Help Using a Whetstone

O

Onoku

Joined
Sep 27, 2010
Messages
11
Hey guys, I purchased my first whetstone (~4 inch Smith sharpening stone) the other day and I thought I would try it out with my CRKT Ultima. It was fairly sharp before I used the stone, and I couldn't cut paper when I was finished.

So I need some advice on technique, here are my questions for anyone here who is proficient with a stone.

Do you lay the stone on a flat surface to sharpen, or do you hold it in your hand?

How can I be sure I am holding the knife at the correct angle?

How much pressure should I be applying?

Approximately how many passes should I expect it to take?

Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
 
Onoku said:
Hey guys, I purchased my first whetstone (~4 inch Smith sharpening stone) the other day and I thought I would try it out with my CRKT Ultima. It was fairly sharp before I used the stone, and I couldn't cut paper when I was finished.

So I need some advice on technique, here are my questions for anyone here who is proficient with a stone.



Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Do you lay the stone on a flat surface to sharpen, or do you hold it in your hand? You can do both really, but it might make it more difficult because with one hand you need to maintain the angle of the stone while you maintaining the knife; some people might find that a little cumbersome, but on the other hand I find it to be pretty comfortable.

How can I be sure I am holding the knife at the correct angle? When you're just trying to sharpen an edge back to sharp, you can use a magic marker on the bevel face to mark where you're grinding. Depending on which part of the marker you abrade away, you can then raise or lower the angle of the knife accordingly until you're hitting all of the marker, which indicates that angle will grind on the bevel surface.

How much pressure should I be applying? This really depends on what you're doing and what part of the process you're at. Typically during the initial stages when you might need to grind away a lot of stock to take care of burrs or nicks or the like, you may want to use moderate pressure--never use lots of pressure though, this will just hurt more than it helps. Once you get to the point where you've raised a burr and you're just trying to hone the edge, then you want to use as light of pressure as possible.

Approximately how many passes should I expect it to take? However many it takes to raise a burr on the opposite side ( of course you'll need to remove that burr so actually a little longer) to which you're grinding--try to avoid counting strokes as this i just arbitrary. The burr is pretty much the universal indicator that you've ground one edge until it meets the other at the point. Depending on what steel you're using, this could take a very long time on an Arkansas stone.
 
Thanks for the advice Kenny.

Anyone happen to have a picture of their blade after a burr has been raised? I'm not really sure what that would look like. Thanks again!
 
Onoku said:
Thanks for the advice Kenny.

Anyone happen to have a picture of their blade after a burr has been raised? I'm not really sure what that would look like. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

I often find the burr easier to feel than see. Run your finger down the grind towards the edge and if there's a burr you should be able to feel it. If you can't feel it, get some wet paper towel and lay it down. Put the blade on towel and drag it sideways leading with the spine, trailing with the edge. If there's no burr it should just glide over the towel. If there's a burr, the towel will rip and snag on the edge.
 
Take a look at one of the threads linked in my sig, a few pics of a burr can be found.
 
Great advise guys, this should prove to be quite helpful I think. I'll give it a go tonight and report back tomorrow with the results!
 
Seems like you're well on your way. Here are a few videos that really helped me:
1 [youtube]QNwP-2xBphI[/youtube] 2 [youtube]jXnSwPhyosA[/youtube] 3 [youtube]7y68flyZqHw[/youtube]
4 [youtube]4SvWabXMfcs[/youtube] 5 [youtube]ZRsfRILLw38[/youtube]

Video credits go to So-Lo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top