Sharpening technique

P

Pabes1

Joined
Aug 5, 2008
Messages
3
I just got my first waterstone, and I am wanting to check out my technique before I actually go sharpen a knife. Here's what I believe to be the standard procedure:

Hold the knife at a 20 degree (or 15, or a range of other various angles) angle to the stone and drag it across the stone edge first. Every few strokes, check the edge for a burr. Once there's a burr, flip it over and repeat until you get another burr. After this point, you move on to your next grit. Once you're on the final grit, you get a burr, flip it over until you get another burr, and then start alternating sides with each stroke, gradually lowering the pressure (although regardless of grit, you should not put much more pressure then the weight of the knife itself). Keep doing this until the burr is gone. Afterwords, if you have one, you use the strop by dragging the knife across the leather with very light weight with the edge trailing.

Is that pretty close?
 
only one burr. there are two sides/bevels to the edge, but only one edge itself.
 
hardheart said:
only one burr. there are two sides/bevels to the edge, but only one edge itself.
Click to expand...

I meant until you can see the burr on the other side of the edge. Other then my poor judgement in words, I have the basic idea, though?
 
yeah, but you should see/feel the burr flop over on the first pass on the other side. You can also use as much pressure as you want for major regrinding, just drop the pressure on the edge refinement, just like finish sanding.
 
Also make sure you're creating a refined edge at each grit. Don't flop the burr over and then move on to the higher grit, but remove it at each stage. You'll get much better results and save yourself time when working on the higher grits.

Once you get comfortable with your skills look into reprofiling the blades you use often. They'll cut much better.

Sounds like you have the ideas right though. Have fun implementing them. :)
 
Yeah, as far as I know you're supposed to (or rather most people do) one pass per side and then switch for the entire process and just swich to the next grit when the feel it's as sharp as it's going to get for the current grit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top