KME sharpening times

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usmc0811

Joined
Jun 11, 2008
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I have been sharpening my knives an friends knives using the KME system for approximately 9 months now. Ive done about 65+ knives give or take ranging from small pocket knives to large 10'' kitchen knives of all types of steel. My question is how long does it take you to sharpen your blades using this system? I know it all depends on type of steel, size of blade and if it needs to be re profiled or just touched up. Just an average Im looking for to compare to my times. A quick session for me is about 40-45 minutes on like a small straight blade and like 2-3 hours on a larger knife say a 9" kitchen or K-bar style that needs to be re profiled. Is this normal or am I taking more time than needed? Also when completing with a stone I do several up strokes with the stone before going on to the next one. I usually go 4 strokes then flip, do 4 more then flip, 3 strokes flip, 3 more flip, 2 and then 1 strokes on each side going back and forth flipping side to side as I go down in number of strokes getting rid of any bur. Is this necessary to do so many or could I just do like 3-4 up strokes on each side and call it good?
 
That sounds about right if you're doing a full polish. I usually spend 30-45 minutes on folders using diamond plates and diamond matrix stones in a similar system. I have some really aggressive diamond plates that save some time too.
 
It's not how long it takes it is how much you enjoy it and whether the results please you.
Doing it commercially . . . that's all different.
I suppose a person could use a super coarse stone 60 to 400 grit depending on the situation, change the angle a little steeper and strop it or use a fine stone 3,000 to 8,000 and get a knife that cuts stuff pretty well.

That to me is just kind of boring. I like to see a polished bevel, I like to cut cardboard and not have fibers of paper adhering to the edge.

Sure I "waste" time sharpening. Some people "waste" time on the golf course.
As long as it turns our crank what does it matter ?
 
my question is how long do you need to maintain your principal folder on the KME , if it can't get stropped back to life.
 
If you want an already profiled knife “shaving sharp” then 10-15 min.

if you need to reprofile or a mirror polish then it takes much longer

a kitchen knife or a non-knife nut friend’s knife gets a quick touch up. They won’t notice the difference of a time-consuming mirror polish.
 
Once I stopped counting strokes, gave up on the folly of polished edges and rarely go above 600 grit (300 more often than not), then it's generally in the 10-20 min range all said and done. Re-profiling or really dull of course takes longer.
 
Just answering about your time question, let me offer this comparison. I use a Wicked Edge and have fully profiled and sharpened a couple knives from scratch this past month.

One was in 3V, other was in 1095, taking them from about 23dps to 20dps and sharpening then up to 1200grit. Both were 4 - 4.25" blades.

Each was right at 50 minutes, give or take. This includes dragging out the kit and setting it up. Pretty typical examples, of approximately 40 knives I have put on this system. Largest was a 9" bowie and it still wasn't over an hour and 15 minutes.

So 2-3 hours sounds quite long to me.

Hope this helps.
 
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