- Joined
- Jun 6, 2019
- Messages
- 389
I have all of one knife in M390. When I got it a few weeks ago, the edge didn't feel right. I don't mean that it was dull, but more like it wouldn't 'grab' paper to cut it. If I could get it to grab, it sliced OK. More often than not, though, it seemed to just slide off the paper. I thought, "Hmm. Maybe too polished?" So I put it on the Hapstone and went 200/600/1000 at 23* per side. I figured that would be a good, working angle. It seemed OK, but not great. Then I stropped it and it suddenly seemed duller.
So I went back to the Hapstone, 200, then 600, and stopped there. It was reasonably sharp, so I left it there for a while. Last week, I decided to take it down to ~19*. Because I had lowered the angle, I went 200/600/1000, and got it reasonably sharp. Once again, I stropped it and BLAM! Sharpness gone. OK. So now I seem to have a stropping problem. I was thinking I used too much pressure. So I went back to the Hap again, 200/600, touched everything up, skipped the 1K, and a few extremely light passes on the strop. (Flexcut Gold, rough leather on balsa wood, FWIW). This time, at the very least, I didn't appreciably dull the edge. Granted, I was also unable to determine if my stropping did any good.
But I'm confounded. Why is M390 giving me such trouble? I've tried to do my due diligence on M390 and, by all accounts, it should take a good edge and hold it pretty well. Particularly in light of the fact that this is a light-duty office knife. It's not like I'm out batoning black walnut or anything.
No, I don't have any pictures of the edge right now, but I can try. What I can tell you is that everything looked right. I Sharpied the edge, got that worked off, got a (tiny, but discernable) burr, etc.
Can anyone shed some light on what's going on with my M390? Any tricks for this steel that I need to know?
So I went back to the Hapstone, 200, then 600, and stopped there. It was reasonably sharp, so I left it there for a while. Last week, I decided to take it down to ~19*. Because I had lowered the angle, I went 200/600/1000, and got it reasonably sharp. Once again, I stropped it and BLAM! Sharpness gone. OK. So now I seem to have a stropping problem. I was thinking I used too much pressure. So I went back to the Hap again, 200/600, touched everything up, skipped the 1K, and a few extremely light passes on the strop. (Flexcut Gold, rough leather on balsa wood, FWIW). This time, at the very least, I didn't appreciably dull the edge. Granted, I was also unable to determine if my stropping did any good.
But I'm confounded. Why is M390 giving me such trouble? I've tried to do my due diligence on M390 and, by all accounts, it should take a good edge and hold it pretty well. Particularly in light of the fact that this is a light-duty office knife. It's not like I'm out batoning black walnut or anything.
No, I don't have any pictures of the edge right now, but I can try. What I can tell you is that everything looked right. I Sharpied the edge, got that worked off, got a (tiny, but discernable) burr, etc.
Can anyone shed some light on what's going on with my M390? Any tricks for this steel that I need to know?