Have you ever forgot how to sharpen?

[J-Tal]

Darn this is a bad day.

I sharpened a benchmade and a spyderco today and took them to work so I could look at them under the microscope. Damn! a wire edge and they quit cutting pretty fast when i tried them out. Oh well I'll redo them.

I came home from work, took out the sharpmaker and went to work. Ok job done now time to try em out on the bald spot on my leg, some hair is growing back there. Huh, my hair must have grown back as kevlar. I'll try a newspaper. Rip! What!

I pull out the gatco. no luck. It's like part of my brain just died. Last week I was slicing hanging hairs and now I just turned my sharp knives into butter knives.

Anyone else have a full day of sharpening failure?

 

[MelancholyMutt]

Sharpening is a combination of hand-eye coordination, muscle memory and "sensing". All of these skills atrophy if one does not practice for any length of time. What you do remember is the concept behind a good sharpening process and it will probably take you less time to "remember" how to sharpen than it did for you to develop those skills.

 

[Runs With Scissors]

What I've noticed with myself, is that I can be quite quirky with my sharpening. On some days it seems like I can do everything by the book and not make my knives any sharper than the leading edge of a library book. On other days I can make a wooden spoon sharp enough to shave yer beard with. I know deep in my heart of hearts that it's merely an application of the forementioned principles. That being said however, on a bad day I've learned to just put away all my toys that I love, and call it quits for the day. It's also worth mentioning, that most "bad days" are days when I'm exhausted, sick, or in a higher than normal emotional state. Goofy, I know...Guess the bottom line is, that you aint the only one that has those days....

 

[beluga]

For me sharpening is like riding a bicycle. Once you do it, you'll never forget how to.

 

[VampyreWolf]

Been sharpening since I was old enough to handle a knife... can't "forget" it, but can have an "ah fu&#99k" day.

You know those days... cranial flatulance abounds, you're sicker'n a dog, or seem all thumbs. Those are the days you put the knives aside, bring out 1 to use all day b/c you could use it with your eyes closed with your "off hand"(for you leftie-challenged ppl), and hope not to lose any blood... and use it with the hopes it's sharp enough to make it.

 

[Sticky]

This is maybe the one and only advantage of never really having known how to sharpen worth a F..I can't forget!

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

It's funny that this thread comes up, because it happened to me just recently.

Sharpening is a skill I've developed over time, since about 1990 when I first tried it -- knowing next to nothing about knives OR sharpening. The lesson I've learned is to always be patient and willing to let time run its course: you will learn things over time that cannot be learned lickety-split. It can't be rushed. Sometimes you'll even feel like you've hit setbacks, but even those are part of what you learn. Forgetting something you once knew how to do most often causes you to go back and re-study it. Then, guess what? You'll have it more firmly embedded in your foundation than you did the first time you learned it! It's a good thing.

I've come across the same lesson with several other things: flying, knot tying, guitar playing... These are things that I once thought I knew something about; then time went by (in many cases, from several years to a decade +!) and then I looked back from the PRESENT and saw how much I had learned between then and now! "Did I really think that was good sharpening??" It was amazing. This is one of the greatest observations I have ever made in my life: "If you give it time, when you get to some point in the future, you will look back and realize how far you've come, and you won't have even realized you were traveling." That understanding is crucial to me now. It is what sustains me and gives me the patience to allow things to happen -- particularly those things whose pace I really am not empowered to alter. Some day I'll be able to play guitar, with practice. Some day I'll be able to tie more complex knots than I already can. Some day I'll be IFR qualified, with practice and study. Some day I'll even sharpen better or more efficiently than I currently do.

But it's a weird coincidence that this thread got started, because just a few days ago I took out my Benchmade 555 Mini-Griptilian and examined what I had thought was a perfectly sharp edge, no burr. And I found a tiny burr along the edge. Let me relate to you: I WAS CRUSHED. Here I was, thinking I knew my **** when it came to sharpening, AND that I not only knew the theory but could put it into practice, and I had a BURR on what I thought was my best sharpening job! So I set about getting rid of it, and every time I lightly stroked the blade on my Spyderco Profile, all I seemed to do was put a burr on the other side of the edge! It took a lonnnng time late that night to get the knife to where I thought the edge was adequately sharpened and the burr adequately removed.

Now I'm going to shop for a strop. I know that the sharpening faq instructs that one should be able to get rid of a burr with just one's stone, and I can -- it's just a pain in the ass and I want to see how well a strop takes care of the problem.

Oh, btw, I still use a technique I pioneered of using a blue LED to examine the edge in the dark. Holding the spine of the blade near your nose, and the LED light near your eyes, facing away from you, a burr on the blade's edge will be more or less perpendicular to the light, and will reflect it back at you, showing up as a tiny neon line. That's your burr. Turn on the lights, sharpen ever-so-gently, and try the LED again. This also works without pausing to shut off the lights, but the line of the burr will be somewhat harder to discern.

Next thing is I'm going to get a jeweler's loupe. Does anyone here use one to check their edges? What power should I get? I have seen them around with 10x, 20x, and 30x. I'm thinking 20x would be adequate without being too much. Advice?

 

[z17813]

I had an awww F.. sharpening day today.

Butter knives would have seemed like razors compared to what I did to my CQC7 and then I managed to find out, by dropping on my foot, that the tip was still rather sharp

not my day:grumpy:

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Never forgot, just wasn't paying attention, once I focused, everthing was fine.

 

[Don Luis]

As a kid I learned to sharpen by holding the hone in my left hand and my pocket knife in my right, usually standing up (out in the field in rural Mexico, often not a flat surface around to set the hone). The hone was held tilted and the knife moved horizontally (I´ve explained this method in other threads).

Anyway, I hadn´t done it like that for years, I normally use some kind of jig to hold the hone fixed at an angle on a table, and sit down comfortably under good light, etc.

But yesterday morning I was getting ready to go out, picked up an old slipjoint to carry and noticed an ugly nick in one of the blades, I didn´t have much time so I just picked up a coarse stone from the drawer and worked the blade like I used to do some 40+ years ago, removed the nick, changed to a finer hone and got it shaving sharp in almost no time.

Didn´t think much about it at the time but after reading this thread I realize it is like riding a bicycle, once learned, never forgotten.

 

[VampyreWolf]

T. Erdelyi> you pay atention when you sharpen? Fu&#99k, I watch TV, done it enough to not hit myself and the angle is muscle memory.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

My definition of attention is different, just ask my wife. .

I've said it before and others have echoed the same opinion, it's muscle memory from repetition, I usually never think when I sharpen, just when I evaluate the edge when I'm done.