Rounded the tip off...

[Christian]

of my BM 14200 while using the WorkSharp knife and tool sharpener. Lost 1/16th or so of an inch- no big deal. Took me two hours to re-profile by hand. Any body else have the WorkSharp and any tips to prevent rounding tips? I got it to help cut down on re-profiling time. The only other knife I sharpened with it is an ancient Gerber Balance plus 8" chef knife, and it turns out it rounded the tip of that one, too.

 

[MVF]

What timing- I was just going to post a question about this. I noticed on the WorkSharp video he just pulls the knives straight through without any angle change for the tips and wondered how that would work.

Did you do the reprofile with the WorkSharp? I wish you had put "WorkSharp" in the title of your thread to get those guys' attention. Have you emailed their rep that was posting here? Do you think this will continue to be a problem, or can you "technique" your way around it now that you know about it? Seems like they should give directions on how to avoid this happening.

Sorry for the 20 questions, but I was just about to pull the trigger on one of these, and now I wonder. Thanks for posting about it!

 

[cramsey3006]

I almost rounded a tip off with mine, but didn't. I don't pull the blade through, I stop the machine with the tip still on the belt. It's the same technique that you to use if sharpening on a 1x30 belt sander. As long as you don't pull the tip completely off the belt, you won't have a chance round it off.

I think that you could pull the blade through without rounding the tip without any problems, I'm just a bit heavy handed at times. The key is maintaining a straight pull across and decreasing pressure to keep the tip from "dropping" across the edge of the belt. Keep in mind, you're pulling the blade across the belts relatively fast. The instructions say that it should only take a few seconds to pull an 8" blade across. If you're doing a 3-4" blade, then you're only talking about a second or 2 to pull through.

I had sharpened the tip off of my Kershaw Skyline with my Lansky Diamond set. I re-profiled it on the Work Sharp, took a couple of minutes and it was good as new. Much easier and faster to re-profile with the Work Sharp than doing it by hand.

Like any other power sharpening method, it pays to practice it on a couple of cheap or beater blades before using it on the nice stuff.

 

[Incahiker]

Just curious as to what you mean by "I stop the machine with the tip still on the belt". Do you mean you turn off the machine with the tip on the belt? Please explain further.

 

[cramsey3006]

That's what I mean. The 3 position switch allows the machine either to run until you let go of it, or it can run non-stop. I use it so that when I let go of the switch the belt stops. I don't pull the blade off of the belt.

 

[Christian]

What timing- I was just going to post a question about this. I noticed on the WorkSharp video he just pulls the knives straight through without any angle change for the tips and wondered how that would work.

Did you do the reprofile with the WorkSharp? I wish you had put "WorkSharp" in the title of your thread to get those guys' attention. Have you emailed their rep that was posting here? Do you think this will continue to be a problem, or can you "technique" your way around it now that you know about it? Seems like they should give directions on how to avoid this happening.

Sorry for the 20 questions, but I was just about to pull the trigger on one of these, and now I wonder. Thanks for posting about it!

I think I will just practice more with kitchen knives and beaters, but I am pretty sure I will just re-profile my EDC's by hand with my DMT Diafolds. The WorkSharp seems to work better on thinner knives, anyways.

 

[cramsey3006]

My Ka-bar FIN drop point blade is .200" thick. As long as the grind of the blade thins down enough toward the edge to fit the slot, it'll work fine. I did my BSA hatchet with 25 degree outdoor guide slot (it's wider than the 20 degree slot) and it was fine. The hatchet head is much thicker than any knife blade.

 

[WorkSharpEngineer]

Hopefully I can be of some help. I work for Darex in Ashland and am the designer of WorkSharp products. The WSKTS can remove material fairly quickly on the coarse belts so there is a possibility of rounding the tip. There should be a tech tip in the manual to help with this. I’ll double check it when I get back in the shop tomorrow.

Basically, cramsey3006 got it right. To prevent rounding off the tip, release the switch when the tip reaches the belt. It helps to pull the knife through slower until you get accustom to it. (I tend to pull through at around 1-2” per second.) Avoid moving too slowly on the coarser grits when near the tip of very thin blades such as a fillet knife.

You may also find using the open guide can help prevent tip rounding. The open guide only supports the knife behind the belt so that blade is allowed to “slip out” before the tip crosses the belt. I prefer using the open guide when shaping or profiling a knife. I’m basically free hand shaping the blade but I use the guide as a reference surface to help control the bevel angle.

MVF, when sharpening most knives, you can simply pull the blade straight through. The narrow belt will conform to most profiles including highly curved edges like spay and hawksbill blades. To shape or re-profile a blade, it is best to lift or lower the handle as you described to follow the shape you want.

Tip: you may want to try a rounded tip on one blade. The blade does look strange this way but the cutting edge of the round tip will be very sharp. I’ve tested both pointed and rounded tips and found each has its advantages. The rounded tip edge will last longer and cut better in some cases but it does look strange.

