My small Insingo rebirth

T

tomsch

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Dec 31, 2004
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I've been using my small Insingo for pretty much everything over the last two months. The only knife that kicked the Insingo out of my pocket was a Mnandi. The main reason it took a back seat was that it was becoming a PITA to get sharp using my Sharpmaker. Started with the brown stones and could never really get a decent edge back. I used a perm marker and discovered that the angle was significantly greater than 20 degrees per side. That pretty much meant the Sharpmaker was not even touching the actual edge. I confirmed that by increasing the angle and doing some free hand sharpening that improved the edge.

Since, to me, the small Insingo is my ultimate EDC so it justified the time spent to break out my Edge Pro and re-profile. I did the same thing with my Mnandi which is now a dream to slice with as well as resharpen. For the Insingo I set it at ~18 degrees per side and re-profiled down to a semi-polished edge at 600 grit. That allows me to use my Sharpmaker at 40 degrees (inclusive) for micro-bevel touch-ups. I will add that the Insingo blade shape makes it very easy to sharpen on the Edge Pro. It did take about 20mins of work using a 220 grit stone to reprofile the initial edge.

Kind of hard to get pictures of the edge but here's one at least:

IMG_0192.jpg
 
One of the tricky sections using the Edge Pro is a highly curved tip. In the case of the modified Wharncliffe blade of the Insingo it was very easy. I will say that it took a quite a bit of time to get the initial edge and burr set. It was well worth the time because now it is so sharp that trying to cut hair off my arm results in it taking off the top layer of skin, not just the hair. It does make me question the whole "CRK makes S35VN too soft" :)
 
My small insingo was WAY thick behind the edge, and as soon as it got a little dull I was unable to sharpen it. The bevel was <1mm wide:
edge.jpg


However, I sent it to a friend to reprofile at 30 degrees on his Wicked Edge and now the bevel is >1mm wide, is a WICKED slicer, and will definitely be easier for me to touch up.
IMG_2559.jpg

IMG_2561.jpg


I highly recommend anyone who is not happy with the sharpness of their sebenza to reprofile or have someone reprofile it.
 
Looks like a nice edge! The Edge Pro always seems to give such a uniform bevel. I am still glad I went with the Wicked Edge, but the edge tends to widen toward the tip with it. Yours looks perfect. I don't have my Micarta Insingo handy or I'd check, but mine might look about that good, actually, because of the Insingo blade shape. So easy to sharpen. I am such a fan of that knife and blade shape! I wish they made that blade on the Umnum!

Do you freehand sharpen the swedge (SP?) a tiny bit at the tip to make the swedge match up perfectly with the edge for a perfectly formed tip? I haven't done this but it seems like I could reshape it a tiny bit since sharpening the knife and bringing the edge up a little make the tip a little less sharp each time. Seems like it would be easy to thin the swedge a tiny bit to retain that brutal stock tip. I'm just a little scared to do it.
 
I haven't touched the swedge just yet. The tip as-is already is much sharper than what came from the factory. I too just love this blade style. The Edge Pro can be a little tricky but as you said the Insingo blade shape is just sy easy to reprofile.

The interesting part is that since I reprofiled the edge and put on a 40 degree (inclusive) micro bevel it seems to stay much sharper. Not sure if I had a burr on the factory edge but I've been using it like crazy over the past few days and it still will clean hair off my arm.
 
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