Say you want to touch up a knife.

R

Rhodies

Joined
Jul 27, 2017
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Maybe your knife is just dull or moderately sharp. I doubt you'd go down to a 120gr stone but perhaps start out with a 220/400 or a 600? Thanks
 
No need for a 120 grit unless the edge is overly thick or damaged. A 600 should be just fine for a routine touch up.
 
Dull and moderately sharp are two different stages of edge degradation and maintenance would primarily rely on the alloy, and hardness.

If the alloy had some Vanadium, Niobium, Tungsten (Wolfram), or other element resulting in high hardness carbides, I would want Diamonds to cut it, and I would probably go down to a coarse stone.

If it was a simple carbon steel (1084, 1095, etc), I would probably use a Norton Crystolon, and then work up to a DMT XXF if wanted.

TLDR; It depends on the alloy, hardness and damage type/severity.
 
Rhodies said:
Maybe your knife is just dull or moderately sharp. I doubt you'd go down to a 120gr stone but perhaps start out with a 220/400 or a 600? Thanks
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Here are a few past posts where I discuss that in some detail or at least with much verbiage.
Do you dare ?

There are, of course lots of good info at those links by many more experienced than I so enjoy that.
For the knife work I do I need a fairly high degree of sharpness for some what critical cuts (has to be cut right and often has to look top shelf professional when I am done.
I don't let those edges get very dull before getting them back to full sharp so often I can just use the ceramic stone mentioned.
Click on the blue lines of text bellow; they are links to threads.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/gayle-bradley-one-spyderco-ultra-fine-rod-oh-‘ell-yah.1459904/

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/why-i-like-simpler-blade-steels.1434055/#post-16525649

And finally one of my most recent posts about the same sharpening / touch up topic.

This time a real surprise for me in how well it worked.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...blade-before-use.1531699/page-2#post-17600430

Keeping in mind most of these knives are quite shallow bevel angle and really good steel that has , for the most part, been used as carefully as possible. (not hammered through any steel ammo boxes or used for splitting any cinder blocks.

Hear’s a photo of the Spyderco ceramic rods.

This is BY FAR not all I use. I very often sharpen my knives on an Edge Pro Apex using four or five different grits or I use my full size Shapton bench stones free hand for several grits.

First I try the Ultra Fine ceramic triangle rod though.

It’s not for the very high vanadium alloy steels such as S90V, S110V etc. I just use diamond stones exclusively for those steels and I am very happy with the results.
IMG_4162.jpg
 
I use a strop loaded with some 600grit compound suspended in grease recommended by Big Chris.It works amazingly well,alot better than any compound ive tried before.
 
Strop it. If it's beyond stropping then fine grit on the stones a few times or use whatever grit you used last. Then strop it.
 
no way would i go so low for a touch up. Spyderco medium ceramic at worst for me. I don't like to sharpen off blade steel any more than is absolutely necessary. So typically i would first strop. If strop didn't get me where i wanted then i would go to the fine ceramic. If the blade won't slice paper well then i would go to the spyderco medium ceramic.
 
Depends on which knife. But usually for my EDC which is a spyderco endura in VG10 I will take a few swipes on a shapton pro 1k my kitchen knives I do the same but usually on a shapton pro 5k or 8k depending on the knife.
 
Rhodies said:
Maybe your knife is just dull or moderately sharp. I doubt you'd go down to a 120gr stone but perhaps start out with a 220/400 or a 600? Thanks
Click to expand...

If you're aiming to keep the same edge finish as when the edge was freshly-sharpened, I'd just go straight back to whatever stone was used to create that finish, UNLESS the edge is really dull and/or damaged, needing a full regrinding of the bevels; then go as far back as is needed to fix that. For example, if your edge was finished to 600-grit and was just moderately dull, then just use the 600 to restore it. Heavier wear or edge damage, like severe rolling/chipping, might justify going back to something like 220/320. I've almost never felt any need to go lower than that, unless I'm completely grinding new edge geometry on very large or thick blades.

An exception might be if the original finish was highly polished and had just lost it's bite; in which case, going back one more grit step (coarser) might be a good idea, to make sure you've got a perfectly crisp apex before polishing again.


David
 
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Depends what I'm using the knife for. If I want a toothy slicing edge then I may go that low, but if I want more of a push-cutting edge then I'll only go as low as I have to to effectively remove the dull spots, then work up to whatever degree of finish is most advantageous for the work I'm doing.
 
For "touch up", I take you to mean not a full edge profile or edge reset, but also something more than just stropping. I agree there's an intermediate step between just stropping, and full blown sharpening, where you need to go to a stone and actually remove a little metal to get back to optimal sharpness.

For this, I've been doing a few super light passes on the highest grit stone that I finished the knife on (assuming I remember--I don't always :-)). In practice, here are the two stones that get used most for touch ups: the Arctic Fox bench stone (400 grit) for all steels that are not high carbide steels, and the DMT or Ultrasharp diamond 1200 grit plates for all high carbide steels. In my usage, basically anything in that range of 300/400 up to 1200 has worked fine.
 
