may have just accentuated that. Especially with that coating just making it far more noticeable.

Factory bevels, even on quality knives, are notoriously uneven.

Be sure you're clamping in the middle of the blade (heel-to-tip wise). Paint the bevel with a marker, make a couple swipes to see how much you're removing and adjust as needed. You want to be removing all the marker from the very edge to the bevel shoulder. There might little spots you can't get and that's due to the factory and you'll have to grind those out as you go. But the majority of the bevel should be clean. Go slow making small adjustments and reapply marker as needed. If you see you're taking it all off just the very edge (too high) and make an adjustment and now it's all coming off, reapply it and verify. You want to be sure that you're adjustments didn't mess up the previous work.

Now, sharpen that side until you have a burr on the entire edge. Use your 300 diamond and do not go up in grit.

Flip your blade and make one light stroke down the bevel. This will help clean up the ragged burr so can more easily apply the marker. Repeat the above marking steps without regard to the angles matching. You're just looking for whatever angle each side is set at. This will tell you right away if you're starting with uneven bevels.

As for "next level", your KME can absolutely make mirrored edges. You need to learn about scratch patterns, grit progression, strops and/or films to keep achieving higher levels of polish but there's absolutely no reason that system can't do it.

If it's a next level sharpness thing, understand, that if you can easily shave arm hair, your knives are sharp. By and large, everything beyond that is just-cuz kind of stuff. If you want to whittle free-hanging hairs, you're likely going to need more than the KME and now you're talking matching abrasives to steels and angles and all sorts of stuff.

As for test knives, pairing and kitchen utility knives are the best. Just watch your jaw clearance. Might invest in some pen jaws. The steel is good enough to take an edge yet soft and thin enough to be easy to work with. Counter junk can just be a goopy mess that frustrates.

I say evaluate what your priorities are and how your current edges are performing and then how those two things meet up.

No to the Work Sharp.

 

[Eli Chaps]

I use the KME and I need to use a good magnifying lens to be able to see that I am on the edge, that and the magic marker trick. My biggest problem seems to be aligning the blade in the jaws so that I don't get a wider grind in the belly of the blade. I just can't seem to get that part right. I don't know if I should position the blade close to the tip in the jaws or closer to the heel and should the blade be straight or should it be skewed. I can get the edge hair shaving sharp on any folders just from my diamond stones that come with the KME and using Dawn dish soap and water to coat the diamond plates with , for moving swarf.
I considered the WS but that contraption scares me.

Me personally? I don't sweat that at all. I'm not even sure I've noticed it on knives off the KME but I know a lot of folks do mention it.

I'm shooting for performance over looks so that might well be a factor.

I clamp in the center and as close to the spine as I can while still maintaining a firm grip.

 

[cbwx34]

I use the KME and I need to use a good magnifying lens to be able to see that I am on the edge, that and the magic marker trick. My biggest problem seems to be aligning the blade in the jaws so that I don't get a wider grind in the belly of the blade. I just can't seem to get that part right. I don't know if I should position the blade close to the tip in the jaws or closer to the heel and should the blade be straight or should it be skewed. I can get the edge hair shaving sharp on any folders just from my diamond stones that come with the KME and using Dawn dish soap and water to coat the diamond plates with , for moving swarf.
I considered the WS but that contraption scares me.

You can follow the instructions for positioning the knife in the W.E. found HERE as a guide to get started... it's the same principle. (Just turn your monitor sideways...)

 

[Ripcord 82]

Me personally? I don't sweat that at all. I'm not even sure I've noticed it on knives off the KME but I know a lot of folks do mention it.

I'm shooting for performance over looks so that might well be a factor.

I clamp in the center and as close to the spine as I can while still maintaining a firm grip.

Thank you. That does help.

 

[Ripcord 82]

You can follow the instructions for positioning the knife in the W.E. found HERE as a guide to get started... it's the same principle. (Just turn your monitor sideways...)

That's a big help. Thank you.

 

[jfindon]

Goto Walmart and get some of those really cheap knives. Single digit stuff. Then practice on one. Try and match the stock angle.

