Knife owner who can't sharpen a knife

One other point about benchstones and the Sharpmaker. The Sharpmaker can be used as a benchstone.

If you start with a coarse diamond benchstone, you may mess up the edge by overdoing it. If you turn the Sharpmaker base upside down, you will see two grooves in the bottom that fit two Sharpmaker rods. Lay them in there and practice freehand with the ceramic, which will give you some results and a learning experience without harming the edge.

Use the marker trick to see how well you're doing: cover the secondary bevel with marker ink and then sharpen away. This will show you if you're sharpening the whole bevel evenly, or hitting just the edge or just the shoulder.
 
ok now for my two cents worth just a few tips . the hand thats on the blade, spread your fingers as evenly as you can across the blade . keep the presure light but firm, lift the handel a bit at the end of the stroke to get the point sharp. that bur is very small you wont see it but you can feel it rub you finger away fron the edge when you feel a bur come up its time to go with your finest stone very gently polish the bur away. i strop at this point but thats a new ballgame .it takes time to learn to freehand keep at it
 
do you pull the blade toward you or away from you? Starting with coarse stone (no lube)and draw blade at 23 degrees toward me, with fingers resting across the blade and moderate pressure. Do that until I feel the burr and then what? Currently what I would like to sharpen below.

DSC00276.jpg
 
Are any of the "pocket sharperner" type systems any good at all? I am thinking of buying a FireStone DiamondStone 2 Stage Knife Sharpener. It looks alot easierr and quicker than freehanding with less chance of ruining my pretty knives.

Cody
 
The Aztecs had a polished green stone with a shallow concave dish that Bosh and Lomb mesured and found to have the most perfect curve ever made by man. It was made by hand before the Spaniards invaded. Pratice on a flatened 1 penny nail.... soft for easy work and not expensive. ave you Arkansas for the real thing when you get good.
 
Cody, I don't trust those gadgets. I think they are for cheap kitchen knives that would not get sharpened otherwise, but not for good knives that we can do better on.
 
Esav is 100% right. Those types of devices are knife scrapers, not sharpeners. I use a dozen or more different techniques depending on what type of blade material, shape, length, use and time it takes. The real beauty of knife sharpening is that there are probably 100 different ways to do it that work. The best one is the one that works for you. As was previously stated practice is the key. The SM is very basic and a good way to start. If it works to your satisfaction then it may be the only system that you need as it is very versatile.
 
SOLEIL said:
The real beauty of knife sharpening is that there are probably 100 different ways to do it that work. The best one is the one that works for you.
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Also, the same way you sharpened a knife last time might not be how you want to sharpen it next time.

Once you have a few different tools -- rod sharpeners, benchstones, fine, coarse, diamond -- you can put a working or a polished edge or an acute or an obtuse edge, depending on the job at hand. And most of these changes don't require a lot of work.

As I think Cliff Stamp mentioned in another thread recently, you can put a sharp edge on with a coarse stone. This may be exactly what you need for working certain materials, a "toothy" edge.
 
I can't tell you all how pleased I am to be able to benefit from the knowledge and experience of db, Esav, Jerry, Cliff and others too numerous to mention.

Some of your ideas work well for me, some not so well, but they are all thought provoking, educational and worthy of trying out.

I really love this forum, and the people here! :thumbup: ]


Ben
 
startan said:
The Aztecs had a polished green stone with a shallow concave dish that Bosh and Lomb mesured and found to have the most perfect curve ever made by man. It was made by hand before the Spaniards invaded. Pratice on a flatened 1 penny nail.... soft for easy work and not expensive. ave you Arkansas for the real thing when you get good.
Click to expand...

Link please. That sounds like urban myth.....
 
Corpus said:
I thought this interesting when I saw it, and might help those who freehand sharpen on stones..

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=32456&cat=1,43072
Click to expand...

It looks like the DMT Aligner clamp. [?] .........It is. leevalley is the place that doesn't show brand names. It looks good but I'm not sure how you'd do the curved part with it.

PS: I don't like the Sharpmaker. The best I did with it was a thin kitchen knife (Wilkinson Sword bought in a supermarket), honing it more-or-less along the blade with the stones in the bottom of the holder. At the time, I thought that if that's what I was doing, I should have some suitable bench stones. Then I sharpened that knife on the EdgePro - the first time, the first knife. I realised I'm not going to get good at it for a long time. But, the knife was pretty sharp, much sharper than when it was bought, and I found that it worked well for cutting up 3 big cardboard boxes the other night. It sliced well, being thin. Although it's not sharp now.
I think I can do better with the ceramic rod that came with the EdgePro, than with the Sharpmaker.
The second time I used the EdgePro was with an EYE Brand Sodbuster. oh-oh. Bad. I think I spoilt it. For some reason, no matter what I did, it was creating a wider bevel at the back, and it was impossible to get around the curve. And it was difficult to hold the blade consistently. I realised that you need a riser block for small knives. Why he doesn't have them as part of the kit, I don't know. They could screw into the "knife table" with a countersunk screw.
 
