Shaving sharp

T

TomF_32

Joined
May 31, 2005
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Was just messing around with a couple of knives as it's a way of escaping the kids for a bit and was able to put a shaving sharp edge on my old low tech buck 110 with a Lansky sharpener. Was unable to do the same to a 4" Cold steel voyager tanto (one of the good ones made in Seki) and CRKT Kiss 5500k. The Cold steel got sharper just couldn't get it shaving sharp( Maybe with some practice). Strangely though the CRKT seemed to get duller, even tried a diamond stone. I suspect its my fault though, as I dont know its blade angle and was guestimating. On another note the Voyager might go into the rotation as I forgot how easy it is to flip open and how intimidating it is. :D
 
TomF_32 said:
Strangely though the CRKT seemed to get duller, even tried a diamond stone.
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This can happen if you try honing at too low an angle and just hit the shoulder and the slurry blunts the edge. Check the edge with the "marker trick" to check.

-Cliff
 
You might try stropping it after you use the stone or sharpmaker or diamond hones. I've found that the real secret to sharpening is in regularity by touching up the edge on a strop. I believe that it is much better to sharpen lightly on a frequent basis, than to sharpen radically, infrequently.

Place the bevel of the blade as flat against the strop as possible after you finish it off with a stone or sharpmaker. Then you pull the tool or the blade away from the edge to avoid digging into the strop leather. If the angle is too high it will round the bevel but also remember to lift up at the end of the motion back once you have reached the back of the blade or you will prematurely round off your edge, If the angle is too low it will not properly abraid the edge, so take your time and just remember it doesn't take much to keep that biting edge if you regularly strop after working with it.

For me I strop one to three times on each side after about 25 or 30 minutes of carving on soft woods and about every 15 to 20 on hard woods.

On the knife that didn't get sharp it does sound like you didn't properly abraid the edge but probably hit the shoulder more and the edge barely.

Stropping does work though and if you haven't started doing it you might want to give it a try. It will change the way you sharpen, at least it did for me when I first entertained the idea.

Below is a microscopic photo of an edge before and after stropping. Edged tools have two converging surfaces that are joined at the apex, which is the cutting edge. Both of these surfaces need to be as smooth as possible for an edge to be truly sharp. Generally the more highly polished it is, the sharper the tool will be and the longer it will last.

There are some great posts here for learning to strop, some recent ones even so I'll leave it at that. Hope that helps.

Arkansasstonevsstrop-copy.jpg
 
pardon me i have no idea but am interested, i thought a strop was mainly for use on convex grinds and stones for angled grinds. I started learning the other day with a stone and to be honest its great fun, although i scratched up on the blade quite a lot. Being able to shave my arm was very satisfying, that was with a 440 c nieto folder, im sure with the harder steels and bigger curved knives etc it is a lot more complicated.

Keep that advice coming :D
 
One of my wife's biggest complaints is the prickly hairs that are coming back on my arm after a 'shave test' because I do it with every knife I sharpen and even more on the ones I make.

Stropping for a convex is usually done on something soft although people touch them up on a hard surface occassionally if that is all that is available.

You can learn a lot here if you have not seen this site before. http://home.nycap.rr.com/sosak/convex.htm

Flex Cut and some of the other finer carving knife suppliers also furnish some pretty good info on stropping, why, how to and all that.
 
Charlie4727 said:
pardon me i have no idea but am interested, i thought a strop was mainly for use on convex grinds and stones for angled grinds.
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You can strop on anything, some user paper for example on wood which will produce a v-ground edge. Stropping usually uses a fine abrasive, but some use coarse as well, like the Hand American products which have coarse SiC grits available.

-Cliff
 
TomF_32 said:
Was just messing around with a couple of knives as it's a way of escaping the kids for a bit and was able to put a shaving sharp edge on my old low tech buck 110 with a Lansky sharpener.
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If you can afford it, get yourself an Edgepro, and get the extra stones as well including the polishing tape. It is a VASTLY better system than the Lansky. I have both and I think about the only thing the Lansky is going to do now is gather dust.
 
gajinoz,
I've always had pretty good luck with lansky. If anything I'm thinking of getting some old fashioned arkansas stones. But you might gather from my above post I'm not all that great at guestimating the grind angles.
 
