How do you sharpen your EDC?

WhittlinAway

WhittlinAway

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Greetings! I'm relatively new to the world of pocket knives, having caught the bug when I took up whittling as a hobby a couple of months ago. Traditional folders are where my heart's at and I've enjoyed reading this forum over the past couple of weeks.

A comment by Wowbagger in the "Your Favourite EDC pattern" thread ("... one small super sharp blade sharpened to a shallow angle...") made me realize that it's not just which blades you choose for your EDC, but also how you choose to sharpen them. So many possibilities and so much to explore and learn!

I put a bit of thought into how I might configure a stockman or similar pattern for EDC:

  • Clip blade sharpened at 20 degrees and polished -- for food prep and general cutting
  • Sheepsfoot blade at 25 degrees and a bit toothy -- for opening packages and cutting rope, etc.
  • Small pen or spey blade sharpened to 17-20 degrees and polished -- for detail work and push cuts

Is that pretty typical?

I suspect to some degree it's a matter of taste and there's no universal answer. I'd love to hear how other folks approach this and learn from your experience.

Thanks,
Greg
 
Sharpening is both over rated and under rated. If you're running some super steel that stays sharp forever or until the worse possible moment, you can get pretty scientific about it. For more traditional steels, just touch them up now and then. I use a steel presently, going to switch to ceramic coffee cup I think. I've never really paid attention to angles, which is probably why I struggled learning to sharpen. After so many years it's about second nature.
 
Most of mine are touched up on occasion with Lansky ceramic crock sticks. If I really bugger one up I'll reprofile with a Lansky kit, stone or sandpaper ranging from 320 to 5000.
 
I use 20 degree per side on everything. I don't think it makes much difference though. I use 20 because that's common on many of the sharpening systems that I own.
 
I use 10 degrees per side on my Spey for whittling and 15 for the clip. Don't have a third blade on my stockman
 
I just go back an forth on a Spyderco medium grit ceramic stone till the edge cleanly slices paper.
 
I use Fine and Extra Fine DMT DiaSharp diamond stones to put "my" edge on a new knife or to fix up a dull one, then usually just the Extra Fine to keep them sharp. Sometimes I'll use a strop. I don't know exactly what angle I sharpen any of my knives at, I just sort of do it by feel. I do use the sharpie trick to make sure I'm keeping a consistent angle. If I use a knife for a while and I think it needs a more acute angle, I'll redo it on both stones.
 
I use a surgical arkansas stone for touch ups, followed by stropping with a piece of canvas loaded with white jeweler compound. Stropping is, as I have found and others will tell you, a HUGE difference maker. Edges last longer and are sharper to begin with.
 
I use my spey for abusive stuff, and the sheepsfoot gets a lot of action, but I don't bother with toothy edges anymore on my main blade. The opinel that's used for heavy duty gets a 400 wet or dry sandpaper sharpening followed by stropping. I always have my opi in the back right pocket for the tough stuff.
 
I have used lansky sticks and a piece of leather but I just got a real strop and compound which works great
 
WhittlinAway said:
Greetings!
I put a bit of thought into how I might configure a stockman or similar pattern for EDC:
  • Clip blade sharpened at 20 degrees and polished -- for food prep and general cutting
  • Sheepsfoot blade at 25 degrees and a bit toothy -- for opening packages and cutting rope, etc.
  • Small pen or spey blade sharpened to 17-20 degrees and polished -- for detail work and push cuts

Is that pretty typical?

Thanks,
Greg
Click to expand...

Hi,
I'm not sure what is typical, but all those angles are very high,
esp for a small blade (can't put tremendous force into a cut),
esp food/rope/packages/wood

you can go much lower,
like 10-15 degrees per side,
and use 15 dps or 20 dps for a microbevel,

Actually you can go even lower but its better to gradually lower the angle to what you're comfortable with
For some ideas see 25 inclusive for EDC?
 
bucketstove said:
Hi,
I'm not sure what is typical, but all those angles are very high,
esp for a small blade (can't put tremendous force into a cut),
esp food/rope/packages/wood

you can go much lower,
like 10-15 degrees per side,
and use 15 dps or 20 dps for a microbevel,

Actually you can go even lower but its better to gradually lower the angle to what you're comfortable with
For some ideas see 25 inclusive for EDC?
Click to expand...

This Victorinox is sharpened at the 20 degrees setting on a Lansky. Actual angle is just over 17 degrees per side.

