How to get barely shaving-worthy Spydies back to OTB hair-popping sharpness?

V

Veri

Joined
Oct 15, 2004
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6
I've got a black Endura and a Centofante III, both of which are great folders to have. Spyderco being the company it is, each blade came out of the box with a sharpness that easily shaved hair and was just generally razor sharp.

Using a Sharpmaker (that I just cleaned, actually), I have never been able to get them THAT sharp again. They can shave hair, but just barely; it's nothing like what they were OTB.

Obviously, none of the more experienced people here can stand over my shoulder and tell me what I'm doing wrong, but I'd imagine that at least some of you found yourself in a similar situation. What did you do to your blades to make them scary sharp again / what did you find you were doing wrong?
 
Make sure to clean your stones each time you sharpen. When you go to finish up make your last few strokes very light. You may want to get a strop and load it with some Boron Carbide or Cro. I can get things retarded sharp in about 5 minutes with the 3 sets of sharpmaker stones and a boron carbide loaded strop. I do usually run polished edges on my spyders so theyre mostly push cut, hair poppers and not toothy box chewers or rope cutters. It all depends on what you're setting it up to do.
 
It's pretty much light edc, nothing terribly noteworthy as far as usage goes - package opening and the usual laundry list of relatively minor cutting chores.

Will give it a shot on freshly-cleaned stones and see if it's just that I ignorantly let them get too loaded with steel.
 
Well it all depends. If you plan on cutting tough things like cardboard, rope or tomatos, a rougher edge is ideal. You can get this with a DMT X coarse or XX coarse diamond stone. This edge should still be able to pushcut paper but not as well as a high grit polished edge. To get super high polish edges you obviously have to work your way up the grit levels to your desired level. Many people think that because you're working towards a more polished edge its sharper overall but this is not the case. Its more effective to vary the edge angle than it is to take it to super high grit polishes in most cases, but its all relative. You have to tailor your edge polish and angle to the job you're planning on doing and blade material to get the "best" edge.
 
i would mark the dge with a magic marker and see what ya are doing wrong, properly used a sharpmaker will make a std V grind as sharp as anything ya can imagine, but you must do it right & without seeing ya do it i couldnt tell ya, the magic marker will tell you what is up though, and help ya get your technique down.

i rarely clean my SM stones either FWIW, maybe every month or 2. i know they get pretty dusty sitting around between cleanings and still work just fine.
 
SIFU1A said:
i rarely clean my SM stones either FWIW, maybe every month or 2. i know they get pretty dusty sitting around between cleanings and still work just fine.
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Thats not really the issue here. When you sharpen a knife with the sharpmaker it abrades the metal and it collects on the surface of the stone. If you dont clean the stone with a brillo pad and a scouring compound the stone is unable to abrade more material since the grain is full of the metal you already removed. Its pretty much standard practice to clean the stones between each knife an sometimes clean the brown stones twice on one knife if it is very dull.

The interstitial time is of little consequence.
 
I agree with Cliff, many knives of mine have gone from ok-sharp to incredibly sharp after properly getting rid of the burr.
 
For a truly razor edge sharpen at a low angle. One big mistake is to follow the Sharpmaker instructional video which talks about sharpening with the "40-degree" slots in the base. If you want that Spyderco OTB edge you have to back-bevel and sharpen at lower angles.

Insert the dark medium rods in the 30-degree slots rotated to sharpen with the flats. Lay a white rod across your work bench running at right angle to your sharpmaker base. Lay the center of the base across the center of this rod so that the base can tilt left and right like a teeter-totter. With the base tilted to the right hone once on the left-hand rod (which should be more nearly running verticle than normal). After this stroke tip the base to the left and hone on the right hand rod. Repeat this process till you have a razor edge that is at about 10 degrees per side (a 20 degree included angle in Sharpmaker terms). Swap in the white rods and use a dark rod as your fulcrum and do a little more honing. Take the dark rod out and just lightly finish with a half-dozen strokes at the basic 15 degree per side ("30-degree") setting.
 
Are these edges serrated or plain?

You should be hair-popping sharp at every step on the Sharpmaker. Don't go to the next one until you have the current one sharp.

Also, using a hone/strop with chromium oxide (get at any hardware store) really helps finish the edge.

http://www.drsharpening.com/leatherhone.html

http://www.handamerican.com/scary.html

http://forums.egullet.com/index.php?showtopic=26036

I'm positive you can get it sharper than the way it comes from the factory with just a little work and the right tools.
 
Veri, I have similar experiences with VG-10. It doesn't come out as sharp as some other steels. I usually just try once though and leave it at that. But shaving arm hair should be easily attainable.
 
I generally have good results with VG10. You should be able to match or beat the out of the box sharpness at least.
 
DGG said:
I'm positive you can get it sharper than the way it comes from the factory with just a little work and the right tools.
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Few people can expect to sharpen past Spyderco, Ben Dale could not, so that's kind of a lofty goal to set.

kel_aa said:
experiences with VG-10. It doesn't come out as sharp as some other steels.
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Which steels.

-Cliff
 
Which steels.
The most I've used is Aus8. But also 440A. Yes, these are lower carbide steels, mostly around 15 degrees per side. This is just casual effort: using the Sharpmaker and call it quits when I'm satisfied that the blur has been removed and a working edge has been formed.
 
VG-10 has a much lower grindability that those steels, it also really needs to be ran much harder to get the same ease of sharpening else you get deformation burr issues. If you drastically microbevel it should not be a problem, it would be easier to sharpen if it was signifiantly harder however. It would be nice to see it raised up to 62 HRC on the smaller and more cutting focused blades.

-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Few people can expect to sharpen past Spyderco, Ben Dale could not, so that's kind of a lofty goal to set.
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I'm going to assume that spyderco uses some sort of wheel or belt to edge thier production knives. It shouldnt be too hard to replicate the hardware, which means experience is the kung fu we require.
 
LHD said:
Thats not really the issue here. When you sharpen a knife with the sharpmaker it abrades the metal and it collects on the surface of the stone. If you dont clean the stone with a brillo pad and a scouring compound the stone is unable to abrade more material since the grain is full of the metal you already removed. Its pretty much standard practice to clean the stones between each knife an sometimes clean the brown stones twice on one knife if it is very dull.

The interstitial time is of little consequence.
Click to expand...

its not neccesary to clean them between each sharpening. oh it doesnt hurt but its just not neccesary imho, i clean them about twice a month and use them all the time FWIW. not talking about interstitial time lol.
 
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