Invincible wire edge !!

J

Jamesh Bond

Joined
Jan 14, 2007
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1,760
I love me some Cold Steel for toughness and economy, but every single AUS-8 blade of theirs ive tried to sharpen seems to keep the wire edge no matter what i do. This problem has plagued me for years. And its SPECIFICALLY Cold Steel's AUS-8.

Tried high angle swipes, lighter strokes, stropping on unloaded cardboard and leather, and even cutting into wood and felt to rip it off. I know all the tricks and techniques, so what the #%&@!!! is with this stuff???

Its a very tiny, almost invisible, partial wire edge that just wont seem to disappear.

Mostly use medium and fine spyderco ceramics. But used norton silicon carbide, and dmt in the past as well.

Im going to light myself on fire!!! Help!!!

PS. not to derail my own thread, but i never understood cutting into something to rip off a wire edge anyway. Seems like the point of getting rid of a wire edge is so you dont rip it off and dull the blade later when you cut something.
 
I relies on my burr/wire-edge removal technique 99% of sharpening. I am just too impatience for using light/feathery touches/pressure, so basically I fold burr/wire-edge over and cut it off <= quite a deterministic clean apex outcome. Here is an old video - http://youtu.be/l2ynSDYEUYI

Recently I made 3 bainitic (duplex & triplex microstructure) 58rc 52100 blades. These fine grain knives have very high impact toughness because of fine grain size + bainite + retained-austenite. Which also mean burr & wire-edge worse than spyderco vg-10, 420j (at high grit), etc... Wire-edge is automatic for any sort of stropping. At least, my technique above helps to produce clean/strong apex.
 
I kinda hate AUS 8 for the exact same reason, never understood what was the fuss, i own 2 CS and one of them is devoted to cut sandpaper and other dirty stupid chores i wouldnt ever use a proper knife for.
The irony is i own a CRKT neck peck in AUS 6 and it is way less picky about burrs than the 2 CS i own, go figure...
I sometime feel they just deserve to be sharpened on a carbide pull through or on the corner of a SIC stone or even a file.
 
Tenacious burrs or wires that won't otherwise 'break' off need be gently abraded off instead. A firmly-backed denim or linen strop with some white rouge compound or other AlOx works excellently for that, and it's very quick & easy.


David
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
Tenacious burrs or wires that won't otherwise 'break' off need be gently abraded off instead. A firmly-backed denim or linen strop with some white rouge compound or other AlOx works excellently for that, and it's very quick & easy.


David
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Only thing that's worked for me. As a future tip sharpening softer, less wear resistant steels seems to cause a burr to raise no matter how fine or how light I sharpen using very hard aggressive abrasives. All of my Aus 8a knives (or any other similar steel) comes right off my 8k waterstone with a burr. Even super fine diamond paste raises a burr on them. Needs finished with something very fine and not aggressive. Ceramic and diamonds are aggressive.
 
yepimonfire said:
Only thing that's worked for me. As a future tip sharpening softer, less wear resistant steels seems to cause a burr to raise no matter how fine or how light I sharpen using very hard aggressive abrasives. All of my Aus 8a knives (or any other similar steel) comes right off my 8k waterstone with a burr. Even super fine diamond paste raises a burr on them. Needs finished with something very fine and not aggressive. Ceramic and diamonds are aggressive.
Click to expand...

Reduce pressure beyond what you might already be doing; even if you think it's too light, go lighter. I'm more & more convinced it's pressure that'll make the most difference off the hones. Lately, I've been getting much better edges from Coarse & Fine diamond and also on ceramics, and it's just due to going even lighter with pressure. On burr-prone steels like 420HC, VG-10 and Victorinox's softish stainless (mid-50s RC), literally just the weight of the knife is needed to do it. When the burrs are there, they're smaller and more easily cleaned up on the denim strop with just a handful of passes.


David
 
I use a method similar to Bluncut's fold and grind method. Sometimes I find I don't need to do the hard fold pass, but often I'll give it a drag along the edge of my bench or stone holder etc. In my experience, the persistent light edge leading pass, once understood, is the most reliable method out there, whether used in conjunction with a folding method or not.

I've also had good luck with the light drag across wood, pass on stone, light drag, etc. I find if I wait until the finish to start this it doesn't work as well, so generally I'll start dragging on wood every time I change sides once I feel the burr begin to form. Used this way, the burr never really gets that large. This even works when using a trailing pass on wet/dry, waterstone, jointer stone.

Another thing I've come to appreciate is grinding that burr off without flipping, or with the fewest number of flips possible. When its only been flipped once (initial burr formed, flipped once when apex forming on opposite side) it has a pretty robust attachment. The more it flips, the less force it takes to flip and pretty soon its flipping with less force than the abrasive needs to remove it. At this stage the burr on many steels will become a real PITA (Aus8 especially, but there are plenty of others) and you're almost better off dragging the edge across a stone and starting over. I avoid getting to this point at all costs, so I adopted the short light leading pass at the same angle.

