Sharpening a BM 635

[Daneel]

I'm new to knives and picked up 4 knives I liked the look of along with a Spyderco Sharpmaker last week.

One thing I am disapointed with in the 635 is how dull the blade is when brand new (the other being the colour of the handle, it looks much lighter in person that in the photo on the BM site). It struggled to cut through the paking box it came it without a fair bit of pressure. I tried the Spyderco Cricket I bought and it was far easier. I don't understand how BM can offer a free sharpening service but send out new blades like this

Can anyone advise me how to sharpen this thing? I've never sharpened a knife before in my life.

I'm sure I'll be a lot happier with the knife once it's sharp, other than the 2 issues mentioned I like it a lot.

 

[WadeF]

Watch the Sharpmaker video just for a little background info and how to set up the Sharpmaker.

Then take a black magic marker and mark both sides of the edge. Then take a couple passes with the grey medium stones at the 40 degree setting and see where the marker is being removed. If it's right along the very edge you're in luck and won't have a lot of work to do. You can just follow Sal's instructions and work your way up from the grey corners, grey flats, white corners, white flats. You may not have to spend much time on the grey stones.

I was lucky with my last BM purchase, a Doug Ritter Grip, where the edge was 40 degrees or less so I was able to easily touch it up with the Sharpmaker.

If you're removing marker away from the edge, up where the edge bevel meets the blade's grind, then you have some work to do. You will need to remove metal until you get teh 40 degree angle all the way to the edge. For better performance you may want to do this at the 30 degree setting and once you have a 30 degree edge move to the white corners at 40 degrees and put on a micro bevel at 40 degrees.