ruining a knife with sharpening

N

nyfries

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Aug 5, 2009
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hey I have a super noob question, I carry a mini grip 555hg. It is my edc and i love it to death.

however i SUCK at sharpening. I sharpened the 555hg for 3-4 times since I have it and I feel I have done permanent damage to it. I use a cheap whetstone with coarse on one side and fine on another. My dad gave me the stone and I believe he use it to sharpened all the kitchen knife. When I run my blade on the stone sometimes it will dig in to the stone and may even scrap a little bit of the stone :(

I'm pretty sure my technique is very bad, I can get a workable edge though but never razor shape. this is a user knife so a bit of the tip is gone and after cutting through a few boxes and shredding some paper the edge is already reflecting light.

Is there any test I can do at home that will tell me how much edge is left on the blade or rather how much steel I have hack off through my horrible sharpening technique?

took some picture of the edge as best as I can. yes i know i'm a noob and I scratch the blade. I don't really care to be honest as long as my edge is still salvageable.

DSC_6656.jpg

DSC_6655.jpg


the blade is a 154cm and I have put an order in for the spyderco sharpmaker. I'm hoping I will be able to sharpened it properly with the sharpmaker and perhaps correct the tip to a point that I can puncture. Any knife guru can tell me if it possible to totally ruin a blade with horrible sharpening on whetstone even if i only did it 3 times?
 
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It is doubtful that you have ruined the blade. You probably have screwed up the bevels.

You can send it to Benchmade and have them fix the edge or you can find a professional to reset the edge bevel and sharpen it.

As far as the Sharpmaker, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to use it to reset the bevels. You need to get it fixed before sharpening it with the Sharpmaker.
 
Don't worry about it. Looking at your pics, I sure don't see any permanent damage. I have seen some really poor sharpening jobs administered with all manner of equipment, and that one really doesn't even rank as a disaster.

I DAGS for "knife sharpening instruction" and these jumped out at me for some helpful hints.

http://www.knifecenter.com/knifecenter/sharpen/instruct3.html

http://www.knifecenter.com/knifecenter/sharpen/instruct.html

Were I you, I would buy a less expensive knife to practice on and have at it. With sharpening, practice makes perfect.

Robert
 
Does not look at all like you've damaged the blade beyond repair.... that's quite difficult to do actually. Also, don't expect to get it razor sharp with just a cheap coarse/fine whetstone - without going into higher grits, it's quite difficult to do without stropping afterwards. You also don't want to use the coarse side ever unless the knife gets badly damaged and needs the edge rebevelled - the fine is fine for simple touch up.

As for your situation, you can either send it back to Benchmade for resharpening, contact Richard J and send it to him instead to get it insanely sharp via paper wheels, seek out someone locally, or learn how to do it yourself. While any of the above options are great, in the long run, knowing how to sharpen a knife properly yourself is invaluable knowledge. I would recommend learning how to do it with a simple whetstone and leather belt using old kitchen knives, then buying a sharpmaker or lanksy system.
 
Get some old kitchen knives and practice your sharpening technique. Work on your honing skills, try some of the ideas posted here, they all work well, but it does come down to honing your own sharpening skills. Proper sharpening is a life skill that is important
 
Maybe I'm the "noob", or maybe the pictures are too small, but I don't see anything wrong with that edge. It's straight and not chipped. It doesn't look like you've run the edge way up the blade and I don't see any scratches. I can't see if the bevel is even because you'd need to take the picture at a different angle and closer up.

I think that edge could fairly easily be made quite sharp again with a bit of effort. Maybe your only problem is that you don't have a fine enough stone for shaving sharpness. Have you tried a ceramic stick or anything finer than your "cheap stone"? On my combo stone, the "fine" side is more like medium (320 grit or so) and *barely* yields a shaving sharp edge. The edge will bite and pull hair, but *barely* shave it at all.

Moving up to a finer stone, it's easy to get it shaving sharp.

Maybe even the unfinished bottom of a ceramic coffee cup or a ceramic dinner plate would be worth a try. I definitely think you need something finer to get the edge you seem to be after.

You should also consider double edging, also known as double beveling, or micro beveling.. There's a sticky topic here in this forum on it. I'd also read Chad Ward's tutorial where he describes the method in detail. It's long, but you can skip around to get to the main idea if you need to.

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26036

Brian.
 
I think your problems are: (1) that you are sharpening at too high of an angle (spine of the blade tilted to high above the stone) hence you can dig into the stone surface; (2) that you are actually not honing long enough to remove adequate material (you are undersharpening not oversharpening); (3) once you get a real edge on the knife you will need a finer finish hone or a strop to refine the edge.

You really can't ruin a knife through manual honing in a finite amount of time. People ruin knives with grinders, belt sanders, power sharpeners. Working by hand your only risk of semipermanent harm is scratching the side of the blade and marring the appearance.

Try honing at a lower angle so that you widen your bevel to about twice as wide as it is now. Paint the side of your blade with a marker so you can see what you are doing. Make sure that you remove material all the way up to the edge and also material on the other side of the bevel sufficient to make it twice as wide. Do most of your work with your coarse hone. When you have the bevels you want using that go to the finer side to smooth the surface some. After that see if stropping on an old belt makes it feel like you got a sharp edge.

PS. This may take an hour or two to do by hand. Do Not use high pressure for any of this. As you get closer to the end of the process use lighter and lighter honing pressure.

PPS. I have best success sharpening 154CM using a diamond hone. It is abrasion resistant and does not like to get to the finest edge possible. If you have another knife with an AUS-8 or VG10 alloy blade you will see better results.
 
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Since getting my Lansky Alumina Ceramic Sharp Stick I've gotten better than I ever used to be.

I also use an old but good pair of Crock Sticks (ceramics at a set degree) and between the two I'm getting usable blades.

Hoping to get Paper Wheel system soon!
 
If you want I will sharpen it for you at a thin backbevel and polish it out to make it real pretty again. It will be thinner (about 10 degrees per side or so) for easy microbeveling when you get it back. In fact, I would end up raising the angle a few degrees for finish sharpening anyway if you wanted me to sharpen it, so there would already be a tiny microbevel on it. The edge is far from ruined. Use the tips from the others and maybe start out on a sharpmaker or aligner to get a feel for sharpening, then maybe take another crack at freehand. E mail me at gunmike1@comcast.net if you want me to sharpen it for you free of charge, just cover shipping.

Mike
 
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