Quick Sharpening Question

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Feb 25, 2007
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I picked up a Sharpmaker a while back, and I love it. I've been using magic marker to mark the edge of each knife I sharpen to make sure I'm on the right track. Recently, though, I picked up a Boker Subcom fixed blade, and it seems like the angles on each side of the edge don't match. On one side, I have all of the marker sharpened away in a few quick strokes, but on the other side, the marker nearest the edge is left intact while the marker near the shoulder is worn away.

I don't have experience with sharpening beyond the SM, so I was wondering what my choices are here. Thanks.
 
What degree setting are you using on the SM? If you are using the 30, you can switch to the 40 degree setting and that may hit the edge. If you don't want to do that or it doesn't work, then you will have to reprofile the edge on a bench stone or on a set of diamond SM rods in order to be able to sharpen it on the SM.
 
Put the medium rods in the sharpmaker to use the corners. For 5 minutes, work just the side that you can't get all the way to the edge on. If you're not making much progress, you'll need to use something more aggressive, but if it's only a few degrees on a thin primary grind, you can do it quick on the sharpmaker.

Then you'll just treat it like normal from then on.
 
That's not unusual. Almost every standard grind knife I own has (no, had) different angles on each side. One might be 19 degrees, the other 22. You can use a diamond stone as mentioned above or......

Start with 320 wet/dry, then 400, and finish with 600. Cut the paper along the 8" edge, strips about 1-1/2" wide. Lay them face down on your bench, center one of your triangle rods on it, and crease one the edges (crisply!), folding that edge up one side of the rod. Then, maintaining pressure, lift the other side and wrap it around, making sure to crease that edge too. The idea is to wrap the rods with the 320 grit tightly so the faces are clean without any bulging in the corners. Using small spring clamps (or maybe clothespins,,,maybe) put one near the bottom and one near the top to keep the paper clipped to the rod. You'll have to slide the rod down out of the paper about 1-1/2" at the bottom so it'll go in the Sharpmaker hole. Do the same to the other rod. What you have is your Shaprmaker with 320 grit wet/dry on the faces.

Now you can work your edges to 15 degree or less. If you put a 1/4" spacer under one end of the Shaprmaker, you'll raise it and decrease the 15 degree (30 deg holes) to 12-1/2 degrees. You can use a protractor and play with it to get it right. Just remember to switch the spacer when you switch to the other rod for the opposite facing of the blade (DONT axe me how I knowd that!)

If you take 20 swipes or so per side, wiping the wet/dry with water on occasion, you'll re-bevel the edge where you want it. Depending on the steel, you may have to reface the rods a time or two before you're done.

After going through the grades up to 600, you can remove them entirely and go to the medium Sharpmaker rods. If you used the spacer, you'll have about a 25 degree (inclusive) bevel on your edge. When you go to bare rods, you could remove the spacer and then create a microbevel at 30 degrees.

I've done that with almost every std grind knife I own. Now, both sides are equally ground on all knives. Good luck
 
I was using the 40 degree setting while sharpening.

I think I'm going to try working that one side on the Sharpmaker until I get it to match. If that doesn't work, StretchNM's strategy should do the trick.

Thanks again for the help.
 
I don't own a sharp maker, but I have a friend who does. He only has the medium and fine sticks so he got a wooden dowel that fits in the slot and wraps it with wet dry sand paper for a home made coarse stick that lets him match the sharp maker angle.
 
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