I thought I knew sharp..

O

om diggity

Joined
May 21, 2012
Messages
10
So I've been using a Spyderco Sharpmaker and an Arkansas stone for the past few months and got my technique to the point where I thought I could achieve as sharp an edge as I'd ever want on a knife. Well, that has changed forever after receiving my bar of chromium oxide and a leather strop. Holy hell, I have been waiting too long. Now I can move a knife down my leg a quarter inch above the skin and watch a drizzle of severed hairs fall to the floor.

I wonder what the next level is.

Sorry the post has so little substance, but I feel like I have to share my feelings with people who actually care about this strange hobby I have. :D
 
hey that's something new. run the knife 1/4 inch above the skin and see how much hair gets tree-topped. thanks.
 
Sweet man. I remember when I first got a strop with the chromium oxide. Thats how I achieved my first hair whittling edge. Now I have been using kangaroo leather, or balsa and diamond spray. I like that even more. Its always fun trying new things!
 
It's possible to do that with just the standard Sharpmaker, but it takes a lot of practice. Try using Jeff Clark's deburring method. Sharpen at whatever angle you want, 15 or 20, on the Sharpmaker. Before going from the medium to the fine stones, lay the blade parallel to the opposite stone and make 1 or 2 LIGHT strokes on each side. Make sure you use a clean face for this. This is a deburring pass at double the sharpening angle. After this, make about 10 passes per side at the normal angle. Then move to the fine stones and do the same thing at the end, only increase the angle of the final 10 passes just a tiny bit, maybe 2-3 degrees or so. After doing this, try the leg hair trick. Then use your strop, and prepare to be amazed again.
 
me2 said:
It's possible to do that with just the standard Sharpmaker, but it takes a lot of practice. Try using Jeff Clark's deburring method. Sharpen at whatever angle you want, 15 or 20, on the Sharpmaker. Before going from the medium to the fine stones, lay the blade parallel to the opposite stone and make 1 or 2 LIGHT strokes on each side. Make sure you use a clean face for this. This is a deburring pass at double the sharpening angle. After this, make about 10 passes per side at the normal angle. Then move to the fine stones and do the same thing at the end, only increase the angle of the final 10 passes just a tiny bit, maybe 2-3 degrees or so. After doing this, try the leg hair trick. Then use your strop, and prepare to be amazed again.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a neat trick. Definitely going to give that a try. Anymore tips?
 
You guys are too high-tech for me. I still use Stanley metal polish and an old belt.
 
Steel130 said:
Now I have been using kangaroo leather, or balsa and diamond spray. I like that even more.
Click to expand...

What micron level have you gone down to? What steels have you worked with? How well do the different grade diamond sprays work with the different steels?
 
I remember when I first got that crazy sharp edge. I couldn't beleive all the things that got cut with just the slietest touch like my hands arms fingurs and just about everything else within arms reach. :)Congrads on the amazing edge.
 
Jack Black said:
Sounds like a neat trick. Definitely going to give that a try. Anymore tips?
Click to expand...

I find the Sharpmaker to be best when using micro-bevels. You'll need a coarse stone to go with it, possibly a medium if you get a very coarse stone. I used a Norton Coarse India stone for years. Basically you need a quick cutting abrasive to lower the edge angle below the desired edge angle on the Sharpmaker. I use a 12 degree angle block before going to the 15 degree slots, and a 17 degree block before going to the 20 degree ones. This only takes about 10 strokes per side on the Sharpmaker after raising a burr on the coarse stone. If your stone is very coarse, an intermediate grit will help. I currently use a 220 grit King waterstone followed by a 1000 grit King, then go to the Sharpmaker. It's not absolutely necessary to raise a burr, but it's a sure way to know you've gone far enough. After a few sharpenings, the micro-bevel will get pretty wide, so that the Sharpmaker isn't really effective any more. When this happens, just use the coarse and/or medium stone to reduce the width of the micro-bevel. I like to keep my EDC microbevel at about 1/64" wide. My Cold Steel Scalper is set to 12 degrees per side on my coarse then medium stone (I have a 220/1k combo stone). After it got dull last time, I just went back to the 1k (1000 grit) stone and reduced the microbevel down to just barely visible, then went through the Sharpmaker at 15 degrees. Voila, an edge that will clip hairs above my skin.