Lanskys work for a lot of folks, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with going with what you are comfortable with. Many folks say the Sharpmaker is the best around while others say no way to that.

Personally I still use an old fashioned oil stone and a fine Moravia razor hone followed by a good stropping with great results on most of my knives but an EZLap diamond sharpener is also in my sharpening arsenal as well as wheels, and a few Lansky sharpeners laying around also.
 
Hi,

I read in the BRKT forum that it is possible to get a convex edge by stropping on a hard stone.
 
TomF_32 said:
gajinoz,
I've always had pretty good luck with lansky. If anything I'm thinking of getting some old fashioned arkansas stones. But you might gather from my above post I'm not all that great at guestimating the grind angles.
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Sure, the Lansky has it's points and, as others have suggested, whatever works for you is the way to go. I found it to be very fiddly and, on some blade shapes, I could never get the clamp to hold especially well. Actually I did find the Lansky stones to be very useful in one respect, I used them a bit like a file to reprofile the tip of my SnG after I broke it off. (This is described, with a pic., in another thread.)
 
I've found that 'scary sharp' with a Lansky and AUS-8 is slightly hit-or-miss. I can always get it shaving sharp, sometimes with just the extra coarse stone which surprises even me. I've been using the Lansky system to sharpen with for the past decade though, so I guess the time under my belt helps a bit. Probably the best sharpening tips I've read are from here: http://users.ameritech.net/knives/knives1c.html
It really kicked my edges into high gear. The multi-bevel Lansky method he describes has given me some of my most impressive edges to date. That multi-bevel edge slashes, hacks, push cuts, chops, pierces, and is still shaving sharp even after I abuse the hell out of it in a night, doing more than I'd use an EDC for in a month (or an incredibly hard use week), and I still wouldn't feel the need to sharpen after that. A word of caution though, the multi-bevel edge is kind of hard to touch up. I still haven't gotten all the intricacies of that down yet. I'm figuring it out though.
 
BillL said:
I read in the BRKT forum that it is possible to get a convex edge by stropping on a hard stone.
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Yes you can roll the knife on the draw if you want. This is much more difficult than using a soft media like leather which will conform to the shape automatically.

wadly said:
i was wonder does stropping help on chopping knives for use on trees?
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It helps if you put a high polish on the edge, you don't need to strop to do so, there are lots of very fine hones.

-Cliff
 
Hi Cliff,

Could explain the "roll" and also the "difficulty" (i.e. what we won't be able to do properly) in more detail .

Thanks very much.
 
I was shown this by a traditional maker who sharpened convex parangs in this manner. He held the blade fixed and worked a small stone over the blade following the curvature. They just took a large benchstone and broke it into pieces you can of course just buy small ones.

The principle is the same on a large benchstone, you draw the knife towards you and on the pull you rotate it up so that you match the curvature. It sounds insanely difficult, well it does to me anyway, but there is a lot of feedback and I actually find it easier than doing a v-bevel by hand.

-Cliff
 
Cliff,

"Drawing the knife towards us", I assume in a stropping manner i.e. edge trailing. If we do this freehand on a stone and being inconsistent i.e. not trying hard to maintain the same angle, do you think that the final edge bevel automatically becomes a convex? Of course if we are much more consistent the bevel would be a narrow convex (approaching a V edge) and if we are less consistent it will be more convexed. What do you think?

Thanks
 
Cliff,

I forgot to mention the important thing I wanted to say is that "we don't need to roll" just let inconsistency create the convex edge by stropping on a stone.
 
Yes, it will just take a *long* time. I meant to code a computer simulation of this awhile ago but never got around to it. I was curious how long it would take if your angle tolerances were +/-1, +/-2 degrees etc. .

-Cliff
 
Umh...no one mentioned that the CRKT was chisel ground? Do that one free hand. Match the bevel and take a few strokes, then, on the flat side, place it flat on the hone and lift it off VERRRRY slightly to knock off anyburr that may have formed
 
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