I'm just not meant to sharpen apparently

A

Against_The_Wind

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Feb 15, 2022
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Long, long, time lurker of this forum.

Due to it, I own Esses, Beckers, a couple Tops, Ontario, Kabar and a handful of moras.

I have researched every little tip and trick over the years for sharpening knives and I still only achieve butter knife results.

I have 3 sharpeners, that I've owned over the last 3-4 years

1) Spyderco sharpmaker with additional fine diamond stones.

2) worksharp pivot response sharpener with extra stones/strop

3) worksharp field sharpener

4) knivesplus leather strop.

I hold the knife at the correct angles, mark with a sharpie, use light pressure.

When using the strop I move the blade away from the edge and try to find the correct angle by lightly taking the edge into the strop till it catches and then just backing off that angle and proceeding.

At the end of the day I rarely get anything sharper than when I started, and if I do, the edges are weird, they will somewhat shave hair but not cut paper or vice versa.

I've read about checking for a burr, and what that is, but I've never been able to feel a burr. I run my nail down across the edge and it never catches. I'm sure your feeling for something very subtle and it takes a trained feel, but all this stuff seems to take extensive experience with sharpening.

At of my knives are essentially 1095.

As of today, I am trying to sharpen my esse 6 with the sharpmaker set to 40 degrees, 20 each side, which I know little about these angles, but is what I believe esee reccomends.

I find that on one side the esee is removing the sharpie on the other side it is not. I'm guessing this is called an uneven bevel?

What do I do with that? I would assume I hold the knife at a sharper angle to start removing the sharpie for that side which I tried a little bit, and although that started getting some of the sharpie removed after 20 or 30 strokes, I still did not seem to get much improvement on the edge.

I know there are remedies for these type of issues, but what about somebody with no technical experience with sharpening? Im guessing that I wont even understand much of the responses as far as talks about reprofiling, angle technicalities, and other stuff that I won't even understand.

Sorry if I sound frustrated, been working at this for a long time and have read and watched so many videos with no success. But if anyone has anything else I should try please let me know, thanks in advance.
 
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You should be able to raise a burr. That's the first step. With a Sharpie and a loupe, you can see how the stone is meeting the edge. Uneven bevels can be a bear to reprofile, especially with a sharpener like the Sharpmaker, which doesn't remove much metal.

You might want to get a coarse/X-coarse diamond stone to do the rough profiling of the edge. With your Sharpie and loupe, you can see when the stone is starting to reach the apex. Once the apex is reached, you will start raising a burr.

When you can raise a burr the full length of both sides, use short (quarter inch), light, edge-leading strokes to remove it. Then go to your next stone. Repeat and rinse.

You might want to master that skill before going to a strop, which can be difficult to use.
 
Twindog said:
You should be able to raise a burr. That's the first step. With a Sharpie and a loupe, you can see how the stone is meeting the edge. Uneven bevels can be a bear to reprofile, especially with a sharpener like the Sharpmaker, which doesn't remove much metal.

You might want to get a coarse/X-coarse diamond stone to do the rough profiling of the edge. With your Sharpie and loupe, you can see when the stone is starting to reach the apex. Once the apex is reached, you will start raising a burr.

When you can raise a burr the full length of both sides, use short (quarter inch), light, edge-leading strokes to remove it. Then go to your next stone. Repeat and rinse.

You might want to master that skill before going to a strop, which can be difficult to use.
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It seems that with the majority of these knives, they all have a uneven bevel, I almost always find that i am removing the sharpie on one edge, but not the other. So correct me if i'm wrong but it seems all these knives are not novice friendly to sharpen from the factory.

I have the more coarse diamond stones with worksharp, should I move to that to try to make both side of the knife 20 degrees? I know nothing about any of this.

And can it take a while sometimes to raise a burr? And is a burr something your run your finger down the bevel to the edge to see if it catches, if I understand correctly?

Thanks for the response.
 
Against_The_Wind said:
It seems that with the majority of these knives, they all have a uneven bevel, I almost always find that i am removing the sharpie on one edge, but not the other. So correct me if i'm wrong but it seems all these knives are not novice friendly to sharpen from the factory.

I have the more coarse diamond stones with worksharp, should I move to that to try to make both side of the knife 20 degrees? I know nothing about any of this.

And can it take a while sometimes to raise a burr? And is a burr something your run your finger down the bevel to the edge to see if it catches, if I understand correctly?

Thanks for the response.
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Genuinely you should go watch some videos on youtube about it. when i was first starting off, it took me a while to understand what everyone was talking about just by reading it, but when i had a video to watch that i could reference off of... it was a hell of alot easier.
 
