sharpening a recurve

No, that don´t work. You can use a diamond rod like this...

[video=youtube;qxJMdq7mX2M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxJMdq7mX2M[/video]

or a Spyderco Sharpmaker.

Kind regards,

Andre
 
KB3UBW said:
i am in the process of purchasing a ZT0350, and i want some advice on sharpening the recurve, the sharpener that i currently have is this one:

http://smithsedge.com/products/product.asp?id=24&cid=

will that work for a recurve blade or do i need a different one?
also any other tips would be great

KB3UBW
Click to expand...

My first choice would be some wet/dry sandpaper, wrapped around a cylinder (pvc pipe, jar, can, bed post, dowel, etc.). I recommend this, because you can customize it to 'fit' your recurve, it's very effective as an abrasive, and it's very inexpensive. Make your 'custom hones' as simple or as fancy as you like. Experiment with different shapes/sizes/forms, to see what feels 'right' in your hands, and what seems to work best. Use rubber bands, zip-ties, tape or glue to attach the paper to the cylinder. For starting out, I'd use an edge-trailing 'stropping' stroke. You can use edge-leading, as on a hard hone, but you need to be careful to avoid cutting the paper.
 
David knows his sharpening methods, definitely listen to him. :-) However, if you already have a Sharpmaker, they can work too. That's what I used on a couple of recurves I have, it works ok. The tricky thing with doing a recurve on the SM is, you have to figure out this sort of odd up-and-down wave-like motion that you have to make with your wrist on each stroke down the SM stones, so that you sharpen effectively at each point of the recurve. This gets so tricky to maintain this motion consistently across the entire length of the blade (because remember, you are not just moving the blade downward on the SM stones, you are also drawing it back towards yourself with each stroke, PLUS you are tipping the handle up and down to get the proper sharpening angle on the recurve), it's tough to really do a great job with this approach and be consistent with it.

The reason David's suggestion is ultimately going to work better is, you can customize the sharpening solution to find something that approximately fits the size of the recurve in your blade. If you get something that's about the right size to fit the curve, you can just sharpen the entire recurve section using that device, without any goofy wrist action required. Then you sharpen the remaining sections of the blade using a standard sharpening solution, such as the SM.
 
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