Need a Fresh Angle

[Jamesh Bond]

So ive been sharpening obsessed for years and have read all the stickies and guides i could find. I am confident saying there is probably not much i could read that would be new to me.

However, in practice, my edges can end up way below my expectations, and im pretty sure the culprit is my angle consistency.

A freshly profiled edge is no problem. KEEPING IT THAT WAY is. Simple touch ups take WAY more time and effort than they should, and still yield annoying performance. I often get frustrated and settle for "good enough."

I can get an edge hair whittling sharp if i want to spend the energy on it, but even then there can be a degree of luck involved. I like a crisp shaving, paper slicing edge, which is really nothing special. All i ask is to be able to do this quickly and reliably, and keep it that way.

So im posting this to specifically ask for any special tricks people have discovered to maintain an angle.

Im highly knowledgable and practiced, so it may just be me. But id like to believe i can still improve. I USE THE SHARPIE TRICK AND I HATE JIGS AND GADGETS. So please dont bother mentioning those.

I am specifically interested in freehand sharpening, with a stone or rod, and the ways one can perfect and maintain a perfect angle.

Thanks for reading and i look forward to your experiences.

 

[bgentry]

In my experience it's almost all about stability. I've got two major things that work for me to maintain a consistent angle.

1. I use two hands when sharpening. One hand holding the handle and providing *some* torque to keep the blade at the right angle. I use two or three fingers of the other hand to put downward pressure *right* on the edge bevel. This second part improves my stability remarkably. If the bevel is already flat, then pressing down on it brings it into full contact with the stone and your fingers/hand can *feel* when it's flat. The other part of this technique is that it allows you to concentrate your grinding force exactly where you want it. Most of the grinding will happen directly under your fingertips.

2. Isolating as many joints and muscles as possible gives you the best sharpening platform. First, you want to make sure your body position is balanced and comfortable throughout the entire range of the sharpening motion. Any tendency to strain at all, or struggle to maintain balance will make your stroke less consistent. I mention this because some people can't easily maintain balance while standing for example.

2 continued. If you can eliminate nearly all of your arm motion and barely move your shoulder and elbow joints a HUGE source of variation is removed. What's left to move the blade with if you don't move your arms, elbows, or shoulders?? Your body. Rock from the hips and ankles to move your upper body as a platform. That platform will maintain a very consistent angle if you just move your whole body instead of the relatively small joints and limbs. Now practically speaking, you need a bit of flex in your shoulders and elbows, but it's not much.

These things have helped me quite a bit. I hope you'll get something from them too.

Brian.

 

[Fred.Rowe]

If you want to maintain a specific angle you first have to establish that angle and that is not possible just using your hands and mind alone. Do you know what a 12 degree angle "feels like" intuitively? or a 15 degree angle? In the modern world your hatred of jigs or gadgets or fixtures seems unfounded. Our veritable existence relies them. In milling in welding in knife making in fine woodcraft, they all depend on these fixtures. A very simple way to maintain specific angles on a diamond plate or stone is to use precut degree wedges, this makes maintaining a selected angle quite easy.

Good luck, Fred

 

[Jamesh Bond]

Great answers.

Ive used my share of wedges and clamps. True, they are the only way to produce an EXACT ANGLE by the numbers, but its that distinct limitation that puts me off.

While i agree and respect the usefulness and need for fixtures, my preference is based on simplicity and freedom. People have honed edges for many years without them and still produced great results. I want to enhance my ability to accomplish THAT. Jigs have their place, but i like the idea of simply MATCHING my blade to what I have available at the time, and being able to still get results.

If one can dodge a wrench ...

 

[Twindog]

Freehanding is part science, part art, part skill and a whole lot of practice. It's not hard to freehand a decent edge, but it does require a lot of skill to freehand a highly refined and accurate edge.

I don't freehand much anymore, but when I do I set my stone on an angled ramp. I set the angle of the ramp to whatever angle I want, and then freehand with the blade held horizontal. I find it a lot easier to freehand with the knife in a horizontal position than I do trying to hold a specific angle freehand. It's like using a Sharpmaker with the knife in the horizontal position rather than the vertical position.