I'll also strop on paper to finish and this will pretty reliably reveal any latent burrs. My acid test is a light version of BCs fold and grind - a very light 90* drag across wood. If nothing folds up, there's nothing there to fold up.
 
Thx for the replies guys.

Tried the fold and grind and it helped alot, but the damn thing still hangs on. Prolly a little to do with my technique. Pretty knowledgable with sharpening, but my skills have their limitations. Ill keep at it.

TBH, i did notice the same type of problem on my Boker Kalashnkov (also AUS-8) when i tried it, though not nearly as bad. It really seems to vex me the most with Cold Steel stuff. Interestingly, tho, Kershaw's 8Cr13MoV doesnt bother me at all. In fact i is one of the most trouble free steels ive ever dealt with, and in my experience, also holds a nice edge for a really long time. People compare it to AUS-8 constantly, but for me, its been FAR superior

The more experience i gain over the years with AUS, 8Cr, vg-10, and other similar steels, the more im starting to think that the ideal finishing grit for these softer, malleable steels should be fairly coarse, like 600 grit DMT fine or similar. Trying to take the edge on these steels down to hair whittling usually results in some remnant of a wire, as well as highly diminishing returns for the amount of time and frustration spent.
 
bluntcut said:
I relies on my burr/wire-edge removal technique 99% of sharpening. I am just too impatience for using light/feathery touches/pressure, so basically I fold burr/wire-edge over and cut it off <= quite a deterministic clean apex outcome. Here is an old video - http://youtu.be/l2ynSDYEUYI

Recently I made 3 bainitic (duplex & triplex microstructure) 58rc 52100 blades. These fine grain knives have very high impact toughness because of fine grain size + bainite + retained-austenite. Which also mean burr & wire-edge worse than spyderco vg-10, 420j (at high grit), etc... Wire-edge is automatic for any sort of stropping. At least, my technique above helps to produce clean/strong apex.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the video! I learned some stuff.
 
Jamesh Bond said:
Thx for the replies guys.

Tried the fold and grind and it helped alot, but the damn thing still hangs on. Prolly a little to do with my technique. Pretty knowledgable with sharpening, but my skills have their limitations. Ill keep at it.

TBH, i did notice the same type of problem on my Boker Kalashnkov (also AUS-8) when i tried it, though not nearly as bad. It really seems to vex me the most with Cold Steel stuff. Interestingly, tho, Kershaw's 8Cr13MoV doesnt bother me at all. In fact i is one of the most trouble free steels ive ever dealt with, and in my experience, also holds a nice edge for a really long time. People compare it to AUS-8 constantly, but for me, its been FAR superior

The more experience i gain over the years with AUS, 8Cr, vg-10, and other similar steels, the more im starting to think that the ideal finishing grit for these softer, malleable steels should be fairly coarse, like 600 grit DMT fine or similar. Trying to take the edge on these steels down to hair whittling usually results in some remnant of a wire, as well as highly diminishing returns for the amount of time and frustration spent.
Click to expand...

I can't agree. I love Aus 8a because polishing it to a mirror finish it cuts like a demon. Every knife made of Aus 8a I've handled gets insanely sharp, and I've yet to find another steel, high end, low end, or even straight 1095 carbon that will take such a sharp edge. I'll also add I really like 8cr alot too despite its unpopular opinion. It holds an edge for a good amount of time, and definitely doesn't behave the same way as Aus 8a. It holds an edge much longer and takes a lot longer to sharpen. I can take a completely dull Aus 8a knife and have it razor sharp in about 15 minutes. I just resharpened my dads completely dull kershaw and I spent over an hour on it. I've also resharpened a kershaw tone and an Aus 8a ka bar mule from the same level of dullness, the tone took much longer.
 
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I agree with the 8cr. never really had a problem with it but I don;t like aus 8, I prefer carbon. Guess it is just a personal preference thing. However going back to the OP's question the fold/grind thing with the wire edge has always worked for me in the past.
 
I polish the edge of my AUS8 blades, works better for the steel and I never have a issue with wire edges. If sharpening at low grits I doubt you will ever get rid of the burr without a loaded strop.
 
The way I get rid of stubborn burrs is to both reduce pressure and use extremely short, leading-edge strokes. The burr angles off to the opposite side of the stone, so when you flip the blade, your first leading-edge stroke will cut it off quickly. But if you continue with the sharpening stroke, you'll form a new burr. Short strokes -- maybe a tenth of an inch -- don't recreate the burr. (Only one short stroke per side/per section of the edge, don't use multiple burr-removing strokes or you'll just build up a new burr.)
 
burr_09.jpg


Todd is currently going over this in his blog... may want to follow along. Although he is looking at it more from a straight razor honing perspective, it may still reveal some interesting things.
 
Gold! Thx for that. Perhaps you could share that link in an original thread if you havent already so others can subscribe. Awesome to actually SEE!
 
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