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.
). 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.