 

[Fred.Rowe]

I know where your coming from; I enjoy primitive camping with only what I can carry. My reasoning behind using the simple wedge is the time involved to produce a great edge. When doing a free hand technique a convex edge is always the result; nothing wrong with convex but again its the time required. With a degree wedge and a locked wrist, ever pass on the stone or plate is close to exact and the apex is being worked each and every pass. With free hand, some passes are contacting the apex some are up towards the shoulder, some passes to steep some to flat. In doing this more material is removed than is needed to get the desired result. With wedges and a diamond plate, I can sharpen most any blade in 5 to 10 passes per side, maybe 4 or 5 minutes; I then follow that with my ERU adjustable "V" to remove the wire. I enjoy simplicity but I love efficiency. I'm 70 and stingy with my time.
How ever its done the key is enjoyment, Regards, Fred

 

[Sadden]

If your on stones rather than scrubbing back and forth , take your time and do only light edge leading strokes. It takes longer , but you can get some extremely constant angles this way.

 

[awestib]

If your on stones rather than scrubbing back and forth , take your time and do only light edge leading strokes. It takes longer , but you can get some extremely constant angles this way.

That! It depends a bit on my day to day "gusto" how I sharpen, sometimes I just want to try a different technique but the rule is consistency equals accuracy and vise versa (I think Murray Carter said this). I have taken many things from the Spyderco Sharpmaker and applied them or tried to apply them to freehand on a benchstone. I use the Sharpmaker with a scrubbing motion first to remove metal quickly if needed until burr, then I do edge leading strokes only until burr again, then alternating sides etc. That is what I do on the stone too. I take a mental note of the height of the spine and try to duplicate that for every single stroke, together with the feel and the sound it turns out pretty good. The bigger the knife however the more difficult it gets.
With this I try to do more a sideway motion with my upper body turning rather than a forth and back motion with wrist, ellbow and shoulder involved - this goes towards what bgentry said above.

 

[Jamesh Bond]

Keep em comin guys.

Fred, regarding your wedges, could you elaborate, or maybe post pics? You got me curious.

 

[HwangJino]

All I can say is it took my years to figure out how to slow down my sharpening, slowing down helped me the best.

 

[HeavyHanded]

So im posting this to specifically ask for any special tricks people have discovered to maintain an angle.


Thanks for reading and i look forward to your experiences.

Use two hands, off hand fingertips applied directly opposite where the edge makes contact - slide them along if using a sweeping motion. Experiment to see if you hold better consistency using the same hands for both sides of the blade, or if you favor an ambidextrous approach.

Shorten the length of the pass and work in overlapping section. The further you make your hands transport the tool over the grinding surface, the more corrections need to be made by the smaller joints - goes through the ceiling. A scrubbing pass also seem to help.

Observe the tool as you sharpen and study for rocking movements. Make corrections based on what you see.

Sharpen using tactile feedback as your primary guide. The shoulder, apex, cutting bevel - all feel different relative to each other. Even the back portion of a convex right behind the edge has a different feel than further up the bevel face. Different thickness of stock have different feel etc, yet all have distinctive sensation relative to the other regions of the edge. It is my belief that this is far superior to muscle memory. It is not possible to always sharpen at the same height, various tools have different grip configurations and dimensions. The only thing in common is that they all have an edge and material behind that edge. This is where the scrubbing pass comes in handy, and a moderate to quick pace. By not removing the blade form the surface you have constant stream of tactile inputs for reference. The faster pass (assuming solid mechanics) produces more tactile inputs over a given length of time - ongoing and continuous reference of angle to the stone.

Work from the shoulder to the edge, every time - do not float between the apex and shoulder or your edge will be limited in how flat it can be ground.

Work at a 45* angle to the grind path. Dead perpendicular means any degree variation is applied across the width of the cutting bevel. Any drag at the start of the pass in either direction is liable to translate to rocking - convexing of the bevel. Likewise a dead longitudinal pass has less stability and any rocking is applied entirely to the existing bevel width as well. By working at a 45* you in effect increase the contact width of the bevel - any rocking is spread out over the maximum possible surface contact area. Mechanically, any inclination to sway at the beginning or end of each pass is reduced as well.

