Sharpening Global kitchen knives

C

Coober

Joined
Sep 11, 2005
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6
Having recently purchased Global kitchen knives, I am very impressed with their edge (degree of sharpness and time they hold their edge).

Now the time has come for me to sharpen them myself. Although I can get a reasonable edge with my stones, I cannot get anywhere near the factory edge they shipped with.

When they were brand new, it seemed as though there was not a distinctive bevel, but almost a 'rounded' edge as it came to a point.

Is this the secret with these knives? If so, how do I go about sharpening them in this way?

Thanks,

Coober
 
They are a convex edge. I sharpen convex edges on stones free hand but there are many different ways to do it, leather, sandpaper, mousepad, belt grinder, and a few more do a search on convex sharpening and you'll be reading more than you want to know.
 
Global knives have a convex edge that is around 13degrees. If you have a sharpmaker you can touch them up on the 30degree setting (15per side). The easy way to keep them convex is a mouse pad with some wet&dry paper. Thats how I sort out global knives, people seem to forget just how good the edges can be.
 
Thanks for the links, but none seem to expalain how to maintain the 'convex edge' which seems so important.

Coober
 
I don't have a link about doing convex edges, but I'll say this: you can put a convex edge or a regular edge on a Global knife or any other kind of knife. There's no magic, and no reason to stick with one kind of edge for one manufacturer (as long as your knives aren't so bad that they can't hold certain kinds of edges).
 
here's a link from the Mike at BRKT
http://home.nycap.rr.com/sosak/convex.htm

As has been said before you don't need to keep the convex edge. I think that for kitchen knives it is the best set up though so I have convexed my own kitchen knives. If you find it difficult though I would suggest you just use a fine cermaic hone
 
Andy_L said:
... I have convexed my own kitchen knives. If you find it difficult though I would suggest you just use a fine cermaic hone
Click to expand...

Yeah, but he's asking on how to do convex... can't anyone explain here their favorite methods, without merely pointing to links?
Because as using the Sharpmaker and waterstones has been good enough for me so far, I'd be curious to see how to expand, myself.
Thanks,
t.
 
Ok I will. My method is fairly easy and you shouldn't think too much if at all. Take a flat bench hone, coarse to reshape fine to touchup, slide your blade edge forwards do this free hand no jig or even holding a angle. be sloppy only thing to watch for is don't raise the spine up very much at all. if it needs a fairly good sharpening I'll do one side until I get a burr then the other. For touchup and finishing I do 1 stroke then do the other side switching sides every stroke. Thats it.
 
right this is how I sharpen global knives for people (and indeed my own kitchen knives which came with a secondary bevel)

chip removal
*place a piece of course (240)wet&dry on flat table with a mouse pad in between with the soft side upwards
*lube the wet&dry with wd40 (the paper seems to last longer)
*place knife flat on the wet&dry
*raise the spine a little until the edge is in contact with the paper. Since a fair amount of metal will be removed you want a fair amount of the blade in contact with the paper
*use a stropping type motion drawing the spine first across the paper keeping the cutting edge at 90degrees to the stroke
*do a fair amount on one side and then swap annd remove metal from the other side (keeping the edge in the center)

major sharpening
*rapeat the method of chip removal whilst increasing the grit of the wet&dry being used until your at about 800
*flip the mouse pad over so that the hard side is in contact with the wet&dry (this will mean the abriasive will deform less)
*raise the angle of the knife to about 12-13degrees
*again use a stropping montion to remove steel from the blade, carry on doing this on one side until you have a small burr along the whole edge (at this point the knife should shave hair in one direction but wont in the other
*flip the knife over and remove metal until the burr is gone, often you will get a burr that will move from one side to the other after a few light passes. Get it as small as you can and then just touch up the edge

Touching up
*set up sharpmaker at 30degree setting (15degrees per side)
*use edges of the white stones to remove any burrs
*strop on a peice of leather
*do a couple of passes on the flats of the fine stones to give it some bite
 
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