Sharpening Beginner's First Day

M

Mister Coffee

Joined
Dec 6, 2020
Messages
1,092
My DMT Dia-Sharp stones arrived today. Course and Extra Fine. Thought I would try them out on a cheap kitchen knife (Taiwan). Spent an hour and a half on it, and as far as I can tell, nothing happened. Tried soft strokes, then firm strokes. Tried slicing strokes, then back and forth strokes. Tried small angle, then larger angle. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Couldn't raise a bevel. At least not one that I could recognize. You might say things didn't go like in the YouTube video. Kind of frustrated and disappointed.

What do I do tomorrow?
 
Just keep on grinding on the coarse stone till you get a burr. Focus on holding your angle. Stay on the same side of the blade. Alternating strokes will remove the burr as you go. It’ll happen.
 
^ What Toothy said. No, it doesn't work like you tube videos.
By now you likely have a clogged plate. I'd wash it and start over scrubbing it on one edge. Also, a coarse plate isn't coarse enough to quickly develop a burr. Still, it should do it in 15 mins.. Hold a consistent angle. When you feel a burr on the entire length of the blade, flip it over and do the other side the same. You can't use pressure with that plate or you will sheer off the diamond material. A coarse SiC stone would give you quicker results.. DM
 
Thanks for the responses.

C catspa : I had to check to see if I was using the bottom of the stone and not the working surface. :)

T Toothy Wolf & David Martin: The stone is clean. I washed it before I put it away last night. I'll give it another 15 mins. You know that "holding a consistent angle" is the hardest part for beginners. Especially with a 2.75-in. blade on a 6-in. x 2-in. stone. I thought I was holding it steady, but maybe I was screwing up. Hope I didn't ruin the stone by using too much pressure. It is certainly "broken in" and not rough like it was out of the box. I must say that I didn't expect that diamond stones were going to be so delicate.
 
Try matching whatever bevel you now have on the knife on the hone. Looking at the edge facing you while on the hone, raise the spine until the "shadow" below the edge just disappears. Try sharpening on that angle slowly, either in one direction only, toward you, or if you feel you can maintain the angle, back and forth.

Let the diamond due the work. Do not press hard. You should in a short while be able to feel a burr forming on the opposite side from the one being abraded on the diamond. (Run your thumb or fingernail down from the spine toward the edge and you should feel it catch right at the edge.) Get the burr formed on the whole length of the blade.

Then reproduce that same angle on the side with the burr and do the same thing until you can feel a burr on the opposite side.

Once you have raised a burr on one side, and then a burr on the other... you can alternate a few strokes, very lightly to remove the burr. You can even raise the angle slightly to help remove the burr...but light pressure to avoid creating a new one.

Go slow, see and feel what you are doing. Be patient. It will come and be an ah-ha moment.
 
Mister Coffee said:
I must say that I didn't expect that diamond stones were going to be so delicate.
Click to expand...
DMT is diamond, right? Diamond on metal.
I once completely destroyed a DMT plate by using it to lap a ceramic stone spyderco. While it cut the ceramic stone right away (and did the job of lapping really well), the ceramic stone in turn pulled all the diamonds out of the metal. Within minutes. Well, basically right away. So after minutes the lapped ceramic was cutting the DMT plate (=metal)! I continued to lap until i realized that. Omg.

I might have applied too much pressure. Sure. User error then. Sure. But actually no, i can't remember having applied much pressure. I did the lapping in a bowl of water! Anyway, personally, i will never buy DMT products again. If somebody buys me a DMT product (bday gift), i'll take it and happily use it, of course. That's not the point.
 
Last edited:
I got, and still get, a lot of great sharpening advice here but most of it was in bits and pieces. I couldn't put the whole thing together, and get the big picture and sharp edges, until I read The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening, by John Juranitch. I was actually surprised how simple freehand sharpening really is once I understood and applied the basic principles. There are many great photos and drawings to help better understand the text. I highly recommend this book.
 
Do you have any mild steel scrap, like an old door hinge? Try abrading that a few strokes and examine with a magnifying glass to see the scratch pattern.

Re: holding a consistent angle - Anybody tell you about the quarter trick? For each 1/2” your blade is wide, stack one quarter on the end of the stone to rest the spine on. That will get you in the neighborhood of 15* per side or 30* included.

Parker
 
The Complete Guide to Sharpening, by Leonard Lee, is also a good reference. More geared toward tool sharpening than knives specifically, but still interesting.

Parker
 
Made some progress today. Got a burr on one side, then started on the other side. When the process is finished, what is the edge supposed to feel like? I'm assuming that it should feel like there is no burr on either side.
 
Mister Coffee said:
Made some progress today. Got a burr on one side, then started on the other side. When the process is finished, what is the edge supposed to feel like? I'm assuming that it should feel like there is no burr on either side.
Click to expand...

Correct. You want to remove as much burr as possible.

If you slide the edge (without pressure) over your thumbnail by drawing the knife, you shouldn't feel little speed bumps along the way...and also it should bite slightly into the nail.

Additionally, if you were to lightly try to slide the knife, while edge down on the nail, to the left side or right side, it shouldn't "skate" but stay in place due to the edge biting the nail under its own weight.

If it skates to one side, the side that doesn't skate and catches the nail probably has a bit of burr. So that is the side you'd put back on the hone to remove it.

When the burr is gone, or mostly gone, the knife should slice through flimsy paper, like phone book paper, cleanly and straight without catching along the length of the blade.

Make sense so far?
 
Blues Blues : Makes good sense. This knife wasn't slicing through paper when I finished. But it's a crappy knife, and it probably needs what you old pro's would call "repair" of the edge and not just "sharpening." And I'm still on the Course stone. Think I should go to the Extra Fine (the only other stone I have) tomorrow, or redo the edge on the Course stone?
 
Stay with the coarse stone. A coarse stone will produce a sharp edge. It will be toothier than a fine edge, but it will still slice cleanly.

If you go to a finer stone, it will only take you longer since you haven't "apexed" yet. In other words, the two sides of your blade / edge bevel have not met in a nice V shape.

Many very good sharpeners here prefer coarse edges on their EDC knives, and it makes for good slicing in the kitchen as well with a bit of tooth.
 
Toothy edge means "a toothy apex" (resulting from coarse secondary bevel finish), correct?
Then this is nothing one would encounter on any commercial blade (razor, utility blade, spyderco, chef knife, etc). Commercial blades have rough finishes on the secondary bevel but their apex is straight\smooth not toothy, and i find that fascinating.

And it's hard to imagine an apex to be sharp between the teeth.

Ah never mind, i just don't get the concept of toothy edges. If the finish of the secondary bevel is coarse, then that's actually helpful for cutting performance. But imho the apex should always be smooth , straight, unragged, non toothy.

Never mind.
 
Last edited:
Didn't have time to practice my sharpening yesterday, but I took an 8x loop and looked at the edge. It looks like the Course diamond stone is making an X pattern and those scratches are deep. Would an equivalent grit course water stone make a different pattern and depth? Just wondering.
 
I would recommend not obsessing over the coarse diamond stone...and continue with your efforts to get a burr, flip sides, get a burr, remove burr and test your edge.

With diamonds...don't press hard. Let the diamond do the work. If you keep chasing a new solution which may give incrementally different results, you will derail your efforts to learn the skill you are trying to develop.

Don't quit now.
 
Thanks, Blues. Not thinking of quitting. Just trying to understand and make sense of my experiences. And learn the differences between the stones.

By the way, my bevel looked pretty even and consistent under the 8x loop. I was surprised that it came out so well. (Just talking about the looks. Not how well the knife cuts.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top