Sharpening - What Am I Doing Wrong?

M

MarcK99

Joined
Jul 23, 2014
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I recently purchased a Spyderco Sharpmaker and I'm attempting to self-teach myself to sharpen. Had no previous sharpening experience and spent a considerable amount of time researching the topic. I've read countless articles, such as http://forums.egullet.org/topic/26036-knife-maintenance-and-sharpening/ and http://sharpeningmadeeasy.com/. Also watched lots of videos from DMT, Spyderco, and on Youtube such as from username JDavis882 and others. So I attempted my first sharpening with a Leatherman skeletool CX with 154cm steel.

I went through the steps on the 40 degree setting, using first the diamond rods, then medium, then fine, then ultra fine. Spent about 1 hour sharpening. I used the marker trick and was hitting the bevel with normal strokes except for some very small places near the tip, which I touched up. I even finished with a strop from KnivesPlus. I didn't try a microbevel at this time, as I wanted to keep things simple. Unfortunately the results weren't that great, as I could only get a very rough arm-hair shaving edge. Could not cut cleanly through phone book paper as I've seen on many videos. No mirror polish on the bevel. So, I tried sharpening a different knife - the Sypderco Dragon2 - this time using the 30 degree setting. Still not great results and not nearly as sharp as I'd have expected. I also got a 40X loupe and examined the blades, and didn't see any irregularities. In fact it looked pretty good, so I was even more confused.

I see that sharpening takes developing a certain technique, but I get the feeling I must be doing something wrong after all the time spent sharpening and still not getting the results I would expect. Since then, I have purchased the coarse and extra fine DMT stones, but I have not attempted to resharpen yet.

So - what can I do to improve my results? Any suggestions are much appreciated.
 
Maybe swipe the edge, lightly, thru the endgrain of a piece of hardwood. Good way to kill the sharpening burr.
 
Among many possibilities, you may want to make sure you're not using too much pressure on the strop or rolling the edge under as you complete strokes on the strop. Those will both damage the edge. You can undo everything you previously accomplished by making these mistakes.

theapostlep has the best vids I've seen on edge maintenance.
 
Welcome to MT&E on bladeforums. I tend to be kind of a broken record and repeat the same advice over and over again. So here's me repeating it to you. :)

You probably haven't raised a burr on both sides of the blade, down the FULL length. It's good that you're using marker and seeing it removed. Try doing a couple of things:

First, stand under a strong light and hold one of your problem blades with the edge facing the ceiling and look straight down onto the cutting edge. Now, angle the blade tip up towards the ceiling and then down towards the ground. As you are doing this, look along the length of the cutting edge. You are probably going to see light reflected back in a very thin line on parts, or all, of the blade. If so, you have not yet apexed the edge. You have not made the edge bevels meet in the middle.

Second, once you start sharpening again, apply sharpie to the edge bevels as before and do some careful strokes. After you've done a handful and the sharpie is gone from the edge, grab your loupe and look at the edge bevel. You *might* find that the sharpie is gone everywhere, except for a whisper thin line at the edge of the edge that you can't easily see with the naked eye.

If either of these things are true, the cure is the same: Keep sharpening until you form a burr along the FULL length of the edge on one side. Then switch sides and do the same thing again, forming a burr on the full length of the other side. Finally, remove the burr with light strokes.

I'll stop here to see what your results are and/or to answer any other questions that you might have about this.

Brian.
 
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