Queen D2 edge angle

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Brutus013

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I'm wondering what your experiences with the out of the box edge with Queen D2 is? I'm looking into getting a D2 Canoe, but something like D2 I want it to be either 30 or 40 degrees inclusive. I only have a Sharpmaker, and so can't do much edge work.
 
I have heard all the horror stories, but, as I just posted in your other thread, I bought both a Canoe and a Cattle King in Amber Carved Bone Stag in the past 3 weeks and both (although a little toothy) were able to shave the hair from my arm right out of the box.
 
Mine wasn't really a horror story -- just a dull knife that I took the time to sharpen, and now it's one of my favorites. Put whatever angle you want on it. It may take more time to sharpen than a 1095 Old Timer blade, but hey -- variety is the spice of life, right?
 
Changing the angle of a D2 blade on the medium sharpmaker rods is a bit of a time consuming project. Have any of you used a sharpmaker to sharpen a Queen in D2?
 
Brutus013 said:
Changing the angle of a D2 blade on the medium sharpmaker rods is a bit of a time consuming project. Have any of you used a sharpmaker to sharpen a Queen in D2?
Click to expand...

Yes, I use a Sharpmaker to sharpen my Queens, it just takes some extra strokes, but it's not impossible...
 
Sharpening I'm not worrying about, I would be worried if I had to change the edge angle itself. If the edge is the right angle for the sharpmaker, I'm happy. I'm assuming you use the 40 degree setting?
 
I have not used a SharpMaker

I do not know if this will help, but...
I rebevel all Queens using a DMT Aligner jig, I start with X-Course and go down to E-Fine
It is very easy and fast and very good results
 
I use the sharpmaker with the wider setting(40 degree set up,20 per side I think)and it works great,they get very sharp and if you touch them up once in a while you will always have a very sharp knife.
 
I don't know about the Queen Canoe, but my Stockman and Whittler both had cold chisel edges on the main blades. Well, not quite, but close to 60 degrees included. I ended up sacrificing the blade etches and thinning them out on a belt sander to get them where I wanted. The smaller blades were fine, around 40 included as was the blade of my D2 Toothpick. That makes 5 out of 7 acceptable, so the odds are in your favor.
 
My queen whittler was dull out of the box. I put a 17 deg angle on each side with a Lansky. It is shaving sharp now and holds an edge for a very long time. I like D2 very much.
 
It is really hit or miss on what a Queen edge is going to be. I have or have had (not sure how many I have now) around 30 Queens and 3/4 have had uneven grinds or were just plain dull.

I haven't bought any new Queens lately and have heard newer ones are coming with much improved edges. The last new Queens I bought (1 1/2 years ago) were much improved from others but still not sharp enough to use out of the box.

Knowing the knife was likely to come with a funky edge never stopped me from buying a Queen. They are great production knives. Grab that canoe. You can chalk up any initial sharpening to a bonding experience with your new knife.
 
I attach a cheap, long, coarse, diamond stone to the Sharpmaker triangular rod with a heavy rubber band to re-profile any new knife with a fat edge. The diamond stone will allow you to quickly set the angle to 30º. You can then switch to the ceramic sharpmaker rods to set the micro bevel at 40º. This process doesn't take me longer with D2 than any other steel. Once main bevel is correct, getting the the micro bevel hair popping sharp is very quick.

Using the brown Sharpmaker rods to re-profile D2 will take you forever. I gave up after at least an hour and a half of grinding away at one blade on my large Queen Congress. The Diamond stone on the Sharpmaker took me about 25 minutes total for all four "butter knife" blades including the micro bevels.

sharpener1.jpg


sharpener.jpg
 
I usually thin them out, but stop at around 20 deg inclusive. At that level, I have to use a microbevel to avoid damage. But they really cut well if you aren't afraid to take them down! I use an edgepro on some, and large dmt stones on others to thin them. It doesn't take that long, the primary grind is pretty thin to start with.
 
It seems to me that during the past couple of years, Queen knives are much sharper out of the box than they used to be.

It was around the time they switched from the carved stag bone & cocobolo handles to the birds eye maple, and now the amber stag bone.

In other words, the half dozen or so Queen knives I've bought over the past couple of years have been very sharp right out of the box and have not needed any reprofiling at all.
 
Brutus013 said:
I'm wondering what your experiences with the out of the box edge with Queen D2 is? I'm looking into getting a D2 Canoe, but something like D2 I want it to be either 30 or 40 degrees inclusive. I only have a Sharpmaker, and so can't do much edge work.
Click to expand...

I recently bought a Queen Cattle King. I found the edges to be reasonably sharp OOB, though not as sharp as I like edges to be. When I went to sharpen the blades, they were at a broader angle than the 40° Sharpmaker setting (20° per side). I would estimate that they were 25°-30° per side.

I used a Norton Combo stone (coarse/fine) to change the angle to ~15° per side. I then used DMT coarse and fine stones to sharpen. I think I will need to get a finer DMT stone as the finish after the fine was a bit rougher than I want.

I found the Queen D2 to be somewhat more difficult to rebevel than 154CM or VG10, but the D2 still responded well to the India stone and it responded very well to the diamond.
 
Convexed mine with sandpaper and mouse pad (aka Hoodoo Hone).
While I was at it I took off that silly blade etch.
EDC.gif


Sharpen it, use it, this isn't rocket science :D :D :D
 
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