Knife tip sharper than base; strop care?

[stevenchamp45]

I'll get to the point, i'm pretty sure i'm sharpening it correctly, but the even when the full knife his popping sharp, the tip end is sharper than the base of the blade. With the knife in particular i'm talking about, the BG Ultimate Pro Survival, I sharpen it from coarse-medium-smooth with honing solution, then both sides of a leather strop with herb's yellowstone, and while the tip of it is easily shaving sharp, the base is barely skin dusting sharp.

Also, I cleaned my leather strop with 50% isopropyl rubbing alcohol and cotton balls to get excess buildup of honing brick off, but now it's dry and won't make my knives shaving sharp anymore. Did I do something wrong, and is ther any way to restore it without the expensive treatment oils if neccesary?

 

[exracr]

Watch the angle that your pushing the blades on the stones... you're putting less angle on the tip area than the base length of the blade. Hence the flat base of the blade doesn't have as much angle taken off as the tip. AKA you're putting the blade closer to the stone at the tip... then have more room between the blade and the stone on the base/straight part of the blade.

I did the same probably the first 50 knives or so I sharpened. Takes practice, keep at it! Hope this might explain it?

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

I'll get to the point, i'm pretty sure i'm sharpening it correctly, but the even when the full knife his popping sharp, the tip end is sharper than the base of the blade. With the knife in particular i'm talking about, the BG Ultimate Pro Survival, I sharpen it from coarse-medium-smooth with honing solution, then both sides of a leather strop with herb's yellowstone, and while the tip of it is easily shaving sharp, the base is barely skin dusting sharp.

Also, I cleaned my leather strop with 50% isopropyl rubbing alcohol and cotton balls to get excess buildup of honing brick off, but now it's dry and won't make my knives shaving sharp anymore. Did I do something wrong, and is ther any way to restore it without the expensive treatment oils if neccesary?

The vast majoritiy of knives will be thinner near the tip and thicker near the heel ('base') of the blade. It's also typical for the edge angle to be wider near the base of the blade, largely because most factories will try to keep the bevel width consistent along the whole edge, which means sharpening to a wider angle in the thicker portions near the heel. Those characteristics by themselves will usually mean it's much easier to make the tip sharp than the heel of the blade. That's the first of two issues here, as I see it.

The 2nd issue is that no strop by itself will keep a knife sharp forever. Sooner or later, the edge will need resharpening on a coarse stone or something equally aggressive at crisply reshaping the edge, such as powered grinders, etc. A strop can't fix a thick & dull edge by itself. I think the main problem is that the knife needs tuning up on a stone, to both thin the edge near the heel (thinning the edge geometry is most of what will bring 'shaving' sharpness back) and also restore a crisp apex that can more easily be maintained after the fact, on a strop.

I wouldn't worry too much about the strop itself now, until after the knife's edge has been reshaped on a stone to a thinner, crisper apex. It won't really be ready for stropping until that's done first.


David