Sharpening a recurve blade

M

mattoverboard209

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Aug 25, 2014
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hey I have a ZT0350 and I've tried sharpening it but the with the recurve blade it's difficult, I'm using a ceramic rod but I just can't seek to get it sharp again. any tips?
 
S30v is very difficult to sharpen with a simple ceramic rod. You might want to consider buying a Sharpmaker, or simply practice holding a consistent angle. You can draw a line on the cutting edge of the knife with a permanent marker, and as you swipe the blade on the sharpening media, the ink from the marker will be gone from the places where the stone is actually removing metal.
There is a forum entirely dedicated to sharpening and other tinkering and embellishments. General Knife discussion is geared more for discussing the knives themselves.
 
mattoverboard209 said:
hey I have a ZT0350 and I've tried sharpening it but the with the recurve blade it's difficult, I'm using a ceramic rod but I just can't seek to get it sharp again. any tips?
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If you're otherwise comfortable using a rod for sharpening your other knives(?), you might look into a diamond rod for the S30V. Ceramic is mainly for finishing/refining, and won't work very quickly to fix a very dull edge in high-wear steel like S30V. Diamond will get the apex crisp again, quite quickly and with a light touch; you can follow that with your ceramic, for cleaning up any burrs left. If your finishing strokes are good with the diamond, you don't have to use the ceramic at all, if you don't want to. With the diamond, always keep pressure feather-light, and focus on maintaining a steady angle with a comfortable grip. 'Comfortable' = not so tight as to unconsciously apply too much pressure; it's easy to lean into it too much, if the grip is too tight.


David
 
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I often use some various grit wet/dry sandpaper wrapped around a golf grip that is itself mounted to a wooden dowel. Sandpaper around just a dowel will probably do just fine. Try that and see if you can work the edge a little better.
 
RevDevil said:
S30v is very difficult to sharpen with a simple ceramic rod. You might want to consider buying a Sharpmaker, or simply practice holding a consistent angle. You can draw a line on the cutting edge of the knife with a permanent marker, and as you swipe the blade on the sharpening media, the ink from the marker will be gone from the places where the stone is actually removing metal.
There is a forum entirely dedicated to sharpening and other tinkering and embellishments. General Knife discussion is geared more for discussing the knives themselves.
Click to expand...

RevDevil's got the right idea. For recurves I just use my Sharpmaker. I only use the corners of the stones on all grits, and don't use the flats. The flat sides of the stones don't make contact with the curvature of the blade correctly. Just using the corners I have been able to keep recurved blades sharp with very little effort.
 
Yeah, ceramic rods in general doesn't work all that great on recurves, especially the more extreme ones in more wear-resistant steels. I have found some triangular ceramic/alumina rods (like the Sharpmaker) to work best. I think Spyderco made a Duckfoot diamond-coated sharpener at some point... or maybe it was alumina as well...

Also try attaching some autobody sandpaper to a wooden dowel. Helped me a lot when I first tried sharpening recurves with no specialized equipment. Also fairly easy and inexpensive to vary the grits.

I've also used old glossy fashion magazines as a strop. Just roll it up and go to it. Certain mailing envelopes also work. Has to be the very glossy thick almost plastic-feeling kind.
 
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