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Sharpening 3 & 4V
- Thread starter Teesac81
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oldmanwilly
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Please follow this advice. Practice on some cheap kitchen knives you have around, a dull hunting knife in the back of a drawer, or even some inexpensive folding knives. Work on your technique until you get comfortable maintaining pressure and angles. Try a different types of steel (stainless and carbon) being used in blades of varying thickness and design. You don't want to scratch up your fancy new knives.
Take your time and try not to get frustrated. I've been freehand sharpening since I was a kid and I still find ways to improve each time.
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Yes mate, you never stop learning.
You are welcome.
Mr. Outdoors55 also made a review of this stone in one of his videos but I can't find it at the moment.
Anyhow, I think this stone will do a good job for you.
Perhaps it's worth mentioning.... he is using so called 'a role of thumb' or 'half thumb role' to find and maintain a sharpening angle.
Mr. Neevesknives is using the same 'thumb' technique. Check the video below. He explained a clever 'permanent marker' trick to help beginners find and maintain sharpening angle. I used this trick when learning freehand sharpening.
Long video and lots of talk but you don't need to watch the whole video.... just a few minutes starting at about 8:30.
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Yep yep yep. A black permanent marker is something which you should have with your knife sharpening gear anyways, for marking the bevel so you can see where the stone is hitting. So as long as you have the marker already, and while you're learning freehand, you might as well try out the thumb marker trick.
Yes, I have a couple of old kitchen knives and a folder I found in the dirt years ago that are in poor condition that I will start with.
Those cheap kitchen knives should be relatively easy to sharpen because they are usually made from inexpensive stainless steel. But sometimes they're not heat treated properly. Keep that in mind if you're having problems with any one specific knife.
And there could be a few bad spots on the edge due to the heat of the grinding process when they put an edge on the knife at the factory. Those spots could be softer than the rest of the edge. So just keep that in mind if you run into any issues with specific spots along the edge. I ran into this problem myself recently. The solution to that issue is to keep sharpening until you fully remove the bad spots. Once you do that, it's smooth sailing for the rest of the life of the knife.
Thank you for that advice. I figure that even if the kitchen steel is different from the tool steel, at least I can get some practice at holding a consistent angle.
So yeah, sharpening is hard. It looks easy in the videos. My paring knife is virtually a shiv now. Sharper than before, but I am having a hell of a time getting the bevels even on both sides, and the burr goes from one side to another and I never notice a moment where it releases. It just seems like it’s gone after I go back and forth between sides. The steel is whatever Global Japanese kitchen knives are made of, so I’m guessing the diamond stone won’t hog away steel the same on a 4V knife that’s high hardness.
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Persistence is the key. I was still a teen when I was first learning how to sharpen. Now it takes me minutes to sharpen and edges often look almost as if I used guided system. But they usually get a little bit convexed over time. That's all normal. Just practice.
The tip is the most challenging. Due to the curve of the blade toward the tip, I have to curve my sharpening stroke to match. My bevel gets screwed up there.
That will also get better with time. Just follow the edge and be relaxed
oldmanwilly
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It is tricky at first, but as said above, persistence is key. Try not to get too frustrated with it as you will get better with practice. A couple of pointers:
1. If you get to the point where you're chasing a burr from one side of the edge to the other, then you are probably ready to change to a finer grit. Maintain the same angles and light pressure until you start chasing the burr again. Eventually you will transition to hones (I prefer brown, then white ceramics from Spyderco) and strops, if you have them (don't worry about stropping now, focus on the stones first). The burr should get finer and straighter with each progression through your grits, eventually seeming to disappear entirely.
2. Regarding the tip, it took me years to figure out how to not only curve my stroke across the stone but to also slightly lift the handle upwards as the stone came into contact with the tip. Until you learn this little trick you will probably end up with slightly rounded tips. I will try to find a youtube video showing you what I mean.
3. Use a sharpie to color over the edge on your knife. Check the edge after each pass over the stone and you will see exactly where your edge contacts the stone and are therefore removing material. This trick will help you adjust your angle until you remove sharpie, and therefore steel, all the way down to the apex of the edge. Many people will sharpen their blades, removing so much material as to re-profile their edge while never fully reaching the apex, and get frustrated that their knife still isn't "sharp." This sharpie trick helps you avoid that, although the best indicator is feeling a burr along the edge (which you already seem to know how to do).
I forgot about the Sharpie trick. Thank you for the reminder.
oldmanwilly
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Following up with some videos:
1. This is a good channel for knife nerd info. Here he discusses his favorite freehand system. He doesn't get to the meat of it until about the 6 minute mark, apparently his Worksharp stones have a feature that alleviate the need to lift the handle as your stroke reaches the belly and tip. Skip to 11:30 to see exactly what I was describing in my earlier post (watch how his right hand lifts the handle as the belly and blade come into contact with the stone):
2. Here's another good one. Watch his left hand and how he slightly lifts the handle as he come near the tip:
1. This is a good channel for knife nerd info. Here he discusses his favorite freehand system. He doesn't get to the meat of it until about the 6 minute mark, apparently his Worksharp stones have a feature that alleviate the need to lift the handle as your stroke reaches the belly and tip. Skip to 11:30 to see exactly what I was describing in my earlier post (watch how his right hand lifts the handle as the belly and blade come into contact with the stone):
2. Here's another good one. Watch his left hand and how he slightly lifts the handle as he come near the tip:
Welcome to the club. The only thing I could say is: ''practice makes master ..... if .... master makes practice''.
Mr. Outdoors55 explained his method of burr removal in a few sharpening videos. Usually he doesn't progress through multiple stones. In most cases he only use one diamond plate - coarse or fine and a strop.
First he sharpens one side of the blade till he gets a burr. Then he flips the blade and sharpens the other side till he gets a burr. In this phase he also pays some attention to get more or less even bevels on both sides.
After that he does a very light alternating passes at the same angle as he was sharpening. This way he minimizes the burr. You can't remove the burr with those light passes - you can just minimize it to some degree.
The last phase is leather strop. He removes the burr with a leather strop loaded with diamond compound. Lately he is using 6 micron diamond compound.
I don't know about other forum members but his method works for me.
You might find this video interesting and informative, if you haven't watched it already. Just do exactly the same.
I’ve been practicing for about 15-30 minutes daily. I used the sharpie trick today, and it is slicing paper off a coarse grit stone and a strop.
Looks good to me.
Did you try the ''wood test'' after sharpening?
Congratulations on your progress.
Watch the tip, you might be flicking it off the stone at the end of your stroke or something or perhaps already rounded just a bit?
Looks really good though.