As you work, lower the spine from time to time and lightly make a pass or two on the shoulder, elevate the spine just enough to eliminate the increase in grind chatter produced by working the shoulder/primary grind intersection. This guarantees you're working from the shoulder out, and not floating between the shoulder and apex. Is very important - when freehand sharpening, even if you have very precise mechanics, pretty much every time you jump from a coarse to a finer abrasive, you will uncover a convexed edge that is directly related to the size of the abrasive. If you cannot decrease this convexity with each progression it will reveal itself as a visibly convexed cutting edge. Below is a funhouse diagram of what I'm talking about. The last diagram shows the effect of sharpening without taking into account this principle - there is a lower density of steel at the edge and close to the shoulder - this material gets removed faster than the higher density of steel in the middle unless one directs the action specifically. This also illustrates why it is relatively easy to make an optically flat bevel with a coarse abrasive and becomes progressively more difficult as the abrasive gets smaller. The margin of error for the abrasive overlap shrinks dramatically. Also, without strategy there is a strong tendency to drift toward the increased feedback of the cutting edge - guaranteed to produce a much more broad edge than intended.

Hope this makes sense...

Martin

 

[Jamesh Bond]

Jaw droppingly Brilliant!
Thx HeavyHanded!

Im pretty good with two hands on a large benchstone, which i use only for resetting a bevel. Its the finer, stones i have that give me trouble (naturally). I opted for more portability regarding these since the majority of my sharpening involves honing and touch ups on an already set edge.

As this thread evolves, so will my questions. Any input on sharpening blades with a small stone, like a Spyderco Profile rod or DMT Dua? Say when touching up a large fixed blade with a field stone.

There is a guy on Youtube by the moniker JDavis882 that is a sharpening ninja. Ive watched him hone dull damaged edges one handed on tiny pieces of ceramic and he gets the knives phonebook paper sharp with only about 6 passes or so, give or take depending on the knife. He does this consistently, and it drives me bat sh!t crazy! The exaxct same scenario can take me up to ten minutes or longer, with inconsistent results, and NEVER sharp enough to slice phonebook paper.

 

[Brassaxe]

Seeing as I have never posted before I may as well try and make my first post a good one.

First are your stones. My suggestion and that of many others is to use waterstones (wetstones, whetstones, whatever you want to call them). The most common being Norton, Naniwa, King, Sun Tiger, etc. The less common are Togiharu, Mizuyama, Shun, etc.. It doesn't really matter what kind you get but over time you will get a feel for what works for you depending on how soft the stones are and how well they do the job you want them to do.

I have a collection of stones up to and including a $500 Shoubudani asagi. But you really only need probably 3 stones at most. Your 800-1200 grit will be the workhorse of sharpening. It's what will give you that baseline edge. The next stone you'll need is usually something between 4000 and 6000. This gives you an all around finished edge. The last stone is all based on your needs. If you're fixing stones, something in the 400 range will do the job. If you don't have a lot of nicked up knives then a 3000 range stone is nice since it give you a good middle man between you 1000 and 6000 or whatever. Lower grit stones (220 and below) are very dangerous if you are still learning the skills of freehand sharpening. And higher grit (8000+) stones are rarely necessary. I have everything from 220 - 30,000 and most of my work comes down to three stones. A King hyper 1000, A Naniwa SS 3000, and a Naniwa 8000 or Mizuyama 6000. That set does 95% of all the sharpening I do.

Once you figure out what stones you want the next thing is figuring out where to sharpen. Since you've been sharpening things for a few years my only suggestion is to sharpen at your sink. Its a good height to learn how to sharpen and it's convenient. I have a 4" wide board that has two smaller pieces of wood coming off the bottom to position the board securely over the top of the sink. You don't need a fancy jig to hold your stones. Just find a rag or hand towel that once wet and placed below your stone will hold it in place. If your stone slides under light pressure get a different rag.

Now you should always learn to freehand sharpen on kitchen knives first, learning to sharpen on smaller folding knives or whatnot will only lead to heartache and frustration. After a year or two then try smaller knives.

