Looking For Some Sharpening Advice

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Willieboy

Joined
Jul 4, 2002
Messages
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I have just been through a sharpening ordeal. The knife involved was the TOP's Street Scalpel. This little rascal is 1/4" thick and about 3/4" wide at the widest part of the blade. The steel is 1095.

I usually use a Sharpmaker 203 but was having a hard time getting a suitable edge on the right side of the blade. In frustration, I decided to sharpen by hand. Hand sharpening was a skill I used to possess but have apparently lost. The result of hand sharpening was a disaster so, back to the Sharpmaker. After some work on the medium stone, I was able to put a decent edge on the left side of the blade but the right side, even after 100's of passes, remained less that sharp. Soooo, I got out the Lanskey set and lo and behold, after about an hour's work at 20 degrees, I have a very sharp knife.

My question is, as this knife requires touching up, would I be okay using the Sharpmaker's 30 degree angle on the 20 degree edge I now have. Would sharpening a 20 degree edge at 30 degrees enhance or degrade the sharpness, assuming I can master getting the edge on the right side of the blade?

Any thoughts?
 
The sharpmakers angles are included, as in 40 degrees in 20 per side and 30 is 15 per side. The Lansky I have has 17, 20, 25, and 30 degrees per side. If you try to sharpen on the 30 (15 per side) degree setting on the sharpmaker you will only being cutting the shoulders, and not the edge. The 40 (20 per side) degree setting should work for you, but it would work better if you brought the back bevel down to 15 (or 17) per side, and then you microbevel at 20 per side. Your ease of sharpening will skyrocket, as you are only sharpening a small amount of metal, versus the whole bevel.

Edit to add: If you use an extra coarse benchstone to set the backbevel you will save a lot of time. What took you hours would only take you minutes that way. You could also use the diamond hones for the sharpmaker, but they are expensive and it still takes much longer than an extra coarse SiC or DMT stone would. It took me over 30 minutes to reprofile a relative's Gerber Applegate Fairbairn (ATS-34) to 15 per side on the sharpmaker with the diamond hones, mostly due to a very obtuse tip on that one. That would have taken me hours on the medium hones, but only minutes on a benchstone.
 
Willieboy said:
After some work on the medium stone, I was able to put a decent edge on the left side of the blade but the right side, even after 100's of passes, remained less that sharp.
Click to expand...

New knives often have uneven bevels, one bevel is at 15 and the other at 25. It is one of the main reasons that people have problems sharpening, it also causes a lot of confusion because people think they are are causing the asymmetry and this gets incorrectly attributed to all sort of irrelevant factors like not alternating sides frequently enough. The reality is that edge bevels and even primary bevels are often uneven. There are two things you can do, the easiest is to just tilt the sharpmaker so it grinds an uneven bevel to match. The other way is to take a x-coarse hone and just grind down the bevel on the side on the knife which doesn't seem to sharpen. This will make the bevel more acute but in general this is usually a good thing.

-Cliff
 
If you are going to go the coarse stone and equal bevels route (the proper one IMO), then I would take the time to do it so the bevels were even widths on both sides of the blade, and the edge was centred. And yes, I am bit fussy that way!
Greg
 
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