This is a bit all over the place...Little excitement in my Busse World Lately

COPIUOS

COPIUOS

Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
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Howdy folks - just recently went through another slew of eBay/forums/dealer purchases to experiment with different knives, as it is not feasible to travel to shows, so i often end up paying a little premium on the already premium prices (for good reason, don't get me wrong at all). Sometimes I get really cool deals on users and strippers which I have been gravitating towards for 2 reasons:

Some of the strippers sent to sharpening houses (Ban, Horton etc) even when users are absolutely sick with edges and stripping/polishing.

Others are rather beat up or scratched and this allows me to more comfortably play around with edges and sharpening on INFI. Ive gotten pretty good. I have noticed that new INFI safe queens are fairly unreliable in how sharp they come from the factory. I know all about the different edges/grinds (mostly anyways), and some are just plain not sharp. Its okay though, I have access to a very nice array of hand sharpening apparatussseseesses...

Working on a very used and stripped tank buster (getting a really nice edge on it first off), and a brand new Custom MUK. I am hand sanding the paper micarta on MUK to become a custom made handle for myself, I found it was too large (with red liners that look awesome) on black paper with some very raised diagonal grip pattern that were very edgy, and when held in hand it felt like holding a spiky hot dog, attached to a thinner flat ground blade that should be able (to me) maneuvered in a way that the thicker larger handle set up did not allow for me.

I am so very happy I came across the opportunity to buy a Muddy MoFo, this is a fascinating blade to me, just got it today, and its lightness and balance is incredible. I usually do not like serrations OR blade catchers, and for some reason visually this knife really grabbed me, and I am so glad I have it in my possession for a deal that i think was really good considering other data points out there. I have to MoJos that I love, and I think those style blades could be the "one knife" option potentially for me...

Got a Manum Bear Cub recently (one of the absolute coolest knives I have ever held), as well as a host of other knives including a ZTSH and a ZTNO, way cool blades that are very sharp, and awesome feeling/looking. I also picked up a Custom Shop 1/4inch old school Steal Heart E with a full flat grind and it will pop hairs up into the air.

Anyways, I guess you could say I am a collector now (probably close to 50, maybe more) with some OP2W coming in soon hopefully, and feel especially excited to begin work on my known keepers (that even need it), so I can max out desired edge performance and comfort/utility in hand.

Probably need to unload, as I don't really dig the safe queen concept, I just love knives in general, and I love all different kinds, especially Busse, Benchmade and Spyderco.

Who knows if anyone got any thing out of that...

Cam
 
I get it...

Aaaaaand CONGRAT's on the scores and the great start to a really nice collection!:thumbup:
 
Some cool stuff that you listed as owning. Good luck deciding what to keep. Haha. It's not an easy game.
 
HA! I get you Snake, I will try and send pics, I have tried before, and I am not sure if I was ever able to be successful, I would love to send pics.
 
Top - I will share the method I have found to get a really sharp and polished edge. I am able to do the "reflection" test on magazine ads etc with my heavily used, previously owned tank buster 1/4 inch. Will get into specifics a bit later, working now.
 
I hear ya, and seems you have quite the collection yourself. When I do unload, some people will likley end up with some beautiful high-end users! I hate to buy a knife and not at least give it a whirl in the woods, kitchen or camp. I have been gravitating to the thinner, medium to smaller blades as users (still have my NMSFNO's, CGFBM, NMFSH and a ASHBM etc that I will never part with). That goes back to, okay what do you get rid of then? At this time, it is hard for me to think of giving even one up. At least I know I have a pile of cash sitting there if i do need to sell - even if "users" of varying degrees. Never done the trade thing, and maybe that could be fun, too...
 
TOP - here is my 2 pence worth....This is only my current method, and I am sure it is inneficient as hell....

If the knife is "dull", which to me means I cannot find any decent angle of blade or paper to make a clean non-ripping cut along most of the blade, or will not slice across lemon skin and cut a lemon in half with relatively minimal effort. This test is just to see if I can find one angle, cut technique to achieve that, which means, to me in my non-scientific knife sharpening guru mind, that the blade is sharp it just has a very steep grind, or there are some irregularities along blade/bellies, or any recurves or some chipping observable easily or not. I also see how the blade does on cardboard and slicing fruit, bell peppers etc. If it is "already sharp", yet at only certain angles/cuts, I will start with a medium-fine abrasive stone (the finer side of my Norton/Pike combination bench stone). I work that for a while using olive oil because I want all my knives to be able to cut food in a variety of situations.

If the edge is really bad, chipped, etc, I start with the coarser side of the same stone, and grind metal away until the chip/s are out and the rest of the edge follows a nice line after taking off the steel to get at the chips - the box does not say the grits for either side, one is clearly more abrasive than the other - i have the 1"X2"X8" stone. I will work coarser to finer abrasive checking for that bur to determine I am ready for finer/finishing stones.

Then i take that to a ceramic stone - about 1.5'X6' flat ceramic "bar" - not sure of the grit, its just a cermamic slab.

Then i go to 1000-grit and then 6000-grit Shun japanese water stone (i use both sides for good measure), and then i strop on a piece of leather mounted to a rectangular "paddle" with applied strop abrasive, and then i finish on the backside of an old leather belt with no applied abrasive.

To a sharpening expert like many of you, and like the guy I talk to about these kinds of things says my way has too many steps - (my "mentor" was SF in Vietnam) owns a Bow Hunting Shop and Knife Shop, makes his own knives and sells mid to mid-high end production folders and fixed blades (ESEE, TOPS, BEnchmade, Spyderco, Ka-Bar/Becker), etc...

He says once i get better, I can cut it down to about 3 steps out of the above and get really, really sharp - his knives are scary sharp, and they are all beat up as hell and he can reflect newspaper ads etc off of his edges...

I also just got access to 50-60 year old abrasive and waterstones that my buddy inherited from his grandfather he never uses, so I am excited to see where that leads.

Cam
 
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