How you hold your knife is important! The best way is to hold the knife in you right or left hand with the spine away from you. Grip the handle then place your thumb on the very back heel of the knife. Just holding the handle alone does not give you very good control over the angle. But placing your thumb that one or two inches away from the handle does. Imagine taking the handle bars off a bike and steering with just the tube coming up. That's what it's like to just hold the handle alone. But put you thumb on that heel and you have your handle bars back. Your other hand is what does the sharpening. Place three fingers on the very very edge of the blade and use that hand to control the pressure and the sharpening. Usually you'll need to sharpening in two or three places. With you fingers at the back toward the heel, in the middle, and towards the tip.. BUT NEVER EVER try and sharpen the tip. Keep your fingers back from that tip and let the tip sharpen itself. If you try to sharpen the tip of the blade you will loose that tip. The beginning of the stroke usually starts with the blade angle just slightly away from you and you continue to angle that blade away from you through the stroke. Starting with it angled about 20 or so degrees away and continuing to about 45 degrees away at the end. This is for a reason.. If you simply push the blade straight away from you the grooves that stone makes on the edge will be at 90 degrees to the edge. Think of the edge of the blade like a micro saw then those points will be sticking straight down like little sharp triangles. They will make your blade reasonably good at cutting in forward and backward strokes. But if those little points are angled back at 45 degrees then will be much better at pull strokes (most cutting with a kitchen knife is a pull stroke). Thinking of the edge like a saw is beneficial because you can tailor the edge to how you use it. Some people actually push cut things so you would sharpen it the other way. You would start the same way in terms of how you hold the knife, but instead of pushing the tip away from you would push the handle away. Hopefully that makes sense.

So how do you tell what angle your sharpening? Well.. You don't.. Just forget about the 17 degree, 20 degree, blah blah.. Focus on keeping a consistent angle as you sharpen, whatever that is, maintain it. Its a very fluid motion once you get use to it. Once you learn the motion then you can tailor how narrow you want that angle on the edge to be depending on the knives use. In general having the angle too narrow is better. If it's waaay to narrow and dulls quickly back off a bit next time of learn to do a micro-bevel.

This next part is critical.. Always watch and analyze what you are doing as you sharpen. You may get into the mind set that you need to get into some sort on "groove" as you sharpen, and just keep going. But don't.. Sharpen a little bit, pick up your blade and look at what your doing. Look at where you sharpened. Then continue sharpening. As you sharpening, not only should you look at your edge, but feel it. Hold the blade up and gently rest your fingertips against the edge. From 1000 grit on up you can get and edge that you can tell is sharp. You'll feel it.. A sharp edge feels "scary".. Your brain will actually try to prevent you from moving your fingers along the blade because you know you'll cut the crap out of yourself. Feel where you have that edge and sharpen where you don't until the whole length of the blade is like that. Then and ONLY then should you go to the next higher grit. If you continue before it's to that point you are wasting your time. You will only frustrate yourself..

Once you make it all the way up to your highest grit then completely dry off your knife and test it.

First test is the most basic. Just try to cut a sheet of printer paper. You will get anything from a torn piece of paper to a clean cut with no fibers sticking out. In general if you can cut it clean with no fibers fraying out it's sharp enough. But there are more tests.... You can roll that paper up into a tube and try to cut it at 45 degrees. If it does that roll up some shiny gloss paper and try to cut it at 45 degrees.. If it does that then try to cut it a shallower angles. If you can get your knife to cut that rolled up shiny paper at just barely above the angle you sharpened it at then you have nothing else to learn for normal human knife use.


I hope this all made sense and if you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

[HeavyHanded]

Jaw droppingly Brilliant!
Thx HeavyHanded!

Im pretty good with two hands on a large benchstone, which i use only for resetting a bevel. Its the finer, stones i have that give me trouble (naturally). I opted for more portability regarding these since the majority of my sharpening involves honing and touch ups on an already set edge.

As this thread evolves, so will my questions. Any input on sharpening blades with a small stone, like a Spyderco Profile rod or DMT Dua? Say when touching up a large fixed blade with a field stone.

There is a guy on Youtube by the moniker JDavis882 that is a sharpening ninja. Ive watched him hone dull damaged edges one handed on tiny pieces of ceramic and he gets the knives phonebook paper sharp with only about 6 passes or so, give or take depending on the knife. He does this consistently, and it drives me bat sh!t crazy! The exaxct same scenario can take me up to ten minutes or longer, with inconsistent results, and NEVER sharp enough to slice phonebook paper.