The aligner clamp works perfectly with bench stones. Even on the curve section, however the angle varies a bit as the distance from the guide point to the point of contact with the edge changes. Apart from the slightly varying angle (which should match perfectly on both sides of the bevel), the bevel you get will look like a factory ground bevel with no missed strokes and perfect flats. Incidently, the varying angles are effected by both the taper of your blade and the length of the blade.
 
IMHO I remember back in the 1970s getting a fine PUMA folder (way before the holes and knobs) and friend trying to teach me how to sharpen it. I spent perhaps 20 hours trying to get the knack of it. P.S. I never did learn the right way to keep that angle by eye-sight. Nope, never did.

I still have those 6 Hard Arkansas Smith Stones - and a Smith's Withita - and three more India Oil Stones - BY GOODNESS.

None ever did me any good time and angles always ruined the edge for me on ANY knife. It must be just one-of-those-things.

Then around 1987 I went to the Del Mar Fair in San Diego and saw my first Spyderco Endura G-2 knife. It also had a $20 triangle sharpening system. The darn thing worked (system) - and the knife was even in Rambo climbing movie - when he stabbed some PERP in the foot with it.

As for the device - all I can say it that I use it almost every month - and it really works. I even sharpen my AFCK, my CRT money clip, all my Spydercos,
my Al Mar SERE 2000, my custom Executive Edge, my 1980 Gerber Loveless dagger, my six homemade kitchen knives, and a half-dozen others.

It still is cheap too.

http://www.knifesite.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=165&Click=2&gclid=CPatjsjN2o0CFSjKhgodDCLGag
 
stainz, you can get a set of the good cardboard wheels at a discount from a member here. he goes by stevebot. he wrote a few books on sharpening also. i have 3 short vids on how i sharpen with the wheels. they arent much but give you an idea on how to use them. it takes me a couple minutes or less to put a razor sharp edge on a knife depending on how dull it is.
 
A few suggestions from my experience:

* start with carbon steel knives
* use good stones (japanese combination artificial ones 1000/6000 -eg: king brand- are great and not too expensive - never use dry), I wasn't able to get anything sharp until I ditched my old crappy stone for a decent one.
* from my experince, keeping doing the same movement is more important than keeping a consistant angle along the blade

You can start with a bunch of moras:
* they are carb steel
* they are inexpensive so you can try some experiments
* keeping the large bevel against the stone will give you a good idea of the movement you should be doing with smaller bevels
* once you're done with the moras try with small beveled knives. Opinels are great too: inexpensive and available in both carb and stainless.
* then you should have built enough confidence to try more "difficult" steels.
 
I am a new member. What an excellent discussion: stones vs. the Sharpmaker. I will admit that I have never even tried to sharpen the few knives that I own. I have figured I would do it incorrectly, and would rather not damage a nice knife. I would like to get a few more knives, and, thus, I will need to know what to do...Help...:confused:
 
Pick a system and practice, practice, practice. Almost any system will do, as long as it includes at least coarse, medium, and fine abrasives. Unless you have valuable "collector" knives, and you rub your knife flat or at a 90 degree angle against a stone as coarse as a concrete block, you won't "ruin" your knife. Even doing that would just make the knife dull and ugly looking. It could still be sharpened to cut again. So long as you are not using a power grinder that could overheat the steel and draw the temper, you really can't ruin a knife sharpening by hand.

It may take you a while to get the hang of producing a sharp edge, but eventually you will. Sharpening a knife does not remove all that much steel that you can't afford a few tries to get it right. A guide (DMT, Lee Valley, Razor Edge Systems, etc...) will help if you want to use stones or sandpaper, (and after a while you'll be able to "feel" the angle to hold the blade for freehand sharpening) or get something like the Sharpmaker if that apeals to you. If you are going to use your knives, they will need sharpening. And eventually they will get used up. I use my knives fairly hard, and sharpen anywhere from daily to weekly to monthly and will get anywhere from 2 to 4 years constant EDC from a knife before it's sharpened away to nothing. It's what keeps knifemakers in business.
 
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