Remove "toothedness" (again)

hank_rearden

hank_rearden

Joined
Jun 7, 2002
Messages
3,411
been seeing this with my EDC delica. been using it for more than a month now. all i've done is touch it up with my oil stone and stropping. the factory edge grind is still there. the teeth can already be seen if you hold the edge more than a foot from your eyes.
 
i was was assuming it's not a very good thing. well other than that, the edge isn't as sharp as it was. with that, i plan to finally do a full-blown sharpening.

oh yeah, the question is "why do those teeth form, and is there something wrong with the way i use/maintain the edge?"
 
Lots of options,

Not making proper contact.
Using too fine of a stone.
A burr.
A sloppy factory grind.

A complete sharpening from the beginning is how I roll. Maybe 1-5% of knives I see have a decent bevel grind and enough sharpness to pop a few hairs while the typical factory edge is over 40 degrees inclusive and struggles with thick printer paper. Make that edge your own and you will likely have less problems.
 
The "teeth" you are seeing on your edge is probably the rough factory grind on the cutting bevel. Even if you touch it up on a stone and strop, unless you completely grind away the factory bevel, there will be "teeth". Depending on your stone grit, you may be creating "teeth".

Basically, the smoother you go on your stones, the smaller the "teeth" will be. They are always there, but when you get to high grit stones, you just can't see them.
 
thanks guys. no more teeth on my delica (vg-10) and i'm able to split a hair strand again so it's something of an achievement. the only thing is i did the right side badly (stoning with the edge towards you, i have trouble with that.) at one point of sharpening i realized i had to go back to the bigger grit. i had better master the vg-10 soon. a s30v and zdp189 will be arriving at my house shortly.
 
VG-10 is a well-balanced steel for blade, get super sharp and shiny. For powder-steels (with dense hard carbides and matrix), diamond and or cbn are most appropriate abrasives for hone & strop. Both s30v & zdp were brutal on my lumina-based stones. Zdp strops fine using CrO, while s30v won't do so well (as biting sharp) since Vanadium carbide is harder than CrO so CrO mainly abrading the iron matrix.
 
Gunsnknives said:
The "teeth" you are seeing on your edge is probably the rough factory grind on the cutting bevel. Even if you touch it up on a stone and strop, unless you completely grind away the factory bevel, there will be "teeth". Depending on your stone grit, you may be creating "teeth".

Basically, the smoother you go on your stones, the smaller the "teeth" will be. They are always there, but when you get to high grit stones, you just can't see them.
Click to expand...

This seems unlikely. If you can see teeth with your naked eye from a foot away it has nothing to do with the grit you're sharpening at nor is it something i've ever seen on a factory grind. It's just natural wear being caused by hard use. I've never seen this happen on my delica but if you look at a leek i have which hasn't been sharpened for over a year it's definitely a little jagged. I find it's more noticeable on softer steels (my swiss army knives) and thinner grinds. You probably weren't apexing the edge when you were just trying to touch it up on a stone but it sounds like you have it figured out now.
 
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