Help with description terms: Knives of Alaska

[Jesse Jaymes]

I will state this as clearly as possible, as I am a novice reader and knife person. As a hunter, I am very interested in a Knives of Alaska combo set. They offer a new for 2006 Alpha Wolf. This is available in S30V and D2. I am familiar with both steel types or grades.

The problem is the edge or grind. It's listed as a "special convex edge". I have 2 Bark River knives. These are what I call (or have been instructed on) convex edges, where the full tang width of steel is drawn to a tapered edge. I understand the sharpening technique for these types of edges is stropping with various compounds and such to remove steel from nearly the full profile of the blade.

I am more familiar with a "standard" grind of edge, (maybe a flat grind ?), where the final edge is ground to approximately 20-25 degrees, and is resharpened by attempting to maintain the same angle on each side.

I called the company for a clarification, and spoke with two people, both of which were women and possibly secretaries. I don't feel they understood my question, and told me it was a convex edge. The photos of the knives, do not support, this in my opinion.

In a nutshell and as a novice, I have given up on trying to become a free hand knife sharpener, and have been told by a custom kife maker that I can accomplish a fully satisfactory edge by using the idiot proof Lansky type system. I am leanig towards edges that can be supported and maintained by the Lansky type system.

Can anyone answer: What is the "special convex edge" and how it can be resharpened ?

 

[Esav Benyamin]

Welcome to Bladeforums!

I went to the KOA website and the Alpha Wolf page and expanded the picture. It looks to have a hollow grind the full width of the blade with a narrow secondary bevel. This would be accessible to sharpening by Lansky or even more simply, by the Spyderco Sharpmaker.

"Special convex edge" seems to refer to the secondary bevel being convex. This is the same as the Chris Reeve Sebenza. If you sharpen it as you would an ordinary secondary bevel, it will eventually wear the "special" convexing down to an ordinary flat secondary.

I would be surprised if you could tell the difference, before and after. Convexing the full width of the blade to the very edge, without a secondary bevel, is an entirely different matter, as Bark River does. All KOA is accomplishing is a slight increase in edge strength, and if you don't feel proficient in sharpening, don't worry about it.

By the way, in sharpening a full convex edge, you don't have to sharpen the whole flat of the blade, just work on the part nearest the edge itself. Stropping the edge regularly -- even on a pants leg -- will help maintain it.

 

[Jesse Jaymes]

Thank you for the response, investigation, and explaination.

 

[Necroshine]

If you want, you can use a Lansky or similer sharpener (I think I learned this from the Edge Pro site) to sharpen a convex edge when stroping is not enough. You just need to put a bend or curve in the guide rods. It might take a little experimenting to get the rod bent correctly, though it's not that hard to do. Once you have it, it works great! Like I said, I think that it's the Edge Pro site that shows a pic of the guide rod.
Edit: You'll need to use the same rod with all the stones every time, unless you can bend two or more rods 100% exactly the same.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

I am leanig towards edges that can be supported and maintained by the Lansky type system.

You can use the Lansky on any knife irregardless of the nature of the primary grind. Fallkniven for example uses a convex grind like Bark River but they sharpen the knives with a small additional v-bevel. What you want to do is match the angle of the Lansky to required use of the knife, specifically sharpen at the minimal edge angle which prevents edge damage.

[convex bevels]

All KOA is accomplishing is a slight increase in edge strength ...

Convex bevels do not uniformly make edges stronger, it depends on the nature of the curvature. Fallkniven as noted runs a v-ground bevel on their knives and it is much more durable than if they just extended the taper of the primary convex grind because the additional v-bevel is much more obtuse.

Switching a convex edge to a single v-grind will induce a signifiant change in performance if the curvature of the convex edge is significant. If there is a large change between the shoulder and apex of the edge you obviously can't match both of them with a single angle.

-Cliff