I cannot sharpen my knife to save my life...

M

MihajloS

Joined
Apr 22, 2021
Messages
17
Now I am familiar with the basic terms such as forming a bur and apexing the blade. I am also aware of the importance of keeping an angle. I am using a lansky turnbox and a rudimentary amazon strop w/ some compound. I've seen plenty of people get their knives hair popping sharp with just the turnbox alone. I've watched many tutorials on it and have no idea what I'm doing wrong. My knife is a civivi exarch, 3.25" D2 blade.

Here's what I'm doing. I make a bur using the cerramic rods at a 20 deg angle on one side, then I do a few light passes on the other side. After that I take it to the strop, making the angle slightly smaller and maintaining it. I make some passes and test on my arm hair. I've tried a combination of other things, It doesn't matter what I do, I can barely get it to cut hair with good pressure applied at the end of the process...
 
What @cudsaid, plus you should be going up through a few grits, starting medium if edge is bad through fine and extra fine, stropping at the end.
 
Yo Mama said:
What @cudsaid, plus you should be going up through a few grits, starting medium if edge is bad through fine and extra fine, stropping at the end.
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:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:. They now have Diamond Rods for the Lansky Turnbox, these would be better if the edge is damaged or really blunt.:)
 
You're only sharpening one side, so you probably don't have an actual apex. The idea of sharpening is to go from a blunt edge to a sharp angle (the difference between U and V). If you don't sharpen both sides, you won't end up with a clean apex (the V).
What you're doing would work fine for a single-bevel tool like a chisel (hence the term "chisel-ground"), but won't work on a V-edge.
 
I would suggest taking a look at the Maintenance and Sharpening forum here. There is a TON of great information already there that helped me along my way early in my sharpening venture. There is so much wisdom to pull from there.

That being said, there is no "trick" to sharpening. If you are setting an edge you have to remove enough material at the correct angle to get that edge set and then you need to progress through your grits after that. I like so many early in sharpening want to move too quickly to our higher grit stones because we erroneously believe that the higher grits are what actually makes the knife sharp. You should be able to sharpen a knife at 320-400 grit ANSI and deburr and have an edge that will slice paper. If you cant do that then you need more work on the coarsest stone that you are working with.
 
c7m2p3 said:
there is no "trick" to sharpening
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c7m2p3 said:
I like so many early in sharpening want to move too quickly to our higher grit stones because we erroneously believe that the higher grits are what actually makes the knife sharp. You should be able to sharpen a knife at 320-400 grit ANSI and deburr and have an edge that will slice paper. If you cant do that then you need more work on the coarsest stone that you are working with.
Click to expand...
Well said and explained. There is one word in the sharpening vocabulary which is too often forgotten. " Patience ".
 
I find diamond hones work great on D2, the coarser, the better. My Dozier responds best when sharpened on a 220 grit DMT; finer grits aren't as effective. For whatever reason. Benchmade's D2 (Mini-Rukus, Cabela's Grippie, 710) seems to have a finer grain and will take a more polished edge. I sharpen freehand, using an angle guide occasionally when needed to re-establish the bevel.
 
I have found stropping to be helpful as a final step. With most of my blades I use Bark River compounds. Like others have said, it can take awhile but I’m not familiar with any good shortcuts to a sharp blade.
 
Let the OG teach you lol.

Anyway, I think everyone already said 99% of the topic, I'll just contribute a little:
Civivi's hollow grinds are super thin, I actually sharpen them close to 15degrees (my Exarch came closer to that, dont know about yours). If you sharpen at a different angle than the factory, you'll be essentially hitting the sides of the edge and "reprofiling" instead of sharpening the edge.

Good luck! All else fails, ship it over to me I'll be happy to sharpen them for you.
 
If the factory edge is good, I just keep retouching with a strop paddle and compound when needed... I rarely use the stone
 
I use a Wicked Edge 130 - perfect edges every-single-time! My chisels are probably sharper than most peoples knives... Except for my CPK knives, it's the best money that I have ever spent, period. 🎤🩸
 
I’d point you to the Seven Secrets of Sharpening up in the stickies, it helped me tremendously. The concepts are the same wether going freehand or with a ‘jig’ of some sort. When I can’t figure out why I’m not getting a good edge (either freehand or with the Edge Pro I use) it usually goes back to not getting a full length burr on both sides for me, after I do this and take steps to get rid of the burr I get a nice edge.
 
Hey bud, I feel your frustration; when I started out all I had a Lanskys kit and a load of enthusiasm.

I watched a few videos, then had a go on my kitchen knife set that was in need of attention - disaster! I wasted hours no knowing what I was doing and spoilt the knives. Every now and then I'd try again as I was determined to get better and over time I did improve, but it was a confusing and sometimes frustrating experience.

Covid happened and I treated myself to an edge pro. If I'm honest I was worried it'd be a massive waste of money but I needn't have - the edgepro system is better in every aspect than the Lanskys. Yes it took practise and effort but when you compare how it removes variation at every stage of the sharpening process it's obvious why it produces superior results.

Does this mean you can't get a good edge with the Lanskys system? No.

Does this mean you don't need to practise with the edgepro to get good results? No.

Is this the only system that will outperform the Lanskys? I doubt it (I've only used these two but I'm sure Wicked edge etc are superb).

Keep practising, don't give up and keep checking in, if i can get consistently hair whittling results, anyone can!
 
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