Sharpening with paper wheels

[3REDUCK]

I have been sharpening my knives for 30+ years (38 years old now so I started young ) I am confident with my skills and can do a respectable job freehand with stones plus I have tried every gadget out there including the Spyderco Sharpmaker. I can get my knives sharp enough to shave hair but I am always looking for that next level of sharpness. I want to be able to shave my face with an axe like that guy in the ads for his books and guide system (yes, I bought those also).

Last week I read on these forums about using paper wheels from the Razor Sharp Edgemaker System. The wheels are put on a bench grinder and one wheel is for grinding and setting the angle and the second wheel is for taking off the burr and polishing it up. I am not specifically endorsing this brand and I am not affiliated with them in any way. There are probably other fine brands of paper wheels out there but I happened to purchase ones made by this company.

I found a set of wheels at a local Woodcraft store and a cheap bench grinder ($39) at Lowes. I set everything up, read the instructions (twice) and eased into working on sharpening my first knife...a cheap kitchen knife I had around. I say eased into it because the idea of holding a knife blade against a paper wheel turning at 3000+ r.p.m. makes my balls rise into my abdomen a bit! I make sure that the blade was going with the revolution of the wheels and not turned into it but even still, the idea of explaining why I lost a digit or two (or worse) to my wife and kids was sobering...

Anyway, to make a long story just a bit longer, the edge I was able to get on that cheap kitchen knife (and every subsequent knife) is mindblowing! The resulting edge is polished like a mirror (except two of my S30V knives...they turned out polished but not mirror-like....maybe due to the extreme hardness of this steel?) Another thing I noticed is that I didn't have to be super exact with the angle of the knife to the wheel. It seemed to have some leeway built into the system and the knives just turned out crazy sharp.

I even tried this on a couple of my convex edge knives (just using the rouge wheel to tune the edge) and the result was much better than any I had achieved with strops, mouse pads and sandpaper, etc.

Now I need to go and work on my axe to get that beard shaving edge...

High praise for paper wheels! :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

 

[steelscout30]

There's a gentleman here on BladeForums with the username of Richardj that really knows his stuff with paper wheels---his videos and results are excellent.

:thumbup:

 

[Iloveblades]

I to have recently bought the same setup.I bought my grinder at Harbor Freight but did the same thing.I already sold my Gatco sharpener to my son,and started sharpening knives for friends.i never thought sharpening could be so fast and easy!Good luck with the axe I'm not ready for that yet.

 

[myright]

I bought them not too long ago and am still getting the hang of them. I need to regrit the grit wheel and haven't done it yet.

 

[richard j]

when doing an axe or hatchet it helps to remove the handle if possible. the handle makes it interesting to sharpen. also make sure you do a dry run to make sure you can swing the handle. you dont want to be sharpening and have the handle hit something.