Sharpening VG10

T

Thomas_J

Joined
May 31, 2008
Messages
38
I just recently purchased a Fallkniven P pocket knife in VG10. I just can't seem to get it as sharp as my other knives. I generally use either a Japanese water stone or Lilly white Washita followed by stropping with green honing compound. The Fallkniven just won't take an edge. Under bright light it looks like the edge is chipping, very fine chips along the entire edge you can just barely see. It doesn't seem to matter how lightly I press on the stone either. Usually I can't even see the edge when I'm done and I can push cut paper and cross cut wood like butter, but not with the VG10.

Thanks for any help.
 
That's strange behavior. Are you sure you're grinding away the very edge of the blade? I'd try cutting directly into the stone to remove the edge then starting from scratch if I were you.
 
Try using diamond hones. VG-10 responds well to my DMTs, but it does take longer to work that final burr off, similar to D2. VG-10 shares that 'biting' quality with D2 and S30V when properly sharpened, in my experience.
 
Thomas_J said:
I just recently purchased a Fallkniven P pocket knife in VG10. I just can't seem to get it as sharp as my other knives. I generally use either a Japanese water stone or Lilly white Washita followed by stropping with green honing compound. The Fallkniven just won't take an edge. Under bright light it looks like the edge is chipping, very fine chips along the entire edge you can just barely see. It doesn't seem to matter how lightly I press on the stone either. Usually I can't even see the edge when I'm done and I can push cut paper and cross cut wood like butter, but not with the VG10.

Thanks for any help.
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To what steels are you comparing VG10. You might find that the VG10 is hard enough that the Washita is not working. I use ceramic stones, either aluminum oxide or silicon carbide. These are harder than natural stones and I have had no problems using them to sharpen VG10
 
I don't know why that happens some times but I know what your talking about. I have two spyderco temerance fixed blades. One sharpens easily, like the rest of my VG10 knives but the other one has edge fractures that measure (under microscope) 0.07-0.09mm I can't figure out why this is happening to one of my temparence and not the other. I love VG10 and this is the only knife in VG10 I have ever had a problem with. FWIW this is occuring on a sharpmaker as well as water stones. I have even ground off 0.5mm of the edge and started over just to make sure it wasn't something that went wrong during sharpening.
 
Vivi said:
That's strange behavior. Are you sure you're grinding away the very edge of the blade? I'd try cutting directly into the stone to remove the edge then starting from scratch if I were you.
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I tried something like this putting an extra 5 or so degrees on the last couple passes. It go a little better, but I can still see a jagged edge, and sometimes I can see what looks like a chip floating on the white washita. Mind you these are very small chips, fractions of a mm.
 
From what I've heard Falkniven seems to do a good heat treat, so my initial suspect is your stones. Do you have anything else to sharpen with?

At www.ragweedforge.com you can buy ceramic rods for 1$ or 2$. I can get VG10 hair whittling sharp no problem with one of these. Might be worth a shot if you have no other sharpening tools to try.
 
Vivi said:
From what I've heard Falkniven seems to do a good heat treat, so my initial suspect is your stones. Do you have anything else to sharpen with?

At www.ragweedforge.com you can buy ceramic rods for 1$ or 2$. I can get VG10 hair whittling sharp no problem with one of these. Might be worth a shot if you have no other sharpening tools to try.
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You mean these ceramic rods: "I've been told by a customer in New Zealand that using the rounded sticks can cause chipping of the edge on very hard blades."

I'm thinking that the steel is just not as tough as it should be. I don't doubt that it can be made very sharp because it is so hard, but that also makes it brittle. The edge of the F1 on knifetests.com chipped under his tests. Keep in mind that the F1 is VG10 sandwiched by softer tougher stainless, which explains why the chipping stopped after a certain point. Granted he was beating the hell out of it, but never the less, I have never seen an edge do what this is doing. I know it is not my stone either, that doesn't make any sense. I might if I were using 150 grit sandpaper, but come on.....stones are just tools, you need to know how to use them and mine are very good quality ones as well that. My finest ones will polish to a mirror shine.

Anyway, I keep going back to it and this last time I was able to get a descent edge, almost no "chips". I think that maybe Fallkniven overheated the edge sharpening it at the factory, which was obviously done with some kind of powered grinder. I definitely saw the most chipping on the first sharpen.
 
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