When working on smaller stones, you reach a limit to what can be placed on a flat surface and worked. Since I use that short scrubbing pass, I'm comfortable on stones down to about 1"x4" assuming there's a place to rest it - have even used pucks in this manner by setting them across the top of my coffee cup. Otherwise, yeah you'd have to hold and sharpen. I'm a fair hand at this from doing machetes with a file, but is not something I do often. The principle is the same with a small stone, and folks that use this approach (stone in one hand, dull tool in the other) mention very good tactile feedback. I wind up convexing the edge a bit more than I might off a bench, so I tend to lower the initial angle if possible. If it does round over some, the terminal edge angle is still pretty acute. I also recommend this approach to newbies or others with angle issues no matter what methods they're using - start lower than you think you need and you'll finish in a good range.

In any event try to get several points of contact. If I'm working a small cutting tool with a small abrasive, I'll hold the knife by the handle and rest the spine on something, my knee if nothing else is available, and get it up nice and close to my eyes. This is how I work it in the boonies if there's nothing to set it on. I've never watched any of JDavis videos, but have heard he is quite accomplished! I also know what I'm capable of and so always try to get multiple points of support contact - as much stability as I can manage.

This is the page in my manual where I touch on it. Shown is a largish block and the knee is pretty far from the user's face in the third example, but in reality should be much closer. You can be back from the action a bit on a machete or hatchet, but on a smaller tool that's a bad idea.

The best advice I have left is to work very deliberately and stop to observe often. Really take a look at the scratch patterns you're making and where, even if it means stopping every two or three passes in some cases. In conjunction with a Sharpie, you will learn a lot about what your efforts are producing. The more accurately you work, the faster it will go (all else being equal). Amount of wasted movement aside, speed is going to largely be relative to the quality of your abrasives vs steel, and how beat up the edge is.

This issue of working with smaller stones etc also illustrates why I advise working from tactile feedback - if forced to improvise, the ability to work by feel is priceless.

 

[awestib]

There is a guy on Youtube by the moniker JDavis882 that is a sharpening ninja. Ive watched him hone dull damaged edges one handed on tiny pieces of ceramic and he gets the knives phonebook paper sharp with only about 6 passes or so, give or take depending on the knife. He does this consistently ...

Remember that to my knowledge, he has never shown how he sharpens a bigger knife, always EDCs only! The approach that you mention is applying a microbevel, nothing magic about that. HeavyHanded's videos show excellently how he approaches a bigger knife, learn from that. The other youtube video that I can more than recommend showing very solid technique and outstanding skills is Jason's sharpening a big knife right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgSOzYDv-PE

 

[Jamesh Bond]

Thx for the vid.

I know JDavis doesn't show big knives. Ive seen just about all his videos and im led to believe the process im noticing is not microbevels. I could be mistaken.

 

[awestib]

There is a guy on Youtube by the moniker JDavis882 that is a sharpening ninja. Ive watched him hone dull damaged edges one handed on tiny pieces of ceramic and he gets the knives phonebook paper sharp with only about 6 passes

Jamesh, I think I know that video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rET9-fc2fr4&index=60&list=PLB95E1C271CE6654B) and yes, a Microbevel, a bevel at a higher angle. There is no magic, using a coarse diamond 4 strokes then refining on brown and the white stone of the double stuff also 4 strokes. Do you need the skills to apply that specific angle? Sure you do. Does this need particular sharpening skills - no!

Don't get me wrong, I like many of his videos a lot and his consistency and results are outstanding and almost always he established a new, nice and clean bevel. But that takes time and the video, dulling the knife on ceramic that I think you mean, must be a micro bevel.

 

[Jamesh Bond]

Thx awestib.

Yes that is one of the videos. And yes, a microbevel makes the most sense. It just seemed to me when comparing his dialogue and philosophy from everything i watched that he wasnt specifically taking that approach. This is what happens when i start getting obsessed and overthinking things! But as Occam's Razor states, the simplest, most directly obvious answer is usually right.

 

[Valeniiman]

Thanks for all of the great information here...Cheers.