No bite on my blades >:(

D

Decimator22

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Sep 9, 2010
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I have gotten into the sharpening side of knives pretty heavily lately. I have ordered some high end water stones and a good strop so that I can maintain a razors edge as needed on all my blades. I have honed(no pun intended) my skills to the point that I can get hair whittling edges with minimal difficulty. But my edges have almost NO bite. I can literally slide my fingers back and forth on the edge(with VERY lite pressure of course). My sharpening system is as follows. Set bevel to a burr on Shapton 1000 Grit Glass Stone, Strop on Shapton 6000 Grit Glass Stone. Strop on KnivesPlus Strop Block. So I'm thinking I might need to use a more aggressive stripping media for finishing. A diamond spray perhaps. Suggestions?
 
Don't stay too long with the 6k, use very light edge trailing (stropping) strokes only. No leather stropping afterwards. Less is more, excepted for vendors.
 
Deburr after the 1k stone. You may be having to spend a lot of time stropping to get rid of it, possibly causing you to round your edge bevel. If you want a lot of bite, use the 1k stone as your finishing stone. Just sharpened the kitchen knives for the upcoming festivities and finished the workhorse on a King 1k grit stone. Very bitey and it still catches hair on my head well above my skin.
 
So I deburred after the 1k stone on my strop. Then went over to the 6k and honed in the edge. Hair popping AND super bitey. Thanks guys!
 
I actually meant to deburr on the 1k stone, but if it works, it works. I just havent had much auccess deburring with a strop, unless it was a powered strop on my belt sander.
 
Depending on the steel, with a 1k you can't expect the burr to be removed, just reduced.
 
Have no general explanation; have seen pix of the burr getting smaller after every stone and getting off only after the finest grit.
Coincides with my own experience: finely grained carbon burrs come off very easily, VG-10 burrs need a lot of refinement first, AS somewhere in between.
 
Have you tried a specific deburring step?

I just sharpened my RADA cutlery kitchen knife a couple weeks ago and raised the angle considerably doing one stroke on each side with very light pressure, then going back and alternating strokes with very light pressure at the normal angle. I was able to get a very sharp, treetopping edge just off both the 220 side and 1000 side of my King waterstone.
 
Also, some steels polish better than others in my opinion. 154CM and VG-10 respond very well to the 6000 stone while Aus-8 with my experience would go as use described, no bite.
 
me2 said:
Have you tried a specific deburring step?

I just sharpened my RADA cutlery kitchen knife a couple weeks ago and raised the angle considerably doing one stroke on each side with very light pressure, then going back and alternating strokes with very light pressure at the normal angle. I was able to get a very sharp, treetopping edge just off both the 220 side and 1000 side of my King waterstone.
Click to expand...

I don't know the RADA knives, but do have a similar experience with the relatively soft French, German and Swiss stainless. With those, deburring at 1k will work, and going any finer is rather counterproductive.
 
What kind of steels can be cut/abraded/sharpened by a 1000 grit stone that the same stone will not remove a burr?
 
Oh, lets see now. 420hc, 440a, 8cr13mov, 425m, 440c, vg10, aus 8, aus 6, s30v, 1095, 1055, 50100b (carbon v), a2, m2, o1, 154cm, ats34, whatever home depot chisels are made from, japanese mystery stainless, and likely a few others. All these can be deburred using a 1k waterstone or coarser.
 
Please tell me more about deburring VG-10 on a 1k. Just the procedure you described above? No wire edge? What was the angle you sharpened at?
 
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Benuser said:
Please tell me more about deburring VG-10 on a 1k. Just the procedure you described above? No wire edge? What was the angle you sharpened at?
Click to expand...

In my video, I deburred vg-10 using 10 different abrasive materials from 120 grit to 3microns. Using the same technique you can deburr almost any steels at any grit.

Sharpening & deburr Vg-10 - 30 minutes long video, no need to watch past the 1st abrasive material.
 
Benuser said:
Please tell me more about deburring VG-10 on a 1k. Just the procedure you described above? No wire edge? What was the angle you sharpened at?
Click to expand...

The first thing is to try to form the smalles burr you can detect in the initial sharpening. I sharpened my Delica on a 220 grit waterstone at 17 degrees per side (dps), and raised a burr at this grit. Then I moved to the 1000 grit side and used an angle increase of about 3 dps to remove the burr. This was done with alternate passes on the stone, not one side at a time. It was also done with a horizontal block that holds the stone at the angle I want, then I use a spacer to raise the angle a few degrees to deburr and finish. If you have trouble, make a couple of very light passes at a greatly increased angle, like 30-35 dps, then go back to the desired finishing angle and alternate passes to remove the very tiny microbevel you just created. It sounds like a lot of work, but it can be done quickly after a little practice. 10 or 12 passes per side will remove and sharpen over such a small microbevel. I use microbevels a lot. I don't see any sense in polishing the entire bevel on a rough use work knife like I use my Delica. You asked about VG-10. Benchmade's 154CM in my Griptillian 550HG would whittle hair after deburring and 10 or 15 alternating strokes on the 1k stone. Others will do this too, but the Grip did it easier and it was the first one I tried for that level off just a 1k stone.
 
Thanks for explaining. With my VG-10 kitchen knives, it would be an interesting idea to get rid of the burr in this very early stage already.
 
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