Mousepad/paper question

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Nov 16, 2002
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Just have a few questions on the wet/dry abrasive paper on the mousepad trick:

1. How do you stick it there? Elmer's glue, glue stick, glue gun, solder, staples, very small rocks?

2. Assuming two pads are glued to paper, which grit size do you recommend for the 'fine' pad? My first experimental pads are glue-sticked with 220 and 400.

I'd rather 2,500+ for the fine, but I bought what was available and will practice on my Jaguar butterflies and clip-point fixed blade until I save up 5 months salary to buy another mousepad and a slice of finer grit paper.

Many thanks,

Thom
 
thombrogan :

How do you stick it there?

You don't need to. If you were going to, craft stores sell spray on glues that would make it very easy to attach and remove.

.. which grit size do you recommend for the 'fine' pad?

It is a matter of what works best for you. Try what you have, if the edge doesn't have enough bite then you are too fine, if it isn't cutting smoothly enough then go finer. You can also try the method Joe described which is to leave part of the edge coarse and part of it polished.

Mousepads by the way are not essential. It is not a high tech problem. Take some sheets of fabric and stretch them over a piece of wood or plastic and nail / staple them to the ends. A little imagination and just about everything that isn't completely rigid is functional including things like bubble wrap, layered tissue paper, thick cardboard etc. . I have even used a layer of grass on a piece of wood.

You can also remove the backing completely and just use the sandpaper by itself as a big strop. For this you want a quality cloth backed sandpaper (or just glue sandpaper to a piece of cloth), and hang like a big strop, nail between two pieces of board, nail onto something and hold the end with your other hand, etc. .


-Cliff
 
not as great an answer as cliff, but I use 80-1200 to shape my convex edge, and then 600 to maintain. It doesn't shave, but it cuts.
 
I love the Hand American wet/dry paper with the adhesive backing. It makes mouse pad sharpening much easier.

There are many variables to grit choice. If I'm reprofiling a blade to a convex edge, I usually start with something like 400 grit. But some steels, like INFI, required starting with 220 grit to make any appreciable headway. I work my way up 800 or 1200 grit on utility knives, and all the way to 2500 grit on my dedicated wood working knives.

Wet/dry paper is very abrasive, so it's easy to end up with edge rollover. If you want the wire edge taken off, but don't want a highly polished ege, you just have to lighten your stropping motion and make alternating strokes on each side of the blade.
 
Thanks everybody. I'll see about getting finer grits in the future (but not the 'magic grits' from "My Cousin Vinny"). Looks like my 220/400 setup will refine techinique on the <$25 knives until I get finer grit paper.

For the technique, it's make a burr, flip and make a burr on the other side and then alternate with decreasing pressure until the burr is all gone?
 
If the steel burrs badly you might need to cut the burr off with some leading edge strokes. This usually is only a concern after the initial roughest grit. I use a 1200 grit diamond hone to cut the burr off when necessary.

For example I sharpened a convex bevel on a 440C blade last night. The edge was left rough from a worn belt and thus would produce a large burr on edge trailing strokes as all the teeth and debris impairs a clean cut. After sharpening edge trailing with a 600 DMT diafold, I used the 1200 leading with the edge to cut the burr off and then finished with the 1200 edge trailing.

Sandpaper on a slack medium is even more prone to burr formation than that type of flat honing, as on a slack medium all the pressure is on the shoulder of the bevel and the edge just gets hit very lightly, and the abrasive it sees has been worn by the shoulder and filled with debris.

-Cliff
 
For what it is worth... here's my set-up:
I have a mousepad with 800 grit on one side and 2000 next to it. No rhyme or reason on picking these two grits, but they seem to work well for me. I haven't let my knives get to the point where these don't work. I fasten the wetdry paper with double sticky tape from 3M and it is holding well so far. The best source I've found so far is in automotive parts stores.
Have fun,
Mongo
 
Another nice way to attach sandpaper to a mouse pad is using spray adhesive. Dupont makes one that works well. You spray it lightly on the back of the sandpaper and allow it to dry for a few seconds. Then you stick it on the mouse pad. If you go light with the adhesive and allow it to dry before applying to the mouse pad you should be able to peel it back off. There are spray adhesives for mounting photographs that are even easier to remove.
 
it sounds like the mousepad/paper technique is best suited for convex edged knives...how about Scandi grinds?
 
It worked! It worked!!

Thank you so much! I'd still be rounding tips with my Sharpmaker, scraping off its diamond-coated sleaves, and ruining edges by steeling too hard and when unnecessary without the help of my fellow forumites. Thanks! :)

I took a $1 clip point folder and put a convex edge on it! It cleanly cut paper and the edge, even with 400 grit, didn't look too bad. One can only imagine that 2000+ would make the edge look like a silver lake. A few more beaters to have at and that Nimravus will get its own convex goodness.
 
Alan R :

it sounds like the mousepad/paper technique is best suited for convex edged knives...how about Scandi grinds?

Since Puukko styled geometry produces very wide bevels, you can match the angles on a flat hone without any difficulty. But yes you can use sandpaper, remove the mousepad unless you want to convex the Puukko bevel. Chisels are commonly sharpened on sandpaper on glass, do a net search for "scary sharpening".

-Cliff
 
Thanks Cliff -

I currently use a DMT Diafold for my scandi knives. For the std. Mora type blade, I find it requires a bit of elbow grease to get the blade edge up to snuff. Using plate glass and AO or SC paper on a 10" surface should drastically reduce reprofiling time.
 
Yes as Jimbo has described get decent sandpaper which is the width of the blade. With quality sandpaper of suitable grits you can even remove visible damage in little time (just press hard), and sharpening won't take too long. If you know a custom maker who is nearby, have him put a very shallow hollow bevel on the puukko. This will raise sharpening time dramatically and have little effect on overall durability as you just need to break the flat. It also can raise the cutting ability on some materials drastically. The Japanese tend to use such reliefs on most of their blades that have such broad bevels. You can also go with a very deep hollow and raise the cutting ability significantly, but then of course you lose durablity and limit overall scope of work. Different class of knife is all.

-Cliff
 
Cliff -

Will do. I am going to use this mousepad technique on one of my Moras to see how well a convex edge works/holds up with these knives.
 
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