- Joined
- Feb 8, 2022
- Messages
- 8
I've been clicking buy on various knives I've been eyeballing for a long time and one of them is a Condor K-Tact. It's my first Kukri and my first convex edge. I'm pretty okay with the care and feeding of conventional v-beveled knives and probably around an advanced beginner with the care and feeding of scandi grinds - I have a few and have sharpened and polished them successfully, but it still always takes me longer than it feels like it should. My sharpening tools are a Spyderco Sharpmaker, emery and sandpaper 80 to 3000 grit with various soft and hard things to use as backing, a medium size 400/1000 diamond plate, a 3000/6000 grit field strop, and a 400# diamond/ 1000# ceramic pocket stone. I don't really want to add more to this list and I definitely don't want to bring waterstones into my life.
The K-Tact's factory edge is sharper than an axe but pretty rough and unrefined for an all-arounder outdoors knife, which is what I'd like it to be.
If I were to sharpen but not reprofile it, it appears I would use sandpaper with a soft backing surface, and then if I needed to maintain it with a takealong tool (hopefully for touching up only) I would use the pocket stone with a rolling motion bit by bit along the edge. It's small enough that it should be able to do the tighter spots of the recurve. Do I have it right that this would be a plan that could be made to work?
I'm contemplating just putting a 20 degree per side edge on it with the Sharpmaker, so that touching it up with a pocket stone is a more straightforward process. How stupid is this? I've reprofiled big, hard, stubborn stainless kitchen knives so while I understand it would take some work, that part doesn't worry me.
While convex, the edge is already pretty close to flat. I have a vernier protractor and when I squint at various spots along the blade, it matches up pretty close to a 30 degree inclusive angle. That leads me to speculate that if I just made it all a 40 degree V it wouldn't really lose much in terms of strength or edge retention. Stupid?
The K-Tact's factory edge is sharper than an axe but pretty rough and unrefined for an all-arounder outdoors knife, which is what I'd like it to be.
If I were to sharpen but not reprofile it, it appears I would use sandpaper with a soft backing surface, and then if I needed to maintain it with a takealong tool (hopefully for touching up only) I would use the pocket stone with a rolling motion bit by bit along the edge. It's small enough that it should be able to do the tighter spots of the recurve. Do I have it right that this would be a plan that could be made to work?
I'm contemplating just putting a 20 degree per side edge on it with the Sharpmaker, so that touching it up with a pocket stone is a more straightforward process. How stupid is this? I've reprofiled big, hard, stubborn stainless kitchen knives so while I understand it would take some work, that part doesn't worry me.
While convex, the edge is already pretty close to flat. I have a vernier protractor and when I squint at various spots along the blade, it matches up pretty close to a 30 degree inclusive angle. That leads me to speculate that if I just made it all a 40 degree V it wouldn't really lose much in terms of strength or edge retention. Stupid?