After a few of these those knives, the stones will break in. Also don't use too much force and keep the amount of weight on the nob even across the blade. Don't focus too much on one spot. Look at the edge periodically through to check the size of the edge and the apex. A sharpie can help find the angle. Leave yourself some time. Make a snack and take a break for a moment if you're having some trouble. Careful of the tip.

Next knife go just a tad lower for a reprofile. Don't go crazy low until you got it down right after a few.

Have you seen Dean O on YouTube? He has some decent tips. Also knife krazy

Going too low an angle and new stones will leave scratch like that. Also when you wipe off swarf it's scratches it. A spray bottle with soap and water in it helps. It sprays the swarf off,good if your close to a sink or bucket. The more you use the stones the less they will scratch it as much. Also you can put tape on your blade. It may not help if your stones are too low though.

Well, I couldn't find any dirt cheap knives so I wound up with these:

Still cheap enough and knives I would never carry.

I'm quite ok with not scratching the blades, I tape the hell out of them before sharpening. I guess my only issue is dealing with the inconsistent factory grinds. I use the sharpie method, I'm good at feeling the burr and knowing when to move onto the next grit, I just always get hung up on angles. In my head I guess it makes sense to try to find the factory angle and if one side is that far off than the other, make more of a secondary bevel rather than remove a ton of steel from one of the sides... Similar to what he did in this video:

Go to 3:28 since I can't link the version that takes to right to that point in the video.

I wouldn't even consider that second knife. Those bevels may have been totally skewed before you touched them and your work may have just accentuated that. Especially with that coating just making it far more noticeable.

Factory bevels, even on quality knives, are notoriously uneven.

Be sure you're clamping in the middle of the blade (heel-to-tip wise). Paint the bevel with a marker, make a couple swipes to see how much you're removing and adjust as needed. You want to be removing all the marker from the very edge to the bevel shoulder. There might little spots you can't get and that's due to the factory and you'll have to grind those out as you go. But the majority of the bevel should be clean. Go slow making small adjustments and reapply marker as needed. If you see you're taking it all off just the very edge (too high) and make an adjustment and now it's all coming off, reapply it and verify. You want to be sure that you're adjustments didn't mess up the previous work.

Now, sharpen that side until you have a burr on the entire edge. Use your 300 diamond and do not go up in grit.

Flip your blade and make one light stroke down the bevel. This will help clean up the ragged burr so can more easily apply the marker. Repeat the above marking steps without regard to the angles matching. You're just looking for whatever angle each side is set at. This will tell you right away if you're starting with uneven bevels.

As for "next level", your KME can absolutely make mirrored edges. You need to learn about scratch patterns, grit progression, strops and/or films to keep achieving higher levels of polish but there's absolutely no reason that system can't do it.

If it's a next level sharpness thing, understand, that if you can easily shave arm hair, your knives are sharp. By and large, everything beyond that is just-cuz kind of stuff. If you want to whittle free-hanging hairs, you're likely going to need more than the KME and now you're talking matching abrasives to steels and angles and all sorts of stuff.

As for test knives, pairing and kitchen utility knives are the best. Just watch your jaw clearance. Might invest in some pen jaws. The steel is good enough to take an edge yet soft and thin enough to be easy to work with. Counter junk can just be a goopy mess that frustrates.

I say evaluate what your priorities are and how your current edges are performing and then how those two things meet up.

No to the Work Sharp.

So you start off making simple passes just to figure out how even or uneven the factory bevels are? From there, do you just take the higher degree side and apply that to both sides like the guy did in the video I linked? That way you don't remove a ton of steel from the other side, and add more of a secondary bevel to that uneven factory edge. Both these beater knives I got have pretty bad edges, I can see that already.

 

[BadtotheBugs]

You can buy "the beast" the coarsest diamond stone for the kme and an angle cube and reprofile your knives to an exact angle that you can find every time regardless of knife placememt in the clamps.

Watch knifecrazy on YouTube. He is the kme master. Seriously

 

[jfindon]

You can buy "the beast" the coarsest diamond stone for the kme and an angle cube and reprofile your knives to an exact angle that you can find every time regardless of knife placememt in the clamps.

