Knife Sharpening,,, Work Sharp? Wicked Edge? Or EdgePro Apex?

Dcycleman, I'd take Mr. McVey up on his offer. I've heard someone say "I never knew sharp until I purchased a fiddleback from Mr. McVey". They said something similar to that anyway.

Walter, can we see a pic of one of your polished microbevels? Pretty please with one of those cherry thingys.

I can look at polished bevels all day.
 
+1 for wicked edge; you can se some additional thoughts in my maintenance thread here. WEPS can fix just about any edge and make it screaming sharp. With that said, I am unfamiliar with the EdgePro, and have heard bad things about the WS/WSKO in that unless you take your time and do it just right, you can accidentally create a recurve on a blade due to how you pass the blade in and out of the sharpening guide. Now, as I understand it, if you get a WSKO, you can flip it over and use it like a mini belt grinder, which, might be cool, but again caveat emptor if you don't know what you are doing in the first place ;)

When in doubt, A LOT can be accomplished with some sand paper, a mouse pad, and a nice strop.
 
Joe Duder said:
Dcycleman, I'd take Mr. McVey up on his offer. I've heard someone say "I never knew sharp until I purchased a fiddleback from Mr. McVey". They said something similar to that anyway.

Walter, can we see a pic of one of your polished microbevels? Pretty please with one of those cherry thingys.

I can look at polished bevels all day.
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LOL, you have to get the right kind of light, and it is darn cold outside here. Send me any knife you got Josaiah, and I will put a spit polish on it for you. Regarding pictures of a polished edge, I'll see what I can come up with in the short term. In fact, I could get a cell phone pic below.

FWIW, I find that having a little tooth on a knife edge is not necessarily a bad thing in the functionality department. Especially for food prep work. For wood working, a little polish with some remaining tooth is what I tend to prefer.

My new favorite EDC knife, the Lone Star




Edge is 16 dps with 18 and 17 dps micro bevels, stropped to form a convex edge.
 
McVeyMac said:
LOL, you have to get the right kind of light, and it is darn cold outside here. Send me any knife you got Josaiah, and I will put a spit polish on it for you. Regarding pictures of a polished edge, I'll see what I can come up with in the short term. In fact, I could get a cell phone pic below.

FWIW, I find that having a little tooth on a knife edge is not necessarily a bad thing in the functionality department. Especially for food prep work. For wood working, a little polish with some remaining tooth is what I tend to prefer.

My new favorite EDC knife, the Lone Star




Edge is 16 dps with 18 and 17 dps micro bevels, stropped to form a convex edge.
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Thanks for the offer Walter! I may take you up on that, someday. I recently discovered the Lansky system. There only a few stones in the deluxe system that I would put on my Fiddlebacks, but if you pay attention and are carefull, you can get a nice polished edge.

That lonestar edge is very nice brother!
 
Joe Duder said:
Dcycleman, I'd take Mr. McVey up on his offer. I've heard someone say "I never knew sharp until I purchased a fiddleback from Mr. McVey". They said something similar to that anyway.
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That could have been me. When sending me a Kephart, Walt told me something along the lines of "It's nowhere near the best I've ever done, but it will cut you to the bone before you've realized what happened. Seriously, keep it away from the kids."

He was not joking--it rivaled some of my straight razors. Not just shaving sharp, but "tree-topping." And it wasn't "nearly his best..." The man's got mad skills.


Michael
 
:eek::eek::eek::eek:Well I completely funked my ship up!!!!!:eek::eek::eek::eek:

I went out to the tool shop to use my Lnasky to prove it is a good system and forgot one little, very important detail- tighten all the screws and bolts of the system before using!!! This blade is probably the sharpest I've ever sharpened a knife; I was whittling hair, but I really messed this beauty up. Walter do you see my SOS beacon.

My poor Bushie... Where's the whiskey?

Notice the recurve near the top and near the guard?!?!


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Yup.... I'm that guy. I'm gonna delete my BF account now. Farewell y'all.
 
Duder,
If you don't/can't send it in to the shop and don't care about implied warranty, please send it to me and I will fix it. Granted, it will be a bit slimmer, but I should be able to get the general profile back to a KEB-like shape with some patient filing and shaping of the entire edge. I'll post an example in a sec.
 
Dylan's been working on some recurves lately. Just call this a Fiddleback/Fletcher collaboration.
 
I did a similar fix on a few knives for a friend who went WSKO crazy -- recurved all of his blades. The process takes a while, filing by hand, but the results are pretty good. If you are comfortable doing the work, it is pretty straight forward; tape everything up except the edge, mark with a sharpee, and begin stock removal with a medium grit file along the edge. Granted you will need to create a new edge, geometry might be a little different and the HT steel will be hard on your files, but your knife will (somewhat) be back to normal ;)

I'd say that most of your work will be ~1/16" of steel; the majority of the work will be near the tip and the finger guard.
IMG_20150210_142256_zpseed0378f.jpg
 
Hey Will, when you did this work, did you try to thin the blade on sandpaper and a mouse pad at all? As the bevel moves into the thicker steel of the blade, the bevel gets wider and wider, ultimately affecting cutting performance. Have you ever tried thinning a Fiddleback blade in this manner to mitigate this situation?
 
