im cutting hair but not paper

S

steeltowninwv

Joined
Jan 1, 2015
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201
i us a spyderco sharpmaker....i can get them to where they will shave my arm hair...but cant cut paper too good......im using the 40 degree edge..is it because i need a finer angle to cut paper really well?
 
^This.

Had to breakdown a lot of "Christmas cardboard" the past week or two. If my knife was cutting that, it was sharp. :thumbup:
 
yeah don't get me wrong..its plenty sharp for me....but making a knife the sharpest possible has become an additcion to me..ive just started sharpening....i went from a cheapo pull thru that was hard on my knives to the spyderco sharpmaker....so my knives are a lot sharper than before..just wanna take it a but further..i know i can get the extra fine stones to help..but i see people cutting paper with the stock stones....the knives i am sharpening aren't high end...a buck bantam and an older browning knife are the 2 i have been working on latley
 
The Sharpmaker is a great tool I use the 40 inclusive.

You actually may have an issue in that paper cutting is probably a better test of how refined your edge is (and how well it cuts). If the knife is "catching", you have an edge that needs some more work. The knife should "whoosh" through paper...the 30 vs 40 wont make much difference.

Im sure the sharpening junkies will chime in...

I will just say that the Sharpmaker demands some practice, and even with practice, on some days you have sharpening "mojo" and some you don't. I do not have an explanation for that, but I have found it to be true.
 
Moved to MT&E

Color the edge with a sharpie. Then will you be able to see you were on the edge you are hitting with the stones.
 
yes i have painted the the edge with sharpie..that helped a lot and got me on the right track...now when i sharpen i remove the sharpie from the edge itself like im supposed to
 
I love the Sharpmaker for touch-up, but it's not the end-all system. Even though the stones are at a fixed angle, any tiny variation in your vertical position and/or stroke can affect the edge for good or bad with each pass. Maybe it's time to try a guided system. Check out the KME sharpener for a good low priced rig that will bring great results.
 
Try thinning your relief edge up some. You know, on the 30 degree side. Then redo the micro bevel on the 40* side
 
Usually with the sharpmker a good stropping after does some kind of voodoo micro honing magic on any blade. I use a leather belt and after stroppimg it basically gets sharper than what I actually need it to be. I learned the strop trick of course thank you kindly to members of the forum and their sage advice.

After learning the strop trick I stopped obsessing although my right arm still has bald patches from time to time.
 
Yeah, James is right. You likely have a burr of some sort, whether a really big one or a small one. Here are a few things you can do to test.

1. Try shaving with both sides of the blade. I recommend the same part of both arms, so you're doing a similar shaving task. If you find that one side shaves like a demon and the other is less impressive (or doesn't shave at all), that's a definite indicator that you have a burr. The burr is on the side that shaves really well.
2. Try drawing the blade through a cork, or through the end grain of soft wood (like pine). This will strip off and/or straighten residual burrs. Try both shaving and paper cutting after. If it works better, the cork (or wood) removed some residual burr.
3. Paper has a grain structure. With a blade that's pretty sharp, but not really refined, it will cut paper with the grain, but will tend to simply tear it against the grain. Try cutting paper one one side, and if it doesn't work well, turn the paper 90 degrees and try cutting that side. If you find it cuts quite well on one side and not on the adjacent side, you've just found the side that runs with the grain.

Let us know what you find and we can probably help you troubleshoot your blade to very nice sharpness.

I know I can make most blades easily cut phonebook paper with the grain using just the grey stones on the SharpMaker.

Brian.
 
Sounds like a burr problem to me. Once you get good at feeling for a burr and determining if you got rid, your sharpness should go to the next level. I feel for a burr with my fingernail. Run your nail from the spine to the edge. If you feel it catch at all, you have a burr or wire edge. Make sure you do it to both sides, because it will only be on one side. If you feel it then there are many ways to get rid of it. I would suggest using your sharpmaker, but draw the knife up instead of down and use very light pressure.
 
well i really cant tell u what i did different...i checked for a burr and found nothing...the one thing i think i have noticed is that one side of the blade shaves and other one doesn't very well..it will but takes some work....but i worked on th knives a little more and they both and cutting paper pretty well now....it just may have been the paper i was trying to cut...it was a weird paper i got from an envelope from publishers clearance house....i still wanna take things to the next level...i guess im gonna order the ultra fine stones for the sharpmaker and a strop

i know that one side shaving and the other not indicates a burr....but wouldn't the sharpie show a burr?
 
steeltowninwv said:
... i know that one side shaving and the other not indicates a burr....but wouldn't the sharpie show a burr?
Click to expand...

Might not show a small one very well. Stropping is a good idea. In fact, you might want to start with just a strop or two instead of the UF rods. See how you do with those. One strop to load, and a fairly hard leather finishing strop to use bare. That'd be the final step. I've quit using my UF rods. After I use the white F rods, I'll go to the strops to finish up.

A magnifier of some sort can be really helpful for letting you see the edge in better detail. You can get small jeweler's loupes for that, but I prefer a large lighted seamstress' lamp that magnifies what you're looking at and lights it. I keep one over my work table where I do my serious sharpening so I can look straight down through the magnifier and have both hands free to work on the knife.

I check my edges on the yellow pages that someone gives me for free twice a year. Just pull one out and see how smoothly you can slice through it without any catching along the length of the blade.
 
im not sure whats going on I pulled a case knife out I have, because I knew it would be better steel...gave it the workout on the sharpmaker......ugh..it is very very sharp on one side...slices slivers off of paper..and shaves..but the other side wont shave paper or hair.....hate to be a pain, but I just wanna learn this
 
steeltowninwv said:
im not sure whats going on I pulled a case knife out I have, because I knew it would be better steel...gave it the workout on the sharpmaker......ugh..it is very very sharp on one side...slices slivers off of paper..and shaves..but the other side wont shave paper or hair.....hate to be a pain, but I just wanna learn this
Click to expand...

My initial thought is that your hand angle isn't consistent from one side of the SM to the other. A second possibility is that the edge bevel one one side of the blade matches the SM rod's angle, but the bevel on the other side of the blade doesn't. I know you said you've used a Sharpie... did you color the bevel on both sides of the blade? If you're sure the bevels on both sides are matching the SM, then your hand technique becomes more suspect. A trick some people use is to sharpen in front of a mirror so they can watch to see that they're holding the knife straight up and down and not tilting the blade toward one rod or the other. That was my trouble in the beginning... moving from one rod to the other threw my angle off and I couldn't see it. Doesn't have to be off by much to make a big difference in the result.
 
I have noticed the right side doesn't match the sm angle just perfect but the left side does...it is funny though...it will on the rough stone but when I get to the fine it doesn't...im gonna keep playing....im not frustrated, because im almost there....much better thn my horrible hand sharpening

im gonna be a a slave of the sharpie for a little while....and yes I was hitting the bevel on both sides with the sharpie....im gonna keep playing and see what happens

ive never used my web cam on this computer but im gonna try it....set it up in front of the sharpener....
 
The M rods are a bit "rougher" on the surface than the F ones, so that would indicate that you're very close to having the angle you need on that side. Just keep working it until even the F rods remove the Sharpie all the way down to the very edge of the bevel. This is the slowest part of resetting the bevel because your down to the last little bit of the edge that needs to be reshaped, but that's where the most steel is that you have to take off. Patience and consistency. Work slowly. You'll only have to do this once on that knife.
 
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