Watch knifecrazy on YouTube. He is the kme master. Seriously

I actually do have an angle cube already, I'll check him out. I remember using the angle cube but it seemed like the angle it was ready changed depending on where I put the cube so it was hard maintaining the exact placement. Plus, that's the problem I have. Say I go in wanting to put a 20 degree angle on my blade, one side works fine and then the other side I wind up taking way more off the steel or add that secondary bevel. AM I supposed to diagnose how much the factory edge is off first and then go from there, without having a degree in mind initially?

EDIT: Sharpening the Gerber now, the first side was 24.9 degrees and when I flipped it over it's at 23.5 degrees. This is where I get confused, do I leave it alone and sharpen the other side at the same setting I used initially or tweak it to 24.9 degrees again, which will then throw off the first side again?

This is the first side I did, looks pretty good:

This is the second side at the same setting after a few minutes. It's only removed metal at the bottom of the bevel, will it even out without making the overall bevel larger than the first side?

I already have a massive burr on side 2 and the bevel is not the same width as side 1. Do I just keep going?

 

[Ripcord 82]

The flaw that gets me with using the angle cube is that you zero off the base on the KME but then my stem that screws into the base is not perpendicular to it and is somewhat loose also unless I wrap Teflon tape around the threads and even that doesn't make it perfect. So, what angle am I actually reading is a question that always comes to my mind.

 

[Eli Chaps]

jfindon I recommended checking the bevel angles just so that you would know if indeed it was a factory issue and not caused by you. Help alleviate frustration and give you information up front of what you are dealing with. It looks like that's more or less what you discovered above. Also, keep in mind that on lower-end models especially, primary grinds (flat side of knife) can be off slightly and cause the secondary bevel (sharpened edge) to appear with different widths.

What you do from there is truly up to you. For a visually wider/narrow situation, in general, you're better off to match the "narrow" side to the wide side. You can't add material to the one side so you take it off from the other. Even if they look pretty much the same but measure slightly different, then I'd work to the lowest angle. I don't like either one of those angles. I would probably start by dropping them both down to somewhere around 23 on the first round. Then consider a degree or two lower on subsequent rounds as time went on. If you're never going to use the knife and therefore require subsequent future sharpenings, then you can experiment however you want. As mentioned, if you want to do much re-profiling, the 50 grit Beast is probably best. Lots of bevel scratches with that one though so be conscious of that.

That Kershaw may be a serious pain to get properly clamped.

 

[sickpuppy1]

For one thing I would move your tape back and leave about 1/16 to 1/8" of metal showing above the cutting surface. Your stone cannot sit flat one the metal with the tape in the way. Affects the cutting. In picture 2 it is already interfering with the stone hitting the metal. especially if you are doing trailing edge strokes.(pulling the stone toward you)

 

[Eli Chaps]

Let me add, I more or less gave up the angle measuring thing a long time ago. One, I focused on knives I knew would have a factory angle near my preferences. Namely, Spyderco in the 15-17 degree range. That eliminates a lot of re-profiling requirements. Now, I have a slew of Spydercos with off-center and uneven grinds from the factory. I'd learned early on to give the tips an inspection under magnification to get a feel for what I was starting with. Typically, on my first sharpening, I'd drop my stone as low as it would go and still clear the clamp. Check the marker removal and see how much I was removing. And then do the same on the other side. If my initial inspection showed a noticeably skewed bevel, I'd start on the "narrower" side. Anyway, after checking the marker, if it didn't look like I was going to have to hog off a bunch of material, then away I'd go. Then I'd flip the knife and make it match that angle. I didn't care so much what they measured just that they matched.

And then I'd sorta repeat this process for subsequent sharpenings and see how the bevel was adjusting. I didn't get overly concerned about them being off-center, or how they looked, I just wanted them sharp.

I'm using a past tense as I rarely use my KME anymore. Free hand a lot now a days.

It's up to you and what you want.

 

[Eli Chaps]

For one thing I would move your tape back and leave about 1/16 to 1/8" of metal showing above the cutting surface. Your stone cannot sit flat one the metal with the tape in the way. Affects the cutting. In picture 2 it is already interfering with the stone hitting the metal. especially if you are doing trailing edge strokes.(pulling the stone toward you)

Agreed. I never taped my blades. They're knives.