I'm a sharpening Kung Fu Master!

I tried working the brown in and it just wouldn't go. Feel pretty rough too. Would more than likly undo all the work I did. I'll just go back to sears and pick up the 4 pack.

Wish the carried the white and red in singles. Had the white, but only brown after that. I'll have to check and see if they were just out of the red.
 
ERINT said:
Wish the carried the white and red in singles. Had the white, but only brown after that. I'll have to check and see if they were just out of the red.
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They used to. They used to have them all in singlepacks. I think they must be phasing them out. By me Sears only sells the 4packs anymore.
 
After reading this thread, I headed down to Sears, got some polishing compound , grabbed an old leather belt and had at it.

Now I can easily shave arm hair, Cut tiny slivers of paper and slice through cardboard.

Now I would like to try the hanging hair test. How is this done?
I assume the hair should nolonger be attached to the wife's head :D
But do you swipe at the hair? Acute angle or perpendicular? Or do you just slide down the hair trying to catch an edge

Thanks
 
Supermoto said:
Now I would like to try the hanging hair test. How is this done?
I assume the hair should nolonger be attached to the wife's head :D
But do you swipe at the hair? Acute angle or perpendicular?
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Hold a long one suspended by the folicle end and take a fast perpendicular swipe at is and see if the bottom drops off. If the bottom half drops off, but the hair curls or coils up than that means you actually broke/snapped apart the hair and it doesn't count.


Supermoto said:
Or do you just slide down the hair trying to catch an edge
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Apparantly it can be done, but I've never done it. I've seen photos but never seen it performed. Search for "split hair" and see if you can find that thread too.

The most FUN test is to take a paper shopping bag and put it on the floor. The ones your wife brings home from the department store work best, but brown paper grocery bags work OK.

Anyway...
Stand the bag open side up. Kneel down in front of the bag so you're facing one of the short sides of the bag. Take a downward swipe (medium speed) with your knife and see if you can split the side of the bag all the way to the floor before the bag crushes, tears or wrinkles. Your home may soon be free of paper bags. :)
 
FullofLead,

Is there any particular angle at which you set your bevels with the Lanskyesque thing you use? Also, at which grit do you stop before heading to your strop?

Thanks in advance!
 
thombrogan said:
Is there any particular angle at which you set your bevels with the Lanskyesque thing you use?
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No. But ever since I got the Sharpmaker (a year?) I try to go less than the sharpmaker angle so I can always touchup on the Sharpmaker if I wanna. My personal taste is low bevels but you can get steeper angles to shave and pass the hanging hair test - I've done it. Sometimes I use a steeper angle depending on what I'm using the knife for.


thombrogan said:
Also, at which grit do you stop before heading to your strop?
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The fine non-diamond stone is fine enough. An extra fine DMT diamond stone is fine enough too. I've even gone to ceramic stones first. The finer stone you end with before stropping the more likely you are to pass the hanging-hair test (if that's your goal), but most times I test by using the edge to pluck off arm hairs one at a time. Shaving knuckle hair is another favorite test of mine lately. :)

I've even cut small pieces of leather to rig a strop right on the EdgePro blank stones. I didn't invent that idea though. There was a really good thread on here once when a couple guys came up with that, but it was lost in one of the BF crashes. If you search hard enough you might find mention of it somewhere though.
 
fulloflead said:
I've even cut small pieces of leather to rig a strop right on the EdgePro blank stones. I didn't invent that idea though. There was a really good thread on here once when a couple guys came up with that, but it was lost in one of the BF crashes. If you search hard enough you might find mention of it somewhere though.
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Here's a thought. What about after using a Edgepro polishing tape to polish the edge you simply take a bar of the green compound from Lee Valley and rub it onto the tape? This should fill in the polishing tape's grit and should result in a much finer grit, should it not? Then strop with that.
 
WadeF said:
Here's a thought. What about after using a Edgepro polishing tape to polish the edge you simply take a bar of the green compound from Lee Valley and rub it onto the tape? This should fill in the polishing tape's grit and should result in a much finer grit, should it not? Then strop with that.
Click to expand...

After the tapes my edges look like the mirror I shave in. I can't see going further than that myself, but whatever floats your boat. :)
 
Thanks for the infos. I have no problem to achieve a shaving sharp edge just by the ordinary use of the Spyderco 204 sharpmaker. I don't know if it's sharp enough to cut a hanging hair though.
Now I wonder if you can do the same thing to a serrated edge. :footinmou
 
Anyway...
Stand the bag open side up. Kneel down in front of the bag so you're facing one of the short sides of the bag. Take a downward swipe (medium speed) with your knife and see if you can split the side of the bag all the way to the floor before the bag crushes, tears or wrinkles. Your home may soon be free of paper bags. :)[/QUOTE]


Yeh, and explain all of the gashes in the hardwood floor to the sweetie-pie when she gets home. :mad:
 
Thanks to everyones help here, I was able to get my Ka-Bar to cut a hanging hair :D Now the hair on my arm can grow back.
 
Sort of fun to see how we have all progressed in 2 years.
I am still exclusively using the Edge Pro.
Actually have two. The baby is set up permanently with an Eze Lap diamond hone, and the other finds allot of use with the 'Peel and stick' polishing tapes.

I used a leather strop, stuck to a aluninium blank, on the EdgePro but it was one of those things that sounded good at the time , but in practise did not work well.

Polishing tapes are my last step in the sharpening process.

See you all in a couple of years <gggg>
 
fulloflead said:
After the tapes my edges look like the mirror I shave in. I can't see going further than that myself, but whatever floats your boat. :)
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Wait- now I'm confused! If you tape, you don't strop? Better results from tape? :confused:

TIA,
Robert
 
porterdog said:
Wait- now I'm confused! If you tape, you don't strop? Better results from tape? :confused:

TIA,
Robert
Click to expand...


Well...
That's a hard question to answer.
Let me put it this way...

I can't get a knife as sharp with the tapes as I can with a strop. I think it has something to do with the fact that you can't hold the knife perfectly still and because the edge is so clean. But it's a really nice-looking edge. Stropping after the tapes doesn't seem to do much - probably because the tapes don't leave much to be refined or thinned by the strop. Stropping mostly just makes the mirrored taped edge look worse.

So, I kinda decide ahead of time whether I want a nice-looking edge that I'm not going to touch for a while or if I want it to be wicked-sharp and not really care about appearances.

I also have an untested theory that the mirror-finished edge may be more wear-resistant and might last a little longer. They seem more "slippery" and more difficult to abrade. When I do steeper edges that I can't touch-up on my Sharpmaker, for harder use, I usually do a mirrored edge. That said, I may eventually find that the tapes do nothing more than add a cosmetic effect that serves no real purpose.
 
fulloflead said:
Well...
That's a hard question to answer.
Let me put it this way...
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I'll try and give you an answer. :P The polishing tapes are either 2000 or 3000 grit depending on when you got them from Ben Dale. This is fine enough to put a mirror polish on the edge, but if you want a hair splitting edge you may need to finish with a finer grit. No straight razor shaver I know would finish at 3000 grit and try and shave. It may work, but it wouldn't be as comfortable as if they went to a 8000 grit stone and stropped with some even finer grit compound on a strop.

Most of the time my knives have a micro bevel and they are to small to see how polished they really are. When you use the polishing tapes on your back bevel you have a wider area to see the mirror finish. If you are stropping your edge with 0.5 micron compound after stepping up through various fine grits you can bet it has a super mirror finish on it.

The more polished you can get the edge the better it will slice into hair.
 
Wade,
If I remember right, it was you who posted pics of split hairs a while back?
Why don't you dig those up and post them here. :)
 
Cool, thanks for clarifying. I happened to have everything needed to make a strop in house (even the compounds- Man, the tool user!) , so I'm going to give it a shot...
 
fulloflead said:
Wade,
If I remember right, it was you who posted pics of split hairs a while back?
Why don't you dig those up and post them here. :)
Click to expand...

Sure. :) This is what you can do with a highly polished 40 degree edge:

hairsplit.jpg


Cut the hair in half length wise, then cut one of the halves in half length wise! :eek:
 
ERINT said:
Holy crap, and just when I started feeling good about my skills... :eek: :( :D
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I think I got a little luck there too. :) I'm still learning all the time.

I sliced that hair with my BM710HSSR with a 30 degree bevel and a 40 degree microbevel (edge). I had stropped it with one of the knivesplus.com strop blocks.

From my experience M2 steel takes a very sharp edge and I think some of the other sharp-nuts here have had simliar thoughts about M2.

We need to come up with a good name for those of us who are obsessed with sharpening. Sharpies? Sharpinators? Sharpmiesters? Sharp Freaks?
 
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