I learned about Cris Reeves Knives last month and received my new large Sebenza 21 Insingo last week... Well, better late than never... This is my new EDC replacing a BM that I carried over 10 years. So far I love the Sebenza but wanted to enhance the factory blade edge. After some research on S35VN, I decided to re-profile the edge to 18 degrees on each side as a starting point, so I broke out the old Lansky Sharpening System and...
I had in mind that I wanted 18 degrees per side, not 17 and not 19. My Lansky Sharpener has two major faults: one, its difficult to know what angle you're honing because the "angle marks" get so far off as the distance to the blade edge increases past the mount edge and two, repeatability is hard to achieve unless you take good notes on the original setup.
I know from experience precisely where I mount my old EDC knife onto the Lansky for angle repeatability but I've never really known what the hone angle truly was, sure the "angle marks" reads 17 degrees but I've always wondered how accurate those marks are... So I bought an angle cube!
First thing I learned was there is too much slop between the Lansky and the table mount for the angle cube to give accurate readings within a couple of degrees. But the angle cube was reading my old EDC at around 12 degrees per side when I thought it was closer to 17 like the "angle marks" read. Wow, no wonder my poor ATS 34 was chipping out. Time for plan B if I wanted my Sebenza re-profiled properly.
I remembered from high school math class that the unknown angle of a right triangle could be calculated if you know the height and width of the triangle so... With the help of an online angle calculator and my vernier calipers, I started measuring the know distances between the centerline of the Lansky (opposite side) & the angle holes and the distance to the edge of the blade (adjacent side) to calculate the unknown angle Q.
Here's what I found: 17 degree hole is 0.975" from the centerline of the mount, 20 degrees is 1.235", 25 degrees is 1.600", 30 degrees is 1.885". The distance from the measuring holes (right angle) to the very end of the Lansky mount was 3.65". It's means the 17 degree hole is actually 14.96 degrees, the 20 degree hole is 18.9, the 25 degree hole is actually 23.67 degrees and the 30 degree hole is 27.31. This may not sound like much but the angle gets shallower as the distance from the angle holes (90 degrees) increases. Since you can not position your blade exactly at the edge of the mount, the actual angle will be much more acute than what is read from the "angle marks". Again, I was using the 17 degree hole but my actual hone angle was closer to 12 degrees...
So with this information, setting the Sebenza to an exact 18 degrees was easy! Using the 20 degree hole, I needed to position the blade edge exactly 4.0 inches from the holes upright (90 degrees).
Here's the math:
The 20 degree hole is 1.235" from the bottom of the mount.
My Sebenza blade is .125" thick, meaning each half is 0.0625"
I used 1.3 inches as the opposite side length
After some trial and error, I found 4.0" as the adjacent side length rendered 18 degrees as angle Q, using the online angle calculator made this easy. You can set virtually any angle with precision using the Lansky if you use this method to verify the hone angle.
I verified these results against a protractor and walla, Who'd of thought High School Math would come in handy after all those years...
I had in mind that I wanted 18 degrees per side, not 17 and not 19. My Lansky Sharpener has two major faults: one, its difficult to know what angle you're honing because the "angle marks" get so far off as the distance to the blade edge increases past the mount edge and two, repeatability is hard to achieve unless you take good notes on the original setup.
I know from experience precisely where I mount my old EDC knife onto the Lansky for angle repeatability but I've never really known what the hone angle truly was, sure the "angle marks" reads 17 degrees but I've always wondered how accurate those marks are... So I bought an angle cube!
First thing I learned was there is too much slop between the Lansky and the table mount for the angle cube to give accurate readings within a couple of degrees. But the angle cube was reading my old EDC at around 12 degrees per side when I thought it was closer to 17 like the "angle marks" read. Wow, no wonder my poor ATS 34 was chipping out. Time for plan B if I wanted my Sebenza re-profiled properly.
I remembered from high school math class that the unknown angle of a right triangle could be calculated if you know the height and width of the triangle so... With the help of an online angle calculator and my vernier calipers, I started measuring the know distances between the centerline of the Lansky (opposite side) & the angle holes and the distance to the edge of the blade (adjacent side) to calculate the unknown angle Q.
Here's what I found: 17 degree hole is 0.975" from the centerline of the mount, 20 degrees is 1.235", 25 degrees is 1.600", 30 degrees is 1.885". The distance from the measuring holes (right angle) to the very end of the Lansky mount was 3.65". It's means the 17 degree hole is actually 14.96 degrees, the 20 degree hole is 18.9, the 25 degree hole is actually 23.67 degrees and the 30 degree hole is 27.31. This may not sound like much but the angle gets shallower as the distance from the angle holes (90 degrees) increases. Since you can not position your blade exactly at the edge of the mount, the actual angle will be much more acute than what is read from the "angle marks". Again, I was using the 17 degree hole but my actual hone angle was closer to 12 degrees...
So with this information, setting the Sebenza to an exact 18 degrees was easy! Using the 20 degree hole, I needed to position the blade edge exactly 4.0 inches from the holes upright (90 degrees).
Here's the math:
The 20 degree hole is 1.235" from the bottom of the mount.
My Sebenza blade is .125" thick, meaning each half is 0.0625"
I used 1.3 inches as the opposite side length
After some trial and error, I found 4.0" as the adjacent side length rendered 18 degrees as angle Q, using the online angle calculator made this easy. You can set virtually any angle with precision using the Lansky if you use this method to verify the hone angle.
I verified these results against a protractor and walla, Who'd of thought High School Math would come in handy after all those years...
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-- Congrats! Thats a fantastic blade on an already fantastic folder.