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I thought I could sharpen knives easily.....

BenLong1018

BenLong1018

Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Messages
1,668
I've owned a spyderco sharpmaker for about a year now and up until now I could sharpen knives with it no problem. Recently I tried to sharpen my dad's junkyard dog II and it's just not getting sharp. The same thing happened with my mini griptilian, it just wouldn't get sharp. Mind you these knives weren't dull I just wanted to get them a bit sharper. I have five other knives that have sharpened up perfectly with no problem at all. I'm getting a bur on one side of both the jyd and the mini grip and I'm not sure how to knock it off. Could it be the blade steels? Are benchmade's 154cm and kershaw's cpm d2 just more difficult to sharpen? Or is it just the angles? Please help I'm getting very frustrated by this. Thanks in advance.
 
Try the sharpie trick. I'd bet that you are not hitting the edge which is the reason you're not getting them sharper.
 
Take a permanent marker and rub the blue/black ink on to the knife bevels. Then proceed to sharpen, stopping after a few strokes to see if you are actually hitting the bevel of the blade, or if your technique is bad and you are missing the area that needs to be sharpened. A few strokes will leave bright metal where it hit your sharpener so you can tell.
 
It's most likely the angles. If the edge angle is > 20 degrees per side, you won't hit the edge with the sharpmaker.

The sharpie trick is marking your bevel with a sharpie pen and then looking to see what part hit the stone (no longer coloured).
 
Paint the edge with sharpie and you can see where the blade he is contacting the stone by where the coloring wears away. However if you are getting a burr and want to knock it off you can run the edge through a piece of cardboard.

Edit: double ninja'd!
 
So, as everyone else has said, the sharpie trick will let you know where the stone is contacting the edge. if you do in fact discover you are not actually hitting the edge. Basically, what you're going to have to do if you are not hitting the edge is reprofile the bevel so that it matches or us less than the angles on the sharpmaker. Sounds easy enough, and is with the proper equipment, but reprofiling with the sharpmaker can be very time consuming and frustrating. If the sharpmaker is your only sharpening system your best (and fastest) bet is going to be to simply tilt the blade slightly away from the stone and make your passes trying to keep that angle consistent with each pass. Benchmade's are know for having fairly obtuse bevel angles, usually around 45° but I've seen some in the 60° range. So, assuming yours is at around 45° inclusive from the factory, that would mean you would have to tilt the blade at least 2.5° further away from the stone on each side on the 40° sharpmaker setting in order to compensate for the 5° more obtuse you bevel is compared to the stone.

On the JYD it sounds like one side of the bevel is at or under 20° (for that side, 40° inclusive) and the other side is not. This is causing a bur on the side that is more obtuse than 20°. Again, you'll either have to reprofile the obtuse side, or tilt away from the stone on that side.

Best of luck.
 
Thanks a lot mkjellgren I appreciate it, but since I don't really have a whole lot of patience or experience I think I'm just gonna send my mini grip in to Benchmade and try to work on the jyd myself.
 
BenLong1018 said:
Thanks a lot mkjellgren I appreciate it, but since I don't really have a whole lot of patience or experience I think I'm just gonna send my mini grip in to Benchmade and try to work on the jyd myself.
Click to expand...
Sending in your knife to benchmade certainly is an option, benchmade's lifesharp service is pretty slick, however, keep in mind benchmade isn't known for overly sharp factory edges to begin with and it probably won't fix the issue that the bevel is still too obtuse for your sharpmaker. That fact, combine with the fact that the guy sharpening your knife at benchmade will likely be using a belt sander which can very easily result in unnecessary steel loss. A better option if you can't figure it out yourself would be to send it to one of the excellent knife sharpeners on this forum. One of those guys will gladly thin out that edge and put a nice mirror polish on the bevel, but to mention sharpening it to EXTREME sharpness very rarely seen with a factory job (especially benchmade...). After that it will be able to be easily touched up on your sharpmaker. Alternatively, you could pick up some diamond rod for your sharpmaker or wrap some wet/dry sand paper around the rods to make reprofiling go much faster. If you choose to attempt to reprofile yourself you're going to want to do so on the 30° setting so that you'll be able to sharpen at 40°.
 
Yeah I understand where your coming from. I just might send these knives out to someone here on the forum.
 
Dude, you gotta learn how to sharpen your own knives. With the sharpmaker, you gotta do a few things.

First, you gotta clean them. I have a little plastic scratchy sponge and I put soap and water on that and clean them all the time. A nice clean stone cuts way better.

Second, you gotta be patient. To really remove some serious metal from an obtuse edge, the advice given by Sal on the DVD is not so good. I knocked some nasty shoulders off of a couple of my knives and I probably put at least 300 strokes down each side. Yes, my hand ached a bit after the effort but by heavens, I got results.

Third, you may have to rotate. I did 100 strokes on each of the 3 corners of the brown triangle and then rotated. Had I done more, I would have probably cleaned them again and kept going.

You'll get there with the Sharpmaker but it is kind of slow going. I do like mine a lot and use it often. Ultimately, you are going to have to learn to freehand and then use the Sharpmaker for touch ups.
 
I have a sharpmaker and it works good ,but you might need to reprofile your edge and a sharpmaker will take a while.

Get a silicone carbide stone they work great esp. if you dont want to spend all day at the bench,however i would practice on a cheap knife first to get your angles/pressure figured out first

then after you get you edge profiled the way you want it then you can use your sharpmaker,but you definitely need to learn to sharpen otherwise your going to be sending your knives out all the time(way bigger hassle than sharpening!). just my .02¢
 
The Sharpmaker is great for maintenance, but abysmal for true reprofiling work if the edge angle is too obtuse. A coarse diamond or synthetic "carborundum" type bench stone will go much faster.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
The Sharpmaker is great for maintenance, but abysmal for true reprofiling work if the edge angle is too obtuse. A coarse diamond or synthetic "carborundum" type bench stone will go much faster.
Click to expand...

Absolutely good advice. My anecdote about reprofiling with the the Sharpmaker was not at all an endorsement of the tool for that job. It was a cautionary tale. a. Had that shoulder been any more pronounced I would have never tried it with the Sharpmaker at all, and b. I will not do that again. It as an experiment. Yes I got results but had I used my diamond stones it would have taken a fraction of the time and effort. I learned. In fact, on softer knives I have been speeding the process up with a file. I am pretty handy with a file and you can mess up a blade with a file. Plus a lot of harder steels are not going to budge with a file. But my ESEE-5 took to the file quite well and I am pretty happy with the result. The problem with files is getting the roughness out afterward. I would not advise it on a fancy knife or a pretty knife. I grew up with machetes and that's just how you sharpen them.

Diamonds are not just a girl's bet friend. There are a couple of national brands that are quite good. I got a set of DMT diamond plates and it has really changed everything. The Sharpmaker is for quick touch ups or for adding a microbevel to a fresh reprofile job if that's what you like. I also use it on the 30 degree setting for adding a micro bevel to some of my scandi knives. They are very acute and a 30 degree inclusive micro really helps them in rough service. I wouldn't put a micro bevel on a wood carving knife but for bushcrafting and general use, that little bevel really helps.
 
Yeah--I got where you were coming from. I was just reinforcing the statement. :D:thumbup:
 
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