Royally messed up for first time

C

Cushing H.

Joined
Jun 3, 2019
Messages
2,714
Aside from my very first blades, where I was purposefully working on some techniques and ignoring others, I have been pretty fortunate in that my results have been, although not up to the standards of many here, I think reasonably good. FFG grinds reasonably flat and uniform, edge profile maintained, and edge not overground as I refined to low BTE thickness.

yesterday I was grinding a petty (also trying 80% speed on the belt). All seemed to go pretty well, until I noticed that on one side I had appropriately flat ground back to the spine, I had not *quite* eliminated the initial 45 at the edge (trick of the light at the grinder had me missing it). Ok ... easy enough to fix: set on the flat, and adjust the pressure slightly towards the edge and work that side of the grind back towards the edge, right?

WRONG.

somehow managed to overgrind about 3/4 of the way towards the tip. Dinged both the profile AND the fully flat grind (I think I avoided overheating though). I was able to modify the profile to get rid of the edge flat. So it is no longer quite the right tip profile for a petty (I suspect a casual user would not notice, but YOU guys would). Also, I could not *quite* get rid of the non-flat bevel in that area ... I definitely started feeling like I was just “chasing the grind” in that area ... and if I kept trying I was just likely to overgrind the edge again. So the profile is not quite right, and the flat is also not quite right, and for the first time I find myself considering starting. “Rejects” bin.

so the question is .. I know I have been lucky so far ... and how often do you guys end up saying- no .. that blade is not right ... I am going to trash it and start over?
 
Ok .... giving it a day, I went back and looked at this blade. I think I can (more or less) correct flat-grind (and associated edge) issue.

But, I am going to have to ..... Gasp....... hand sand :-(

(I knew it would happen someday...... )
 
I ruined a blade by leaving it in ferric for too long just two weeks ago. I fell asleep watching Frozen with my kids lol

I ended up fixing it up best I could and put the handle on anyway. I do this 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there most of the time so for me, I really didn't want to lose that blade - I already had the scales fitted up/taken back off, etc

It was in the acid so long I lost ~1/3 the stock thickness. Boy was that sucker easy as all heck to sharpen though lol

Other times I've screwed up a plunge and tossed the blade immediately
 
More often than folks realize there is enough meat on a blade to fix a lot of mistakes. But some will end up in a reject pile. Rejects work well as shop knives, gifts and wind chimes.
 
Ok ... I was actually able to, more or less, correct the worst of things with hand sanding. Contrary to my first experience, this actually went pretty easily .... and I can even see why some people here have commented that they find hand sanding relaxing. Mind you though, that is not to say I will do that on all my blades in the future! :-)

It was, however, not all that easy going back to the grinder to get rid of the diagonal marks and re-establish the edge-to-spine appearance of the grind marks. It almost seems that, once you start hand sanding, you really need to just continue with that???

(Because someone will ask this: I needed to go back to the grinder because this is the second of two knives in a matched set - and the first one was done entirely on the grinder, and finished with a scotch bright finish.....)
 
I just put it on the shelf and come back to it again a few years later when my skills have improved. I have mined plenty of old screw-ups for good knives.
 
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