How to sharpen blades with recurves or large bellies?

[Bladenoobie1]

Hi,

I haven't started a thread here in awhile and for the most part its because my freehand sharpening is fairly proficient!..for me at least. Even so, I still have many things to learn with the specific issue in question, recurves and bellies. I don't own any recurve knives for the mostly because I try to avoid buying them as I don't know how to sharpen the edge. When I sharpen knives with very pronounced bellies, over time the belly becomes less pronounced. I feel this is because my sharpening motion consists straight push with a little sweep/lift in the end to account for the front to tip part of the edge that sweeps up. For large bellies do you just need to do a very large sweep following the curvature of the edge? Doing so is rather difficult and I feel I can lose consistency between my strokes. Any advice or tips regarding sharpening pronounced bellies would be appreciated.

Regarding recurves I'm aware of using ceramic rods or a sharpmaker for touch ups, but how about a complete reprofile? And could you do it on benchstones? I remember the youtuber soloknifereviews said he sharpens his recurves freehand and said he may do a video on his process (can't remember for sure), but in any case he never explained or did a video on how he does it. There are a lot of knives I really like with recurves, but I won't purchase something I know I'll have trouble sharpening. Any tips for sharpening recurves will be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks,
BN

 

[big wes]

1/2" stones on my Edge Pro work well for me and a Spyderco Slip Stone to maintain it until it needs a tune up.

 

[Squashfan]

When I redid my Benchmade 710, I did it on a SiC benchstone. All you have to do is raise the tip of the knife up until *only* the part of the recurve you want sharpened is hitting the stone. Martin (HeavyHanded) has a video which I learned the technique from. But I can't seem to find ATM.

In regards to the stroke, it sounds like you are making one long stroke to try to hit the whole belly in one pass. And it sounds like the blade is moving 90 degrees in relation to the stone. Are statments both correct?

 

[HeavyHanded]

Lower the handle when working the recurve, elevate it when working the belly. You can make changes to how you move the tool so the grind path is where you want, but in general it takes a certain amount of elevation to hit an outside curve, and a bit of drop to hit an inside curve. There is absolutely no reason to use a sweep if you don't wish, can easily be done in overlapping sections.
To do it on a stone, make sure one long edge has been ground to a nice radius on another stone. If not as smooth as the rest of the working surface, the results will not be good. Did some video on an India stone. In most cases the amount you have to lower the handle for a recurve is less than you might think, use a Sharpie to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viC7mybM6gk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9NTNakx8Vs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9NTNakx8Vs

 

[Bladenoobie1]

Lower the handle when working the recurve, elevate it when working the belly. You can make changes to how you move the tool so the grind path is where you want, but in general it takes a certain amount of elevation to hit an outside curve, and a bit of drop to hit an inside curve. There is absolutely no reason to use a sweep if you don't wish, can easily be done in overlapping sections.
To do it on a stone, make sure one long edge has been ground to a nice radius on another stone. If not as smooth as the rest of the working surface, the results will not be good. Did some video on an India stone. In most cases the amount you have to lower the handle for a recurve is less than you might think, use a Sharpie to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viC7mybM6gk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9NTNakx8Vs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9NTNakx8Vs

Thanks for the links. I hope to be proficient at recurves eventually.