Reprofiling tools.

B

bubblewhip

Joined
Dec 18, 2009
Messages
248
Hey, I'm an amateur knife sharpener and working with a stone, but a lot of knives I find I have to remove a lot of metal in order to get a decent edge out of it, It might even take half a day to get a decent edge off my knives. I was wondering what tools could I buy to reprofile some horrendous 60 degree edges down to a 30 or 40 level. I would prefer hand tools, but a small light job belt sander would be okay as well. How aggressive is a Sharpmaker at removing metal? What armature belt sander running at a low RPM would you recommend?
 
An Edgepro will give you a reasonably accurate angle and rip the metal off fairly quickly. The DMT diamond stones will rip it off even quicker.

The Sharpmaker is really only for maintaining an already established edge. Reprofiling on that would be a long and arduous task.

Your best bet would probably be a belt sander if you're going tobe doing lots of knives.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I usually just use a file. :)
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+1:thumbup:

I use a 12" mill bastard file, or an XXcourse DMT stone, or sometimes 120 grit sandpaper.

I decent belt sander with the propper grits would be ideal, but for the money a file works just fine.:)
 
The Sharpmaker is capable of reprofiling, but it does take a tremendous amount of time with the standard stones. You can add the diamond rods to the kit and that will greatly reduce the amount of time you spend when compared to the Brown/Grey rods. Another way you can speed up the Sharpmaker is to clip sand paper around the stones and only sharpen on the flats of the rods (so you have a wider sand paper surface so you do not wear out the grit immediately like you do on the corners which I found that out with one experience) so you increase the grit without a large investment. You do wear through the wet/dry sandpaper this way, but it is worth the small investment for increased speed.

That being said, I have grown to like using a Harbor Freight or Grizzly belt sander to rebevel with an 80 - 120 grit belt and then sharpen on the standard Sharpmaker setup for the actual edge which in this case is usually a micro bevel.

One more alternative is to shop the local yard sales (if your area does that, I'm in a very rural area, so they are quite popular) for a used bench grinder, then pick up a set of the paper wheels richard j is fond of promoting on this forum! I picked up a free grinder from a buddy cleaning out his shop and added the wheels from Grizzly. Just make sure to measure you can remove the guards from the bench grinder and that you know the diameter of the drive shaft so you can order a set of wheels and it will work when you get them!

As others have said, files can work just fine if your trying to watch the "bottom line".

Let us know what you decide to do for your reprofiling needs.

Cheers,

Doug
 
ChapmanPreferred said:
The Sharpmaker is capable of reprofiling, but it does take a tremendous amount of time with the standard stones. You can add the diamond rods to the kit and that will greatly reduce the amount of time you spend when compared to the Brown/Grey rods. Another way you can speed up the Sharpmaker is to clip sand paper around the stones and only sharpen on the flats of the rods (so you have a wider sand paper surface so you do not wear out the grit immediately like you do on the corners which I found that out with one experience) so you increase the grit without a large investment. You do wear through the wet/dry sandpaper this way, but it is worth the small investment for increased speed.
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Be easier to say, "The Sharpmaker is capable of reprofiling, it just sucks at it". :)

cbw
 
Try a coarser, faster stone. The DMT XXC can reprofile a knife in a few minutes. A bench grinder works even faster, maybe 20 seconds of actual grinding.

But yeah, if you're using some 1000 grit stone it can take an hour to set a new bevel. With the proper tools it can be done in 5 minutes.
 
ChapmanPreferred said:
Another way you can speed up the Sharpmaker is to clip sand paper around the stones and only sharpen on the flats of the rods (so you have a wider sand paper surface so you do not wear out the grit immediately like you do on the corners which I found that out with one experience) so you increase the grit without a large investment. You do wear through the wet/dry sandpaper this way, but it is worth the small investment for increased speed.
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wouldnt you have to stroke from the bottom of the rod to the top if using sanpaper? otherwise wouldnt the blade just demolish the sand paper?
 
THG said:
1 hour? What kind of soft-ass steel is that?
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Why do you ask, does it take you longer? I'm using benchstones, not a sharpmaker. One hour is considered a very long time. To answer your question, my knives are in the 60-67 rc range.
 
sweet_hitch-hiker said:
wouldnt you have to stroke from the bottom of the rod to the top if using sanpaper? otherwise wouldnt the blade just demolish the sand paper?
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On regular garnet sandpaper, it would. On silicon carbide sandpaper and some aluminum oxide sandpapers (like the Norton 3X and 3M Sandblaster stuff), it'll be fine.

Another thing that can be done is the old Cliff Stamp method of breaking a large 220 grit silicon carbide waterstone into hand-held chunks and using one of those piece with high pressure.
 
Actually, it is not a problem until you bring the bevels together and set the edge. Until then, I do not have any issue at all going with edge leading.
 
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