Two quick questions

A

Aelius

Joined
Sep 18, 2006
Messages
94
1) Can the sold-separately diamond rods for the Sharpmaker be put in the dishwasher? I know you can put the ceramic ones in the dishwasher, but I wanted to ask before I threw my $80 rods into a machine.

2) The tip of my knives, Spyerco Endura and Stretch, are blunt. It's as if the point has been chipped off, probably due to my vigourous reprofiling on both these knives. How do I fix this?
 
1) I don't know, but I would think that rinsing in water and wiping with a cloth would be enough to clean them without risking the dishwasher. Diamond sharpeners are easy to clean.

2) It is unfortunately pretty easy to round the point on a knife using a Sharpmaker. The fastest way this happens is using the corners of the rods (especially the diamond rods) and drawing the blade all the way through until it drops off of the corner and skates over the rod's flat surface.

The first thing you should do to fix the problem is stop making it worse. Stop doing the above. I personally do not use the corners. I use only the flats and I stop the stroke before the tip passes off the edge of the rod. This will keep your sharp tips needle sharp and prevent any fruther rounding of your rounded tips.

Merely sharpening correctly from now on will gradually improve your tips. To speed the process, you would need to reprofile the edge until the new profile meets the spine at an acute angle. This would take a lot of work on a Sharpmaker.
 
What Lurker said, plus one comment. If you want to get rid of the rounded tip, you need to profile and flatten the spine of the blade to bring it down to where you want the tip. If you keep working on the edge side of the blade, you will remove enough metal that the tip will stick out above the frame of the knife when it is closed. That is a dangerous and un-aesthetic condition (and I'm not sure which is more unappealing :D ). The proper way is to grind down the spine.
 
I don't quite understand, the spine of my knives are naturally flat, if I were to sharpen them wouldn't that create a double-sided blade? And trying to shave off 2-3 millimeters of steel is a lengthy task.
 
You're not trying to remove metal off the corners, which would eventually result in a double-edge blade, but parallel (or pretty close) to the flat top of the blade.
 
Lucky Bob said:
You're not trying to remove metal off the corners, which would eventually result in a double-edge blade, but parallel (or pretty close) to the flat top of the blade.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. So I do this only to the tip of the spine, not the whole length of it?
 
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