What am I doing wrong?

coyote711

coyote711

Joined
Sep 19, 2009
Messages
1,679
I'm new to this, so I'm not up to the shaving or splitting hairs level at all. I've got an old Case pen knife (cv) that's my "practice sharpening" knife.

I can get a pretty fair edge using my Norton IB8 Combo stone. Passes the thumb nail nick test and cuts paper ok, too. Will shave some arm hair sometimes, too. Certainly not a smooth shave, tho.

Recently bought a Spyderco Fine Ceramic stone - light blue box. All it takes is a couple of strokes on that to make my edge noticeably WORSE!!!

Using both stones dry. Both are the same size - 2" x 8". I know I'm keeping the bevel angle the same, and using really light pressure on the ceramic. Edge leading strokes on both. Even tried edge trailing on the ceramic, with the same sad result - worse than when it came off the Norton.

I thought these ceramics were really supposed to be great.

What am I doing wrong?
 
Hard to say without seeing you doing your thing. 1 mark blade edge with a marker 2 use course stone and remove enough metal so that all of the marker is completely removed all the way to the edge. Until this is done there is no step 3. 3 repeat on other side 4 repeat process with medium stone 5 finish at a slightly higher angle on the ceramic with light pressure. At this point alternate sides on every stroke.
 
Your probably just making too big of a jump in grit, the fine ceramic is around 6 microns/4000 grit waterstone. It would probably be better if you used the medium ceramic in between.
 
If you're coming off a fine side of the Norton india stone, why are you even going to a ceramic?

Try going right from the stone to a leather strop and smoothiing the blade out on that. Going to a strop from the fine india should give you a razor sharp shaving edge.

People over complicate knife sharpening.
 
jackknife said:
If you're coming off a fine side of the Norton india stone, why are you even going to a ceramic?

Try going right from the stone to a leather strop and smoothiing the blade out on that. Going to a strop from the fine india should give you a razor sharp shaving edge.

People over complicate knife sharpening.
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That sure sounds simpler to me. I'm going to try it. You've earned my respect in the short time I've been coming here. Even tho I'm an old fart, I'm still learning when it comes to all things related to knives and sharpening - still finding my way.

So, do I need to buy any kind of goop to put on the strop? I'm guessing no!
 
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What is the grit of a fine india? I thought it was pretty low.
 
coyote711 said:
So, do I need to buy any kind of goop to put on the strop? I'm guessing no!
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No.

I just use the back of an old Dickies work belt, the rough side. Takes about 4 to 5 minutes.

For several years now, my only sharpening stuff has been the cut down Eze-lap model L I carry in my wallet, and the back of my belt. When my knife starts getting dull, I sit down someplace take out the hone and touch up my knife. Put hone back in wallet and take my belt and strop it a couple minutes, and I'm good to go again.

Only of late have I been using my old boyscout carborundum stone just for yuks and nostalgia. I found it while going through some stuff in the attick, and I remember how our scoutmaster taught us t sharpen our scout knives. I tried it and lo and behold after all there years it still worked. Made me kind of realize how far off we can get by obsessing too much on this knife thing. I still carry the little diamond home in my wallet, but once ina while I'll touch up a knife on the old carborunum stone for old times sake.

Just lay your belt along the edge of the table. That will hold it nice and flat. Use it after the Norton fine india and you'll do just fine.:thumbup:
 
I find that for whatever reason, probably my technique, some stones work, and some don't. I get great results from the ceramics, DMT (red/blue), and Norton India. I have trouble with waterstones and CrO compound. I've given up trying to figure it out.

If you are going from India fine to stropping, you might want to try an intermediate step with CrO on leather/MDF/post it notes. A lot of people swear by this. My favorite is to use Thiers Issard razor paste, it comes in sticks like the old camo sticks we had in the Army. I put it on the linen side of a razor strop, but you can get some denim from old jeans, and stretch it across some wood nice and tight, and tack it down. Using that as an intermediate step between the stone and bare leather will really refine your edge, and make it last longer.

Sorry this is so brief, I'm trying to fire this off before going to work...
 
Thanks for all the input, guys! I went and re-read the post that Jackknife made a little while back, the one questioning whether we obsess too much over sharpening. Good points all around on that one!

I've got to admit that my sentiments lie more along the lines of what Jackknife wrote - basically the simpler, the better. Now that's not necessarily just because he's Jackknife, although that doesn't hurt, but probably because I, too, am an old fart :), and have come to realize that in most things "the simpler the better" holds true. Either that or the older I get the less patience I have with complicated systems and such.

The above factors probably explain why I've chosen to start learning, and stick with, sharpening free hand rather than buy & try any of the systems out there. Not that they haven't tempted me at times, especially when I feel like I'm not making any progress on the stones. But I'm stickin' with freehand. I find that sometimes an old dog CAN be taught new tricks - depending on the dog, and depending on the teacher. This community is my teacher, and I'm having a lot of fun learning.
 
Well good luck with whichever direction you choose to take it. Keep in mind, a lot of us that like refining our edges are old farts too. Too often, in these kinds of discussions, people tend to get stereotyped depending on their interests...
 
Hey coyote, I forgot to ask you, are you lifting the blade off the stone after every swipe and using the 'slice the top off the stone' approach?

One thing I learned when I was a kid, was the small circle way of sharpening. