How To Get Sharp Knives

Mister Coffee said:
I was half kidding. :) Do you go through all four sharpening steps on the Sharpmaker, or just a a few light passes own the flat part lof the white rods?
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I knew that...but it deserved a more serious reply because it's something that folks often question.

I only use the flats of the brown rods. I use the corners for my wife's serrated paring knife, or a bread knife (almost) exclusively...with rare exceptions. I haven't used the fine or ultra-fine rods in some time. I don't think I've ever even used my diamond rods.

The function of the flats of the brown rods (in my usage):

1. Removal of lingering burr.
2. Possible addition of a micro-bevel. (I was going to say small micro-bevel, but a large micro-bevel wouldn't be micro, would it?)
3. Touching up an already relatively sharp knife which gets a small ding or roll, generally from kitchen usage where my missus is prone to create them.

Use light strokes. This cannot be emphasized enough...especially if used for the purposes I outlined. Sometimes just the weight of the knife alone, with you simply guiding it, is (more than) enough.
 
Mister Coffee said:
I was half kidding. :) Do you go through all four sharpening steps on the Sharpmaker, or just a a few light passes own the flat part lof the white rods?
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It depends, I try not to let my knives get too dull before hitting either the Sharpmaker or benchstones. I will often hit the flats on the fine stone and then move onto the ultra fine stone. That one I my hit the corners of the stones lightly and finish off on the flats. If I only have the medium and fine stones then I would start with the corners of the fine and move onto the flats. Keep in mind that I try to not let my edge get too beat up and dull. I am also not re-profiling my edge either but bringing back the edge. If I had a really dull edge or I was re-profiling it then I would break out the coarse belt on my Worksharp and start there.
 
Blues said:
I knew that...but it deserved a more serious reply because it's something that folks often question.

I only use the flats of the brown rods. I use the corners for my wife's serrated paring knife, or a bread knife (almost) exclusively...with rare exceptions. I haven't used the fine or ultra-fine rods in some time. I don't think I've ever even used my diamond rods.

The function of the flats of the brown rods (in my usage):

1. Removal of lingering burr.
2. Possible addition of a micro-bevel. (I was going to say small micro-bevel, but a large micro-bevel wouldn't be micro, would it?)
3. Touching up an already relatively sharp knife which gets a small ding or roll, generally from kitchen usage where my missus is prone to create them.

Use light strokes. This cannot be emphasized enough...especially if used for the purposes I outlined. Sometimes just the weight of the knife alone, with you simply guiding it, is (more than) enough.
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Thanks for that clarification. :)

Hypothetical: Say you had a new Spyderco in VG-10. You used it two or three times, and it lost some of that screaming (and I mean screaming) sharp factory edge. You want to touch it up and bring it back to the level of disturb-the-neighbors screaming sharp. How would you use the Sharpmaker? Remember, the knife is still plenty sharp, but you want the level of sharpness that it had out of the box.
 
Mister Coffee said:
Gentlemen, the sharpening game has got me beat. I've spent a week trying to sharpen one knife, and all I have done is make it more dull. I've tried bench stones, the Sharpmaker, strops, ceramic rods. The whole situation is baffling to me. Extremely frustrating. I just can't figure this out.
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Check this video from our Petr out. You can use a benchstone instead of his strop, too (I use a medium Spyderco one, I like edges a little coarser):

wajgy said:
Hello! I have started a small project here
😁
let's check it out and we will see if it could be interresting for you guys
😉


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Helped me quite a bit, for some reason this forces me to reduce pressure and keep angles consistent (both a good thing) and makes me do the final strokes (edge moving forward) more carefully.

Also, you need a consistent way of measuring your sharpness. Forget hair, etc (thanks Blues Blues ). Easiest is paper slicing - just use the same paper everytime.
 
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Mister Coffee said:
Thanks for that clarification. :)

Hypothetical: Say you had a new Spyderco in VG-10. You used it two or three times, and it lost some of that screaming (and I mean screaming) sharp factory edge. You want to touch it up and bring it back to the level of disturb-the-neighbors screaming sharp. How would you use the Sharpmaker? Remember, the knife is still plenty sharp, but you want the level of sharpness that it had out of the box.
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Flats only.

Very lightly or just the weight of the knife on the appropriate angle of the Sharpmaker. Let it glide down the length of the rod, sharpening the entire length of the blade. (Don't let the tip come off the rod.)

(The easiest way to tell which angle is appropriate: Wrap some newsprint tightly around the 15* rod and let the knife sit on the paper in the same position you would sharpen on the sharpmaker. If it bites into the paper (on both sides of the blade), you know you're good to go in that slot. If it slides, try the more obtuse, 20*, angle slot. If it doesn't bite there, your edge bevel is greater than the 20* angle and must be reduced. The fastest way to reduce the angle is with a coarser bench stone. Then you can go back to the Sharpmaker to finish.)
 
Mister Coffee said:
It's a Zwilling J.A. Henckels stainless steel. Not sure beyond that. I was using a DMT Course for the most part. "Raise the bevel" to me means sharpening at an acute angle—more acute than what was on there. What does it mean to you?

Edit: Maybe the correct term is "re-profiling." Not sure. I'm new around here.
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I think you’re using the “raise the bevel” term correctly. If you recently started sharpening at a more acute angle, meaning you started at say 20 degrees per side but now youre closer to 15 degrees per side, is it possible you have more grinding to do until you actually hit the apex with this new angle? Theres been knives that I sharpen at the factory edge angle but do not cut well until I reprofile at a more acute angle.

Maybe try a different knife, different blade steel to get quicker results, and take that experience back to the Henckels blade to go from there. Case CV and Swiss Army knives are pretty easy to form a burr with in my experience. Both easily obtainable and replaceable.
 
Tuna said:
I think you’re using the “raise the bevel” term correctly. If you recently started sharpening at a more acute angle, meaning you started at say 20 degrees per side but now youre closer to 15 degrees per side, is it possible you have more grinding to do until you actually hit the apex with this new angle? Theres been knives that I sharpen at the factory edge angle but do not cut well until I reprofile at a more acute angle.

Maybe try a different knife, different blade steel to get quicker results, and take that experience back to the Henckels blade to go from there. Case CV and Swiss Army knives are pretty easy to form a burr with in my experience. Both easily obtainable and replaceable.
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I know what you mean, Tuna. When I raised the bevel, I knew that I would have to bring it all the way down to the apex. Pretty sure I did that. Getting a burr on the knife wasn't the issue. I got a burr on each side in every time (total of four) that I sharpened the knife. As for this knife, I think it's kaput. No going back for another try. It's ruined. Damn ugly, too.
 
Out of curiosity, what size is this knife? 4”,6”,8”? Never heard of using extra course or such on knives that thin. Guess I just never needed to.
 
Holy shit!! Yeah that may be toast. Or, and here’s another idea, cut handle off to middle rivet, take a bit off the point and sell it as a boot dagger! Custom made……
I sharpen many of my kitchen knives and have never gone below 400 grit due to thinness of the steel. But I use diamond stones on a hapstone m2. (Kinda like an edgepro). I don’t trust me….
I’m not going to go into my style of sharpening because you’ve gotten great advice from more skilled pro’s already. I must have missed the picture a while ago so when I read it was a kitchen knife I just had to know.
 
M Mister Coffee : Your knife is far from ruined, i rescue knives like that (and worse) quite often for restaurants, and the resulting knives will also cut noticeably better compared to how they were before.
You can do this too, it isn't rocket science.

If you don't have access to a cooled belt system you can also do it by hand on wet & dry SiC paper on a piece of hardened glass using WD40 as a lubricant.
Of course this will take more time, but the joy of using that knife once it's done will more than make up for it.

Destress the old edge by cutting a few times straight but lightly into a fine sharpening stone (this will also create a narrow light reflecting line), grind the blade flat or almost flat on the SiC paper and watch until the edge no longer reflects light (or a slight burr starts to form), then apply a microbevel with (for instance) a Spyderco sharpmaker, a handheld ceramic stick or fine stone.
Quite a few of my own daily use kitchen knives are also done this way, from my Spyderco santoku & paring knife to a few cheap stainless paring knives made from mystery steel.
 
Mister Coffee said:
I took so much metal off of the knife that I ruined it.

Before:


After:


Going to need a new bicycle.
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Woops, sorry, I just saw these pictures.

In my previous post I emphasized grinding down to the edge on a coarse stone, but it appears you didn't need that advice... lol

Can I ask you to describe what you did? And it still didn't get sharp?
 
Luke Dupont said:
Can I ask you to describe what you did? And it still didn't get sharp?
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Sure. I did everything that you're supposed to do, everything that is recommended in this thread. But I must have been doing it wrong because the knife wouldn't get sharp. Then, I lost my temper and got a little too aggressive on the Course diamond plate. I gotta remember to watch my temper.
 
Mister Coffee said:
Sure. I did everything that you're supposed to do, everything that is recommended in this thread. But I must have been doing it wrong because the knife wouldn't get sharp. Then, I lost my temper and got a little too aggressive on the Course diamond plate. I gotta remember to watch my temper.
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When you say it won't get sharp, you mean it won't cut paper at all, or the edge is just coarse? What did you move on to after the diamond stone?

The next step would be to work off any burrs and polish the edge by alternating between sides and lightening up as you go, but I guess you know that already!

Maybe it's something you're doing or not doing in this process, or the tool you're using. If it's too hard to remove the burr, you might find luck with a hard backed leather strop (just glue some leather to a board and put green metal polishing compound on it).
Or maybe some fine stone around 3-6k. It can be difficult to remove a burr on a coarse stone sometimes.

Anyway, you've got a good knife to practice on now. You don't need to worry about "ruining it." And it's not really ruined per-se, it just looks like it has many years of love and use! Haha.

Maybe if you post a video of what you're doing we can give you more specific advice.
 
ferider said:
Check this video from our Petr out. You can use a benchstone instead of his strop, too (I use a medium Spyderco one, I like edges a little coarser):



Helped me quite a bit, for some reason this forces me to reduce pressure and keep angles consistent (both a good thing) and makes me do the final strokes (edge moving forward) more carefully.

Also, you need a consistent way of measuring your sharpness. Forget hair, etc (thanks Blues Blues ). Easiest is paper slicing - just use the same paper everytime.
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I do final sharpening / burr removal much the same way -- starting with 3-5 passes per side and reducing the number with each pass.
Well, I don't have any set formula, I just tend to do this by feel when I feel it's helpful -- it depends on the condition of the tool, the size of the burr, and a bunch of other factors.

I just found it interesting to see this similarity as I thought I "came up with this" on my own and never knew if anyone else did it or not, lol
 
Mister Coffee said:
L Luke Dupont Thanks, Luke. I think I'm just making basic beginner's mistakes, like inconsistent angle and incomplete burr removal. I've got to take some time and think about my method.
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Keep at it and don't get discouraged!

I think that we might all be forgetting something else important, which is just simply muscle memory. My hand knows various angles, and I could measure all of my tools, and even knives (I have actually measured my tools) and find the cutting edges to all be within a degree of eachother (unless I sharpened them intentionally at a different angle). At this point for me I don't think about angle -- my hand just knows, and I think it's the same for anyone who's been sharpening a while. It just takes practice.

As for angle consistency,

Practicing making feather sticks on some wood might be a good way to get your hand used to the angle of a given knife, if you're into bushcrafty stuff.
Sharpening is essentially the same as just taking a really thin shaving off of the surface of the stone, if you can think about it that way. You should decide what the cutting angle is that you want, just with your hand, and then practice keeping that angle, and pretending that the blade cuts at this angle. It's okay to go *under* that angle and skate on the bevel (it'll just give you a convex bevel, which is perfectly fine), but don't go over that angle and keep increasing it, as there is a tendency for beginners to do. Think like you're just taking paper thin shavings from the stone, but if you go too deep/thick, it's game over. Better not to have a shaving than to have too thick of one.

With practice you'll get a feel for when the edge is in contact with the stone, and when you're just skating on the bevel, and even when you took a stroke that is a little too steep made a mistake (went over your target angle). When that happens, you may need to take some strokes additional or even grind a little bit to fix it.

You don't need to be quite as strict as I make it sound perhaps, but if you keep that imagery in your head and practice as I mentioned, I think you'll find the knack for it and build the muscle memory you need.
 
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Mister Coffee said:
Thanks for that clarification. :)

Hypothetical: Say you had a new Spyderco in VG-10. You used it two or three times, and it lost some of that screaming (and I mean screaming) sharp factory edge. You want to touch it up and bring it back to the level of disturb-the-neighbors screaming sharp. How would you use the Sharpmaker? Remember, the knife is still plenty sharp, but you want the level of sharpness that it had out of the box.
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This option doesn't utilize the sharpmaker (*I've never used one, so will let someone else comment) but here's one suggestion:
You could try stropping on a plain piece of leather, smooth side up, glued to a wooden base. I think that would be quite safe and unlikely to ruin the edge, and might be able to bring a sharp knife back to super sharp.
 
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