As one who's trying to re-learn freehand sharpening after many years, I can tell you that there are TONS of sharpening videos on the internet.
 
Learning to sharpen, at least for me, has been a lifelong endeavor. It's actually only in the last few years that I've really been able to achieve consistent results on a variety of steel types. Mostly because of what I've been able to glean here. The biggest thing I have found is having a good quality extra coarse stone to set your bevels. I currently use either a manticore, or an American mutt from baryonyx knife for the rough in work. After that it's pretty smooth sailing. Another thing to consider would be picking up some thinner knives from a yard sale or flea market to practice on, that way you can work them harder on the stone without fear of ruining one if your better quality knives. Losing the fear of over grinding might help you raise a more discernable burr so you can get a better idea of what you're looking for, and apply it to your user knives.
 
For my own edification, do you raise a burr every time you progress to the next stone or just the initial stone?
 
T.J. H said:
For my own edification, do you raise a burr every time you progress to the next stone or just the initial stone?
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I know what a burr is, but have never been able to feel one so there is no rhyme or reason when I transition to the next stone, which im sure is a problem
 
T.J. H said:
For my own edification, do you raise a burr every time you progress to the next stone or just the initial stone?
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Once you reach the apex, the burr will pop up pretty fast. I like to remove the burr after every stone grit; that way the burr doesn't continue to grow and you keep the apex clean. When you switch to a finer grit, the burr will come right back up, which is what you want. But with finer and finer grits and lighter pressure, the burr will get progressively smaller.
 
Twindog said:
Once you reach the apex, the burr will pop up pretty fast. I like to remove the burr after every stone grit; that way the burr doesn't continue to grow and you keep the apex clean. When you switch to a finer grit, the burr will come right back up, which is what you want. But with finer and finer grits and lighter pressure, the burr will get progressively smaller.
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Im always alternating strokes, so I guess I should stop doing that, since wouldn't that make the burr less pronounced?
 
I actually just switched to my worksharp which is guided at 20 degress and I was able to remove the sharpie on both side and actually get some sharpness. But when I used the sharpmaker, it did not get the sharpie off from one side even though I was using 20 degrees and holding the knife perfectly straight.

I find when I use the sharpmaker it makes by blades seem like it has even bevels, when in fact they dont.
 
Your not alone as I feel often it would be easier to buy a ChefsChoice and forget the stones as freehand sharpening can be frustrating and yield results that fall short of what I expected. Online information is so plentiful I find it's easy to get lost in all of it jumping from one thing to the next. One thing that helped me was reading a book that covered the basics, The Razors Edge, I found it helped sort out the noise. Another thing is stopping when the edge is good enough as every time I try to make it better I just make it worse. Personally I find it aggravating when a knife can pop arm hairs yet skid off a tomato skin. I just keep working at it because when you nail it it's pretty sweet.
 
P_A_S_1 said:
Your not alone as I feel often it would be easier to buy a ChefsChoice and forget the stones as freehand sharpening can be frustrating and yield results that fall short of what I expected. Online information is so plentiful I find it's easy to get lost in all of it jumping from one thing to the next. One thing that helped me was reading a book that covered the basics, The Razors Edge, I found it helped sort out the noise. Another thing is stopping when the edge is good enough as every time I try to make it better I just make it worse. Personally I find it aggravating when a knife can pop arm hairs yet skid off a tomato skin. I just keep working at it because when you nail it it's pretty sweet.
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If your knife is hair popping sharp but won't easily slice tomato skin, it's probably a highly polished edge. Having a little tooth to the edge helps the blade bite into tomato skin. I find 1000 grit to be a good balance for slicing (toothy good) and push cutting (polished good) for kitchen knives.

If y'all are struggling with the Sharp Maker and/or freehand, I'd highly recommend a fixed angle system, which is basically idiot proof if you follow the directions (no offense ;)). Some popular brands are Lansky, Work Sharp (Precision Adjust), KME, Hapstone, TSProf, Wicked Edge, Edge Pro, etc. They run anywhere from around $40 to over $1,000. Some of the less expensive ones are limited to relatively short blades, so make sure you read the fine print if you go that way.

Another option would be angle guides for bench stones, which are *nearly* idiot proof. DMT and Hapstone (and possibly others) make those and they're relatively cheap at $15-$35 .

