S7 sharpens like warm butter

hardheart

hardheart

Joined
Sep 19, 2001
Messages
8,968
There's a reason knives aren't made of warm butter, I loathe this stuff. My 4th attempt to get a mere 4 1/4" of edge consistently sharp, and it isn't working. I have really lost all reason to clog up and wear down my stones, dirty my hands, and waste my time with this knife.

Don't mind the thread, just wanted to vent a little before I break out the barkeeper's friend, nagura, pink eraser, and scotchbrite.:rolleyes:
 
crazy.....


I don't think I'd classify S7 as "hard to sharpen"....maybe more like "too easy to sharpen"....as in you gotta watch out for a flip-flopping micro-bevel that never pops off or aligns.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the steel...but I won't diss it because I really have little experience working with it.

What I can tell you is what I see on the charts....0.55% carbon, high toughness...low wear-resistance....sounds like what you'd expect from 1060 (a common sword steel) or 440B (a common production knife steel). And I'll echo your sentiments...I don't like sharpening these either...for the same reasons. :thumbdn:


How confident are you in the heat-treat? If the HT is off...would definitely make things worse.

Dan

p.s. crucible's chart on S7 is here: http://www.crucibleservice.com/datash/dsS7v6.pdf?CFID=2035720&CFTOKEN=39367403
 
My thoughts on S7 (based mainly on use of a dog father and scrapper6) have been mixed, and are similar to Daniel's.

On one hand S7 is basically stupid tough. Everything I've done with it I've never had any problems at all. This includes digging, chopping hardwood, prying and the like.

On the other hard, through somewhat minimal use the knife looses its bite. after just a few logs of oak, the bite is nearly gone.

For sharpening; all I really had to do was 10 strokes on the sharpmaker fine corners, then 10 strokes on the flat edges. I then stropped the blade and it was back up to easily shaving sharpness. This process took all of about 5 minutes.

hardheart, if your looking to get rid of the knife, throw me a PM.
 
I've hard no problems sharpening S7, but I only have one knife with the stuff (Justin Gingrich custom).
 
part of the problem is an uneven primary grind and an old uneven factory edge. trying to play around with the edge angle to get a burr along the entire length is causing me to remove a lot of metal where I don't want to. I would really like a touch more wear resistance. I switched to convexing, but still have about a half inch of edge that won't clean up. Didn't want to tear into it too much with the D8XX, but looks like I don't have a choice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top