What am I doing wrong

catspa said:
David, do you find leading or trailing strokes on ceramic produce a difference at that level of final deburring?

Reason I ask is, some of my knives seem to “prefer” a trailing stroke.

Parker
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I do leading strokes for all deburring.

Expanding on that, I tend to believe it leaves the apex a bit stronger that way - especially on simpler steels at moderate hardness. With simpler, more ductile steels, I think trailing strokes tend to draw out the thin edge a bit too much. And while it might be thinner & somewhat sharper that way, it also seems to be more fragile. With leading strokes, once the edge gets thinned beyond a certain point, the thin & fragile steel at the apex will either be cut off on the stone, or left weak enough that it can be stropped away on a bare strop of leather, fabric or paper.
 
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Hmmm, okay. Thanks for mentioning that.

Perhaps I should do some sharpness testing after say, drawing a stroke or two through softwood end grain, to see if whatever is fragile or too thin will peel off.

Or inspect it under magnification.

Parker
 
nevertakeadayoff said:
V Vlade If the strop isn't part of the guided system, I recommend you stop using it.
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nevertakeadayoff said:
To reduce human error and prevent rounding the apex. Super steels are very unforgiving when you accidentally go a couple degrees higher. Also, I do hate manual sharpening.
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Well this user is working with 420HC, not a super steel, and further more I'm not convinced that "super steels" are more susceptible to bad stropping technique than "regular steels". If anything my intuition would be that the opposite would be true with increased abrasive/wear resistance.

I think we've seen more educated responses here than "don't freehand strop"... but sure- if you're terrible at stropping by hand, don't do it. I'm not sure this is OP's problem, and currently stubborn/ductile burrs are my best guess.
 
To avoid getting technical: In other words, it sucks to round the apex on a super steel because you have a lot more work to do to fix it than on a softer steel.

"Don't do unguided sharpening" is educated an intelligent advice ; ) The cutting edge is something I am obsessed with. I don't think most people here share that obsession equally.
 
My advice would be to keep it simple. Until you get a very sharp practical and usable edge with a dmt 325 without stropping I wouldn't worry about anything else. It may not be the have all end all. It won't whittle hair and it won't push cut toilet paper either. But I never do that anyway. Besides I buy the toilet paper already scored for easy removal without a knife. Lol. But for cutting meat, veggies etc it's a very good edge. I don't refine higher than 1200 and that's for one knife. A santoku I use for chopping veggies. I've refined edges to 30k shapton, super fine lapping film, sub micron diamond sprays and pastes etc.
 
This is about the best I can get it fellas I just got to knock the burr off the other side lightly strop it and I'm good to go. what are you guys think ?;is it coming out the right way? This was after 1200. But before stropping when I expand the photo I could see some errors that I made but they have been repaired. This is not as easy as it looks.IMG_20230601_210707781_MF_PORTRAIT.jpg
 
At this point you should be only doing one pass per side to kill off that bur ..
Because if you do multiple passes one after the other = Your creating a bur !
The more passes = the larger the bur .. So it becomes a never ending cycle of creating a new bur / trying to knock it off and creating a new one in the process .
By switching to a single pass per side , you are knocking off the bur and hopefully not creating a new one .
And what ever is left after single passes , will hopefully be stropped to negligence . ( If I can say that )
 
old4570 said:
At this point you should be only doing one pass per side to kill off that bur ..
Because if you do multiple passes one after the other = Your creating a bur !
The more passes = the larger the bur .. So it becomes a never ending cycle of creating a new bur / trying to knock it off and creating a new one in the process .
By switching to a single pass per side , you are knocking off the bur and hopefully not creating a new one .
And what ever is left after single passes , will hopefully be stropped to negligence . ( If I can say that )
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Yes I do realize that now, it is at this point a perfectly sharp polished edge. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it thanks fellas. excuse the wallet I put it there so you can see the contrast however there's no money in it:)IMG_20230603_074559431.jpg
 
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I have a quick question I just ordered a new one in 20 CV is it going to be much more difficult than this or is the procedure the same? I don't want to screw up a new knife 🗡️
 
Vlade said:
I have a quick question I just ordered a new one in 20 CV is it going to be much more difficult than this or is the procedure the same? I don't want to screw up a new knife 🗡️
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You might find that it will be easier to achieve a better edge.

I’ve sharpened scads of knives and the hardest ones to get an edge on were always the cheap mystery metals. Case true sharp also seems to take a bit if finesse.
 
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