Another thing I've been playing with lately is using multiple microbevels. They are so tiny, they really dont' affect cutting much. I have a trapper 2 blade slipjoint that this approach works well on. I set the edge at 12 degrees per side (dps) on the 220 grit, then go straight to the Sharpmaker at 15 dps for the medium stones, and finish off with the 20 dps slots on the fine stones. The last microbevel isn't visible even at 40x magnification. When it's time to resharpen, I start with the 20 degree slots and give it say 20 strokes per side on the fine stones. If that doesn't work, I back up to the medium at 15 dps, and by then I can see what's going on. If that doesn't work within say 100 strokes, or if the 15 degree bevel is getting too wide, I go back to the 220 grit and narrow it down. Once you get a rythem going, 100 strokes takes less than 3 minutes to do. The whole idea is to keep the coarse grit away from the very cutting edge unless you need to remove damage. At the same time, you want to keep the medium and fine grit bevels as narrow as possible, while still getting to the edge, so that these finer grits only need to cut a minimum amount of steel. This makes sharpening very fast. It also lets you be a little sloppy with your angle control, while still assuring the finer grits reach the very edge.

I've had a Sharpmaker a long time and experimented with it a lot. You can free hand the relief bevels before going to the Sharpmaker. I just choose to use the blocks because I'm a control freak.
 
me2 said:
I find the Sharpmaker to be best when using micro-bevels. You'll need a coarse stone to go with it, possibly a medium if you get a very coarse stone. I used a Norton Coarse India stone for years. Basically you need a quick cutting abrasive to lower the edge angle below the desired edge angle on the Sharpmaker. I use a 12 degree angle block before going to the 15 degree slots, and a 17 degree block before going to the 20 degree ones. This only takes about 10 strokes per side on the Sharpmaker after raising a burr on the coarse stone. If your stone is very coarse, an intermediate grit will help. I currently use a 220 grit King waterstone followed by a 1000 grit King, then go to the Sharpmaker. It's not absolutely necessary to raise a burr, but it's a sure way to know you've gone far enough. After a few sharpenings, the micro-bevel will get pretty wide, so that the Sharpmaker isn't really effective any more. When this happens, just use the coarse and/or medium stone to reduce the width of the micro-bevel. I like to keep my EDC microbevel at about 1/64" wide. My Cold Steel Scalper is set to 12 degrees per side on my coarse then medium stone (I have a 220/1k combo stone). After it got dull last time, I just went back to the 1k (1000 grit) stone and reduced the microbevel down to just barely visible, then went through the Sharpmaker at 15 degrees. Voila, an edge that will clip hairs above my skin.

Another thing I've been playing with lately is using multiple microbevels. They are so tiny, they really dont' affect cutting much. I have a trapper 2 blade slipjoint that this approach works well on. I set the edge at 12 degrees per side (dps) on the 220 grit, then go straight to the Sharpmaker at 15 dps for the medium stones, and finish off with the 20 dps slots on the fine stones. The last microbevel isn't visible even at 40x magnification. When it's time to resharpen, I start with the 20 degree slots and give it say 20 strokes per side on the fine stones. If that doesn't work, I back up to the medium at 15 dps, and by then I can see what's going on. If that doesn't work within say 100 strokes, or if the 15 degree bevel is getting too wide, I go back to the 220 grit and narrow it down. Once you get a rythem going, 100 strokes takes less than 3 minutes to do. The whole idea is to keep the coarse grit away from the very cutting edge unless you need to remove damage. At the same time, you want to keep the medium and fine grit bevels as narrow as possible, while still getting to the edge, so that these finer grits only need to cut a minimum amount of steel. This makes sharpening very fast. It also lets you be a little sloppy with your angle control, while still assuring the finer grits reach the very edge.

I've had a Sharpmaker a long time and experimented with it a lot. You can free hand the relief bevels before going to the Sharpmaker. I just choose to use the blocks because I'm a control freak.
Click to expand...

Fascinating. Thanks a lot for taking the trouble to explain.
 
No problem. Just repeating what others have told me. Took the edge off my trapper with some sloppy scotchbrite scrubbing, and was able to resharpen with the multiple microbevels with 20 strokes per side on just the brown and white flats.
 
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