- Joined
- Apr 15, 2014
- Messages
- 483
I finally got around to answering a burning question of mine:
Will the K02 do a Scandi grind?
Or are the angles just too steep?
Turns out the answer to that big, bold, burning question as a raging Hell yes.
Come with me. I wanna show you something...
This is my Mora Companion in carbon steel. It's awesome, but the factory edge is worn out, and I just spent a whole bunch of time sharpening on the stones for a different post I'm writing up and I don't feel like fiddling with angle control on this guy (I still find it gets awkward near the tip if you want uni-directional grind lines).
Yeah, you know what time it is...
The team is the Shapton Glass 320, 1k, 4k, and 8k, and the 220 and 16k are gonna make a surprise guest appearance as well!
Let's put this bitch in the clamps!
K02 reppin' the single clamp, filet style. We're keepin' it real slim. And it's a good thing too, as you'll see.
The factory angle comes in at a slim 12 degrees per side. Literally 12 degrees exactly. I just thought that was pretty cool. Anyway, rise n grind, boys!
The 320 was put to some serious work man. Honestly, it took way too long. For this type of stuff, where I am grinding my own first edge into a factory grind, I like to raise a massive burr, really clean, and make sure it's all my own edge. And for that job, the 320 was a bad choice, so I brought in the reinforcements for the other side.
The Shapton Glass 220 made the other bevel its bitch. Funny how just a hundred grit makes such a difference. This thing set the new bevel in, like, a fifth of the time the 320 did.
Man, you see those two little things sticking out of my clamp, near the knife? Those are the bottoms of the clamp screws coming through. I cleared those things by, like, a half a millimeter lol. Yeah, good thing Mora doesn't put 'em on at 10 degrees or we'd be up the creek without a (stropping) paddle.
I progressed through the 220 and 1k, each time raising a big ass burr. Not necessary. Just the way I do it the first time.
When I got to the 4k and 8k, things got weird again, as they tend to do on the K02. Here, check this out:
Boom. Right there. Perfect example of what I refer to as "ridging" when converting the previous 1k scratch pattern (the upper half) to 4k (the lower half). That's where the stone contact angle cannot be calculated precisely enough to perfectly match the bevel. This is due to a miniscule amount of movement in the system's clamp arm, as well as my angle cube only being accurate to 0.05 degrees.
Now, when I am polishing a normal bevel, I simply do not care to do what I am about to show you, but with a little elbow grease, you can convex the edge bevel an imperceptible amount by manipulating the fine angle adjustment of the K02 while you're sharpening.
Look. Another shot of ridging. This is between the 4k and the 8k:
Buuuuut if you just turn this little doo-hickey here a bit while you're scrubbin' away...
...and you pull out your 16k SG...
...then it looks like you can make yourself a nice, clean, wide bevel!
Let's go put this baby to work!
She feathersticks so well I might have to call it birdsticking
I dunno...
It's just really sharp, okay?
Cross grain batoning was a YUGE success! Effortlessly sliced through that branch!
How about a little MORE batoning!
Cutting up my 2x4's like a table saw, babay!
Also that's not really a sharpness test at all... but it is fun.
I refined my friction fire kit a little more. I deepened the guide groove on my spindle, and really aggressively chipped away at the spindle receivers.
Maybe a little too aggressively...
SHIT. I chipped the tip!
Yeah, that picture sucks. But that's only because of the godlike polish on the edge bevel. My phone was so impressed it couldn't figure out what the hell to focus on. Also props to Mora for having the balls to run their carbon steel up to 60 Rockwell. I'm annoyed at how soft basically every manufacturer runs their steels. The only reason this one chipped was because it's really thin and I was abusing the hell out of it. Literally batoning the tip into the receivers and twisting.
Obligatory shot of the blade in the Knife Stump:
(The lighting is crap, but whatever, the Mora Companion in carbon steel with a mirrored edge like that doesn't need good lighting to shine! Hah!)
Okay, so, yet another usage that the K02 really excels at. It does do Scandi grinds, or at least it should be able to do most of them. The Companion is super slim blade stock and is a pretty narrow blade, edge-to-spine-wise, so it posed one of the more demanding situations, but the K02 was still able to hit the angle, and could actually go a tad lower. I gotta be honest though, as cool as that super-mirror is, I am very likely going to resharpen it at 500, then do a thorough microbevel at 16k to get the polished pushcutting performance on wood. I know, I know, I'm a monster, but guess what? I don't care.
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