- Joined
- Nov 16, 2002
- Messages
- 9,948
I found my mousepads!
Um, actually, I combined Cliff Stamp's grinding belt on a door method with Buzzbait's strop-sharpening on a mousepad to discover a frankensharpening technique:
1. Glue a sheet of silicon carbide wet/dry paper or stick a sheet of lapping/sharpening film to a mousepad.
2. Lie the blade-to-be-sharpened onto said pad and lightly press its side into the pad.
3. Push the edge forward into the paper or film taking care to not cut through the mousepad (if more of your energy is involved with pushing the side of the blade into the mousepad, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. At least, it wasn't for me) and take care to curve the knife to get the belly-to-point area near the end of the stroke. Continue until a burr is formed.
4. Turn knife over and repeat step 3.
5. Gently alternate sides until burr is removed.
I took the thumbstuds off my 154CM Benchmade Ares and got a hair-popping edge using 15 micron lapping film. I started with 400 grit wet/dry, moved to 15 micron for a bit, spent too much time with .5 micron film and only a sharp point and belly, then return to 15 micron film to put a sharp edge on the entire knife. The thumbstuds are back on and it required little to no skill and less than $10 of materials.
Um, actually, I combined Cliff Stamp's grinding belt on a door method with Buzzbait's strop-sharpening on a mousepad to discover a frankensharpening technique:
1. Glue a sheet of silicon carbide wet/dry paper or stick a sheet of lapping/sharpening film to a mousepad.
2. Lie the blade-to-be-sharpened onto said pad and lightly press its side into the pad.
3. Push the edge forward into the paper or film taking care to not cut through the mousepad (if more of your energy is involved with pushing the side of the blade into the mousepad, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. At least, it wasn't for me) and take care to curve the knife to get the belly-to-point area near the end of the stroke. Continue until a burr is formed.
4. Turn knife over and repeat step 3.
5. Gently alternate sides until burr is removed.
I took the thumbstuds off my 154CM Benchmade Ares and got a hair-popping edge using 15 micron lapping film. I started with 400 grit wet/dry, moved to 15 micron for a bit, spent too much time with .5 micron film and only a sharp point and belly, then return to 15 micron film to put a sharp edge on the entire knife. The thumbstuds are back on and it required little to no skill and less than $10 of materials.