McVeyMac said:
Hey Will, when you did this work, did you try to thin the blade on sandpaper and a mouse pad at all? As the bevel moves into the thicker steel of the blade, the bevel gets wider and wider, ultimately affecting cutting performance. Have you ever tried thinning a Fiddleback blade in this manner to mitigate this situation?
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Hey Walt,
I haven't tried this particular method in the particular context. I 100% agree that thinning will help retain geometry but have yet to do any heavy duty work like this specifically to a FB. With that said, I think a convex edge somewhat mitigates this (unlike a flat or scandi), in that over time as you sharpen a convex ( using the preferred methods), you will naturally thin the edge profile as needed due to the shape of the edge; where your recommendation comes into play really is with non convex grinds, as the cutting edge can (and will) become more obtuse over time unless thinning is performed. There was a good writeup a while back on knife forums (I think) about this topic -- I'll try to dig it up.

WRT Duder's problem (or clever regrind), I would actually propose taking a file perpendicular to the edge (on-top) to re-profile very gingerly. Once the general shape is obtained, then re-apply an entirely new (convex) edge
 
Wow. Duder, you have my sympathies. I hope everything works out for you and the bushie. I'll be praying for you both ;)
 
xxwjtxx said:
Hey Walt,
I haven't tried this particular method in the particular context. I 100% agree that thinning will help retain geometry but have yet to do any heavy duty work like this specifically to a FB. With that said, I think a convex edge somewhat mitigates this (unlike a flat or scandi), in that over time as you sharpen a convex ( using the preferred methods), you will naturally thin the edge profile as needed due to the shape of the edge; where your recommendation comes into play really is with non convex grinds, as the cutting edge can (and will) become more obtuse over time unless thinning is performed. There was a good writeup a while back on knife forums (I think) about this topic -- I'll try to dig it up.

WRT Duder's problem (or clever regrind), I would actually propose taking a file perpendicular to the edge (on-top) to re-profile very gingerly. Once the general shape is obtained, then re-apply an entirely new (convex) edge
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In the straight razor world they call this bread knifing in order to eliminate frowns or extreme smiles, especially on vintage blades where improper honing over years has occured. Once acheived then re-set the bevel. This could be done on a DMT or any other abrasive stone as well. In the case of a knife though, the thicker blade might warrant a file as the best approach.

With respect to thinning a blade to conserve edge geometry, I always do it on a stone with either flat or hollow ground knives. You are correct that sharpening with sandpaper on a mouse pad and stropping will have a thinning effect on the blade as you sharpen. I worry though that the WEPS produced convex edge will eventually become problematic unless some blade thinning along the way is performed. I have often considered trying this with a Fiddleback, but I fear running the sandpaper scratch patter into the Spalting of the blade. I should try it on a full ground Fiddleback for the first try I suppose.
 
Props to ya' Duder for even posting that pic. :thumbup: Nothing like letting us all learn from a mistake. Best of luck with the repair.
 
When I reprofile with the edgepro I usually thin the primary bevel at 13 - 15 degrees and then set a secondary (edge bevel) between 19 and 21 degrees before stropping. After thinning the bevel, that edge should last a long time and be relatively easy to touch up on a stone or a strop, depending on use.
 
Vayu said:
When I reprofile with the edgepro I usually thin the primary bevel at 13 - 15 degrees and then set a secondary (edge bevel) between 19 and 21 degrees before stropping. After thinning the bevel, that edge should last a long time and be relatively easy to touch up on a stone or a strop, depending on use.
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Practically speaking, you are absolutely correct. At 57 y.o. and a bunch of knives in all sizes and configurations, I would hope to live long enough for it to become a practical problem on at least one of them. However, I will likely not live that long. I was taught that the blade should be thinned slightly at each sharpening. Of course, this is only applicable to a flat or a hollow ground knife if sharpening with a stone. Having said this, I do thin all of my flat and hollow ground knife blades when I sharpen them in this manner. This ensures a usable edge geometry over the life of the blade.

Your approach will eventually get into thicker portions of the blade such that the cutting edge (19-20 dps) will get significantly wider to the point of effecting performance, albeit it will take quite a long time. I am just curios if anyone has tried thinning a convex ground knife using the sandpaper/mouse pad approach.
 
Your approach will eventually get into thicker portions of the blade such that the cutting edge (19-20 dps) will get significantly wider to the point of effecting performance, albeit it will take quite a long time. I am just curios if anyone has tried thinning a convex ground knife using the sandpaper/mouse pad approach.
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Wouldn't the solution then be to remove metal and thin it out again? With either approach, longevity of the blade will depend on how much and how hard the blade is used. I'm not sure about thinning the entire blade from spine to edge bevel. I wouldn't have the expertise to do that... I focus on a very small area and try to keep to the parameters and philosophy of the design. I'm not a professional sharpener by any means so I apologize if I misunderstand the application of this technique. I am interested in the answer as well.
 
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