Sharpening with a HF 1x30 belt sander

Joined
Mar 29, 2008
Messages
51
My Sharpmaker hasn't been cutting it lately so I decided to try a new method. I bought the HF 1x30 belt sander, a few belts from Lee Valley including a leather belt and some white compound for Pop's knife supplies.

Anyway, I get some rip open the boxes and start setting everything up. Propped the sander on a milk crate, throw the belts into a moldy box next to me, plop down on my garage floor, turn on this marvel of Asian engineering and pull out my first knife to sharpen.

I decided on my 0200 to be my first victim...err test, since it was beat to hell and didn't come back. I take a few swipes along the belt and there goes the edge. Damnit :mad:. Not wanting to spend to much time screwing a single knife up I go and grab another one. This time it was my Ka-Bar heavy bowie. No that I have a plethora of experience under my belt I figured I'd fair better this go around. The next few minutes were a blur. I went through my 80 micron belt, 40, 20, 15, 9 and my leather strop in what seemed like seconds. I then test this blade on the forest of hair growing on top of my thigh, make a slow swipe and HOLY HORSE SHIT. Hair goes popping off of my leg and I run to grab as many sharp objects as I could find.

Now looking back at the 10 knifes and 20 garden tools I went through and the short amount of time I spent trying to learn this form of sharpening I can say that I am very pleased. All the rounded convex edges and mirror like polishes I am amazed at the speed and quality of my edges compared to my Sharpmaker.

The end.

Ok now to some questions I have. How often if at all will I need to clean my belts and how? Also when I am sanding off the black coating on one of my blades I couldn't get the coating of some off in the middle of the blade between the spine and edge. I'm guessing this is because the belt rounds a little from the pressure of the knife. Is there and way to fix that?
 
i don't clean my belts, except by putting my finger on them sometimes to rub off some of the metal dust. i should get one of those rubber eraser things for cleaning sanding belts and disks.

on the coating-i suggest using some sandpaper in your hand to rub it, or go it slow on the platen.

i love the 1x30, and those leevalley belts are great. i orderd a pile of the blue belts too, and use them all the time. i like to use a 120 grit belt to start with to set the bevel angles and thin out edges. then i take it down from the 80 micron to the 9 micron. i buff the wire edge off on a stiff cardboard wheel on my grinder.

welcome to the 1x30 club! feels good doesn't it? ;)
 
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