Christian, call if you want help walking through this. Ask for Dan. They’ll transfer you back to me and I’ll try to answer any questions you have. Thanks, Dan

 

[Christian]

Hopefully I can be of some help. I work for Darex in Ashland and am the designer of WorkSharp products. The WSKTS can remove material fairly quickly on the coarse belts so there is a possibility of rounding the tip. There should be a tech tip in the manual to help with this. I’ll double check it when I get back in the shop tomorrow.

Basically, cramsey3006 got it right. To prevent rounding off the tip, release the switch when the tip reaches the belt. It helps to pull the knife through slower until you get accustom to it. (I tend to pull through at around 1-2” per second.) Avoid moving too slowly on the coarser grits when near the tip of very thin blades such as a fillet knife.

You may also find using the open guide can help prevent tip rounding. The open guide only supports the knife behind the belt so that blade is allowed to “slip out” before the tip crosses the belt. I prefer using the open guide when shaping or profiling a knife. I’m basically free hand shaping the blade but I use the guide as a reference surface to help control the bevel angle.

MVF, when sharpening most knives, you can simply pull the blade straight through. The narrow belt will conform to most profiles including highly curved edges like spay and hawksbill blades. To shape or re-profile a blade, it is best to lift or lower the handle as you described to follow the shape you want.

Tip: you may want to try a rounded tip on one blade. The blade does look strange this way but the cutting edge of the round tip will be very sharp. I’ve tested both pointed and rounded tips and found each has its advantages. The rounded tip edge will last longer and cut better in some cases but it does look strange.

Christian, call if you want help walking through this. Ask for Dan. They’ll transfer you back to me and I’ll try to answer any questions you have. Thanks, Dan

Thanks for the reply, Dan. My problem is I just don't have enough knives (that are dull) to sharpen for practice- I think I need to hit up the neighbors for their kitchen knives to sharpen.

Since I know you guys are here, I just wanted to let you know that I do like the product. I just need to practice more....

 

[MVF]

Thanks for the reply Dan, it's good to know you're available. Now I can't wait to try one. And just when I was finally going to let go of my cheap knives!

 

[WorkSharpEngineer]

Thanks for the reply Dan, it's good to know you're available. Now I can't wait to try one. And just when I was finally going to let go of my cheap knives!

Thanks, give us a call if you have any questions.

Keep your inexpensive knives. They can be fun to try different grinds on. Some import steels turn out to be excellent and some are junk. I've put 15degree single bevel convex grinds on those inexpensive bucket-o-knives at the cash register. Some were junk but others held a hair popping edge.

 

[Chris Chang]

Hi there I am new to this forum .
I have been using the ken onion worksharp with bga with good results. The only downside is that my knives with pointy tips usually have their tips rounded a little bit by the belts.

I move the edge till the tip is half way across the belt and lift it off .I have never let the blade slide off the belt .however my tips are still being rounded off for almost all my blades .I have tried with varying pressure or speed settings but am still facing this problem. I worked around this by stopping short of the tip when sharpening on the system .as I needed to slow the blade as it reached the tip, I end up grinding the portion of the blade near the tip slightly more than the rest of the blade .Not really a solution .

I have resorted to just pulling the knife through to the middle of the belt and grinding down the blade from the spine to restore the tip .

Any one else is observing this ?

Another issue I notice is that the bevel length is usually longer on one side of the blade compared to another (right side). I speculate that the right side needs to be ground by lefties. Most folks are right handers so when grinding the knife the side ground by the left hand is often at a steeper angle . (Referring to the factory profile). I noticed this difference in bevel on zt and spyderco knives. Another explanation is that this is user error however between every pass I place the blade face back on the guide on the bga to check my angles. On some blades I had to grind one side twice as much as the other to correct this a little.

Any one else face this ?

Thank you for your patience on reading this .

 

[Lapedog]

I think I will just practice more with kitchen knives and beaters, but I am pretty sure I will just re-profile my EDC's by hand with my DMT Diafolds. The WorkSharp seems to work better on thinner knives, anyways.

Just reprofile with the machine to set some flat edge bevels and do the tip by hand on the diafolds.

This is coming from a guy that doesn’t own a work sharp. Even sharpening by hand it took ke a while to learn how to not round the tip.

 

[T Abell]

of my BM 14200 while using the WorkSharp knife and tool sharpener. Lost 1/16th or so of an inch- no big deal. Took me two hours to re-profile by hand. Any body else have the WorkSharp and any tips to prevent rounding tips? I got it to help cut down on re-profiling time. The only other knife I sharpened with it is an ancient Gerber Balance plus 8" chef knife, and it turns out it rounded the tip of that one, too.

I've done that more than once. Actually took enough off of a Kershaw to have to send it back for a replacement blade. It sucks.

IMO the trick with the worksharp is to stop about 1/8" before the tip. If you think about it with a pocketknife, that part doesn't see a lot of abuse anyway so it shouldn't be dulled very much.

I don't know if it's because there is so little metal at the tip that it just grinds it away really fast or what but one thing I have started doing is using my WS without the guard. I can eyeball the angle pretty well (plus the belt flex will allow for you to be off a little bit without causing an issue) so I can see what I am doing better.