Wowbagger said:
It’s not for the very high vanadium alloy steels such as S90V, S110V etc. I just use diamond stones exclusively for those steels and I am very happy with the results.
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So, somehow I missed from earlier that you were a big Sharpmaker user, I thought you were a combined guided sharpening system of some type, + freehand. You must have a lot of sharpening gear. :D

On the high carbide steels like the examples you mention, do you really find the Sharpmaker diamond stones are effective for the full range of sharpening tasks (including edge profiling/reset, all the way thru finishing)? I don't have anything as hard as S110v, but have a number of the others, I just don't like the results I get from the diamond stones that much. Sticking with just the "touch up" type of sharpening that OP refers to, I think these could work for that. And realistically, "touch up" is the entire use case for the Sharpmaker. The problem is even restricting the diamond stones to touch up usage, the 400 mesh is not really as high of a finishing option as I'd want for a more expensive folder in a higher end steel. What I've been experimenting with lately in the Sharpmaker just for fun, is those Congress Tools Moldmaster SiC stones that fit in the Sharpmaker. I posted about it recently. I now have a pair of SiC stones each in 150, 240, 400, 600, and with these, you can cut any steel including high carbide ones, and the 600 gives you a really nice but still toothy finished edge. These are seriously a good option for Sharpmaker users, IMHO, although the one wildcard item I haven't figured out yet: how long will those SiC stones last? I assume they need to be lapped, of course, but not sure how long until they become unusable. You can see little puffs of the abrasive coming off with every stroke, especially on the coarser stones. But man, do they work, I love these stones and get way better edges using them than the Spyderco diamond stones.
 
maximus83 said:
So, somehow I missed from earlier that you were a big Sharpmaker user, I thought you were a combined guided sharpening system of some type, + freehand. You must have a lot of sharpening gear. :D
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I thought I had too much sharpening gear until I saw some photos of sharpening gear members here have. Apparently one can not have "too much" sharpening gear.

But you are correct sir ! I have no Sharp Maker. The only triangle rods I have are the ones shown, both Ultra Fine. One I keep at work or carry with me and one I keep safe at home.

When I touch up an edge I use one rod hand held. I think they are very useful this way.

The diamond gear I have is all plates and hand held paddles and my aligner stones.
IMG_3430.jpg
 
Wowbagger said:
When I touch up an edge I use one rod hand held. I think they are very useful this way.
Click to expand...

I've always liked these with M4 but let me show you what I mean.

I sharpened my PM2M4 with my Edge Pro to a "mere" 4,000 Shapton Glass stone made for the Edge Pro. I say mere because I often go to at least 8,000 and up to 15,000 with my hand held Shapton bench stones.

Anyway she was quite adequate after the Edge Pro, pretty polished . . . nice mirror looking bevels if you didn't start looking too close with magnification. The edge was hair whittling.

I used the knife for a week.
then . . .
I butter fingers and dropped the knife. I don't know what all it collided with, bounced off some stuff . . . not too bad . . . came to rest on a plywood floor.

I looked at it when I got home and it had some edge dings and some dullish spots.
I figured I would do what I could to get it touched up to finish out the week and then sharpen it right on the Edge Pro on Sunday.

After getting the slightest, slightest bur using ONLY the Spyderco Ultra Fine Triangle rod and then getting rid of the bur with super light edge leading strokes about half the length of the rod alternating one stroke per side I was able to get rid of all the edge dings.

When I took the edge to my arm hair to see if it would cut anything . . . my highest hope was that it would shave pretty well . . .

. . . as I brought the edge into my arm hair it caught on the hair and topped them off.
I kid you not. Tree topping off a ceramic stone. THAT IS SHARPER than it had been off the Edge Pro.
I don't think I had a false bur edge . . . I mean I debured that off.

HAPPY DOG !

PS: and there were no catches when I sliced the edge on my finger nail draw cutting wise. I mean it was just as smooth and consistent feeling as could be.

Today after using it at work the edge is great (meaning no false edge that rolled or anything; still feels perfect drawn over my nail)
 
I often use a leather belt with cheap white compound (came with the belt seems to last a really long time) on a 1 by 30, this is fast enough to just barely be adequate for regular sharpening to the best part is it gets to what looks like a convex mirror.
 
I set up something like that in the eighties at a place I worked for many years. We used it for the box knives. Un box a bunch of stuff and cut up the crates for recycling and then strop so they are sharp for the next round. The board was roughly as long and I tied one end to a vertical post. Just let go and it is out of the way.

I put the yellow stropping compound on it.

Worked well enogh that others who couldn't care less about knives could actually improve the edges with it. I found it was kind of a gathering place to talk after locking the doors. A couple of people would stand there and shoot the bull and absent mindedly strop their pocket knives. I don't know if they actually did any good to the edges but gave 'em something to do with their hands while they talked.
 
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