Serious Newbie Sharpening ?

HoB said:
You can get a tree-topping edge with the Sharpmaker and standard angles without any additional abrasives, there are several people here that have accomplished that, so it is very likely your technique. I have sharpened my knifes each probably anywhere between 50 and 100+ times and there is still plenty of room to improve for me. I am pretty sure you are carrying a burr from a previous step. It is very difficult to detect. I am not talking about the big burrs from rough shaping, but those that Verhoeven's microscope images show, for example.

You are at a point, where improvements in the edge become difficult to quantify. I would strongly recommend buying a Radio Shack microscope and to establish a consistent way of measuring your results. Whether you do newspaper cutting, or thread cutting or rubberband cutting or whatever else you might think of doesn't matter, but use something that clearly marks your progress.

On the chipping: I would bring out the coarse stones, and completely reset the edge. Sounds like it got weakened during factory sharpening. If that doesn't help, you got a lemon.
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I agree with this 100%. Practice, practice, and more practice, along with magnification to see what is going on at your edges will really improve your results. I would concentrate on getting the absolute sharpest edge I could at the coarsest grit you have, and go from there. Eventually you will be able to get hair popping and tree topping edges (and beyond with good steels) with the Spyderco medium rods, or even coarser stones than that. It just takes a lot of practice and OCD.

As Thom said, float glass and different abrasives are a real nice way to go for economical high grit finishing. I use 3M lapping films on float glass, but I have some diamond paste I'm going to try on some computer paper to see how my edges like it. It beats the cost of the really fine grit waterstones, and I propaply wouldn't be able to tell the difference, if any, in sharpness between the stone and the lapping film or diamond paste finishes.

Mike
 
They work excellent! Human arms and hands provide the convexity whether they want to or not and the float glass backing reduces the likelihood of rounding off the edge (though it can still happen and it did happen to me last night :o ).
 
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