Here's a review/demo of the DMT guide:

 
3D Anvil said:
If your knife is hair popping sharp but won't easily slice tomato skin, it's probably a highly polished edge. Having a little tooth to the edge helps the blade bite into tomato skin. I find 1000 grit to be a good balance for slicing (toothy good) and push cutting (polished good) for kitchen knives.
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Nortons hard arkansas should be in that range, no?
 
For detecting burrs - you can use a cotton ball, felt or flannel that has gotten fuzzy, stuff like that.
Move it in a motion from the spine side towards the edge. You don't have to have pressure, just contact - the idea is to catch the loose fibers on the burr.
 
When you have dull blades and limited sharpening systems, it can feel discouraging for sure. I've been there!

A Against_The_Wind , you desperately need 3 things:

1. A paring knife from a thrift store. Any decent blade that's 3 to 5 inches long will do, but it needs to be THIN like a paring knife. This will be the first blade you put a truly sharp edge on.
2. Secret #6, The Burr.
3. Secret #7, The Course Stone.

It's absolutely essential that you raise a burr and detect it. A paring knife, with its thin geometry will let you do that relatively fast. Of all the sharpening systems you own, you appear to have 2 stones that are somewhat coarse:

A. Spyderco diamond rods. These should be fairly coarse, but you called them "fine", so I'm not 100% sure now. The diamond rods for the Sharpmaker that I'm familiar with are relatively course; my guess is in the neighborhood of 200 grit.
B. The "coarse" plate for the worksharp field sharpener. They call this diamond plate 220 grit, which is pretty coarse. Ideally you'd have something twice this coarse at 100 grit or so, but 220 should do.

Both of these stones are problematic as they are diamond. Diamond is a good abrasive. But if you use hard pressure on them, it's easy to break them off and end up with a plate with almost no diamonds on it. You really need a more traditional coarse stone like a Coarse Crystolon, Coarse India, or similar hardware store stone. Your diamonds will work. But you'll have to be more careful with them to keep from damaging them.

Use your coarse stone on one side of the paring knife until you raise a burr. Switch every few minutes, or after 100 or so strokes if you want. Or just keep going on one side. If you grind on one side only, you are doing to end up with an ugly bevel on that side, that's extra wide. But it will get sharp. ...and you should have paid no more than $5 for this practice knife, so you shouldn't care if you ugly it up. :)

When you raise a nice big burr, you will feel it easily. You will also be able to see it if you angle it in the light. OBSERVE your progress as you go (secret #4). Do use a sharpie. But also, observe the grind lines on the bevel. Watch and see as they progress down the blade.

Wanna know the biggest most common problem for people not raising a burr? They simply don't grind for long enough. Most beginners are worried about destroying a blade and grind too slowly and not nearly long enough. Just keep grinding and you'll get a burr.

After you raise a burr and you feel and/or see it, keep going until that burr is all the way down the entire length of the blade. You might have to use Secret #5, selective grinding, in order to focus your sharpening on parts of the blade that do not yet have a burr. Once you DO have that big burr on the entire length of one side, do the other side. You'll quickly erase the burr from side A and raise one on side B. The second side is always much faster and won't take much time.

From there it's a matter of removing that burr and making sure it's all gone. Secret #6 has a few suggestions for burr removal, but you might want to seek out other resources for burr removal as well.

If it's not clear I'm referencing my article "The Seven Secrets Of Sharpening" at the top of this forum.

You'll have a much easier time of making your first blade really sharp with the 3 things above: cheap thin practice blade, course stone, and BURR.

Best of luck!
Brian.
 
Against_The_Wind said:
I know what a burr is, but have never been able to feel one so there is no rhyme or reason when I transition to the next stone, which im sure is a problem
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This is likely at least part of the problem. If you aren't feeling it, that probably indicates it hasn't been raised.

I struggled for a long time because, like many first time sharpeners, I thought FINE stones meant MORE sharp and I wanted my knives to be sharp so I would use medium and fine stones and would be scratching my head why I couldn't get the results I wanted.

Do yourself a favor and either get, or use the most aggressive diamond plate that you have with your field sharpener and work on ONE side of the blade until you feel a very prominent burr. Experienced sharpeners will tell you that this isn't strictly necessary and its a lot of material removed etc but for someone learning how to do this I find it essential. Then move to the other side and do the same thing. Use a well lit area so that you can actually SEE the scratch pattern left by your stone or diamond plate as that will help indicate how you are doing without having to go to the sharpie method each time.

I realized I got measurably better at truly "Sharpening" when I started to spend the most time (at least when setting my edge for the first time) with the coarsest stone I have. Everything after that is honing.
 
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