I've found myself using stone and steel more than the WS lately though. Depends on what I am doing.

I see a WorkSharp guy has responded as well.

 

[T Abell]

Thanks for the reply, Dan. My problem is I just don't have enough knives (that are dull) to sharpen for practice- I think I need to hit up the neighbors for their kitchen knives to sharpen.

Since I know you guys are here, I just wanted to let you know that I do like the product. I just need to practice more....

Hit up a thrift store for some old knives. Probably get plenty for very cheap and even if they are sharp, you can probably dull them up and then practice on them.

I'm a WorkSharp fan as well but sometimes I just like going back to the old ways with stuff. For me that is stone and steel.

 

[Beastchopper]

I did the same with my new ken onion worksharp grinder. I was trying to put a finer, sharper, convexed edge on my ontario sp-2. I jacked up the tip, buy fixed it when i sharpened the false edge.like T Abell said, i stay clear of the tip altogether apart from a few very careful touch ups.
I did screw up even worse though, and i haven't fixed it yet. I somehow ripped the entire cutting edge right off the knife! WTF. I think i ran the grinder too fast or something. Now i think i have to take a lot of metal off of each side with a low grit course belt in order to reestablish the edge. The trouble is, the sp-2 gets thick quickly with it's obtuse primary bevel. Anyone have any advice about how to fix this for a numbnuts like me?

 

[T Abell]

I did the same with my new ken onion worksharp grinder. I was trying to put a finer, sharper, convexed edge on my ontario sp-2. I jacked up the tip, buy fixed it when i sharpened the false edge.like T Abell said, i stay clear of the tip altogether apart from a few very careful touch ups.
I did screw up even worse though, and i haven't fixed it yet. I somehow ripped the entire cutting edge right off the knife! WTF. I think i ran the grinder too fast or something. Now i think i have to take a lot of metal off of each side with a low grit course belt in order to reestablish the edge. The trouble is, the sp-2 gets thick quickly with it's obtuse primary bevel. Anyone have any advice about how to fix this for a numbnuts like me?

I think your fix is just like you said - re-grind the edge.

I have the standard Worksharp and it only has two power settings - continuous on and hold-down on (let go and it shuts off). I used it last night on a CRKT Ripsnort, using an old fine belt with Bore Bright applied to it. Really finished the edge up nicely.

Watch the angle on the guide on the Ken Onion edition - that might be where you made a mistake. If you had it set to an overly obtuse angle (say 25 degrees instead of 20), it would do what you described. But it should be fixable.

Worksharp does have extra-coarse belts (green) for edge repair and regrinds. You can get them down to P80 (purple I think). I use the red and grey - and mostly the grey. I put the Bore Bright (the one without any granular stuff) on an old grey belt and it will act rather like stropping a knife. You can get leather belts for these things but I think I read that they can be hard on the machine.

As I stated earlier I have used mine without the guard. I can pretty much eyeball the angle. But I wouldn't do that with anything rougher than the fine belt (grey).

 

[T Abell]

Thanks, give us a call if you have any questions.

Keep your inexpensive knives. They can be fun to try different grinds on. Some import steels turn out to be excellent and some are junk. I've put 15degree single bevel convex grinds on those inexpensive bucket-o-knives at the cash register. Some were junk but others held a hair popping edge.

Do you guys have any sort of adjustable guard for the standard Worksharp? Kind of like the one on the Ken Onion? I'd like to have something like that but not bad enough to buy a whole new machine (the KO came out after I bought my machine).

Is there a Blade Grinder Attachment for a standard Worksharp?

 

[bgentry]

Freehanding gives you a lot more control over the grinding. The tip in particular seems pretty hard to control angle and pressure when using the guide. With freehanding, I can use both hands to guide the blade and put pressure where I want it. ...and I can feel it making contact. It's much closer to using a bench stone in these ways.

My video on freehanding with the WSKO is rather long... way too long actually... but I tried to talk about a lot of these points as I was making it. It might be worth watching if you have any interest in freehanding with a tiny belt sander like this.

Brian.

 

[Beastchopper]

Freehanding gives you a lot more control over the grinding. The tip in particular seems pretty hard to control angle and pressure when using the guide. With freehanding, I can use both hands to guide the blade and put pressure where I want it. ...and I can feel it making contact. It's much closer to using a bench stone in these ways.

My video on freehanding with the WSKO is rather long... way too long actually... but I tried to talk about a lot of these points as I was making it. It might be worth watching if you have any interest in freehanding with a tiny belt sander like this.

Brian.

I watched your video...21min,15 sec and you accidentally cut off half of it. It was interesting how as you closed in on the tip you adjusted the blade to grind a more obtuse angle. I'm going to go with your #6 speed locked on and set it up high on a table like you did. It looks like it works out much better than my one handed pull across technique. You're using it like you would if you had the grinder attachment, except holding the blade vertically instead of horizontally. I just hope I can get the fat military blade to cut paper like your kitchen knife.