[video=youtube;0c-la7uG5Xo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-la7uG5Xo[/video]

Frans
 
Personally, I've never paid much attention to the angle to which I sharpen. But you're right, blades for different purposes get sharpened differently.
The way I do it is, first of all I sharpen freehand, and I rarely use a medium or coarse stone unless I'm reprofiling a factory edge down to my preferred angle. I normally use a fine stone, like a Hard Arkansas, and if I had to guess I'd say I use around a 20- to 25-degree total/inclusive angle for most of my pocket knives, so 10 or 12 degrees each side (keep in mind, this is based on my eyeballs only, as I just now held a blade to my stone and looked closely at it, to get an idea).
On a larger knife that's going to see some rougher work, or may accidentally run into a hard surface (a hidden nail or staple, or cutting against metal, glass, ceramic, or hard plastic), I'll take it back to a bit of a more obtuse angle. Let's call it 25 or even almost 30 per side.
 
Hi
I carry a Case whittler almost everyday and after a while I settled on this
- main blade medium grit, used to be 600 diamond but with Case's 70's steel I had to be extra careful with burr formation. Lately I've been using an Opinel natural stone that seems to be made for that kind of steel it leaves a medium finish but with some kind of burnishing only natural stones give. Angle is around 15dps and I regrind the primary when the bevel gets wider than around 1mm
- small clip polished all the way, this is my whittling blade sharpened very shallow around 7-10 dps and finished with translucent Arkansas and flexcut gold on leather. And again when the shoulders get a little thick I regrind the primary and for this kind of use the difference is even more.
- small pen blade rough work, after trying different options for this one I'm now sharpening it at 20+ dps and straight off the 600 diamond not worrying too much because it's the blade used to scrape, etc.

This is what works for me, but there is no universal formula
 
lutejones said:
Hi
I carry a Case whittler almost everyday and after a while I settled on this
- main blade medium grit, used to be 600 diamond but with Case's 70's steel I had to be extra careful with burr formation. Lately I've been using an Opinel natural stone that seems to be made for that kind of steel it leaves a medium finish but with some kind of burnishing only natural stones give. Angle is around 15dps and I regrind the primary when the bevel gets wider than around 1mm
- small clip polished all the way, this is my whittling blade sharpened very shallow around 7-10 dps and finished with translucent Arkansas and flexcut gold on leather. And again when the shoulders get a little thick I regrind the primary and for this kind of use the difference is even more.
- small pen blade rough work, after trying different options for this one I'm now sharpening it at 20+ dps and straight off the 600 diamond not worrying too much because it's the blade used to scrape, etc.

This is what works for me, but there is no universal formula
Click to expand...

Thank you. This is exactly the type of information I was hoping for. I know part of it will be discovering myself what works for me, but hearing what's worked well for others helps a lot with getting that process going.
 
puukkoman said:
Personally, I've never paid much attention to the angle to which I sharpen. But you're right, blades for different purposes get sharpened differently.
The way I do it is, first of all I sharpen freehand, and I rarely use a medium or coarse stone unless I'm reprofiling a factory edge down to my preferred angle. I normally use a fine stone, like a Hard Arkansas, and if I had to guess I'd say I use around a 20- to 25-degree total/inclusive angle for most of my pocket knives, so 10 or 12 degrees each side (keep in mind, this is based on my eyeballs only, as I just now held a blade to my stone and looked closely at it, to get an idea).
On a larger knife that's going to see some rougher work, or may accidentally run into a hard surface (a hidden nail or staple, or cutting against metal, glass, ceramic, or hard plastic), I'll take it back to a bit of a more obtuse angle. Let's call it 25 or even almost 30 per side.
Click to expand...

Thanks! This is good info and I hadn't considered that the size of the blade should also be taken into account until you and bucketstove mentioned it.
 
bucketstove said:
Hi,
I'm not sure what is typical, but all those angles are very high,
esp for a small blade (can't put tremendous force into a cut),
esp food/rope/packages/wood

you can go much lower,
like 10-15 degrees per side,
and use 15 dps or 20 dps for a microbevel,

Actually you can go even lower but its better to gradually lower the angle to what you're comfortable with
For some ideas see 25 inclusive for EDC?
Click to expand...

This is very useful feedback. Thank you. I'll go read that other thread, too.
 
Thank you to all who have replied. I'm really happy to have gotten so much feedback.

It's clear that the consensus is that lower angles than what I'd initially been considering would be beneficial. Now it's time to get some more practice sharpening... :)
 
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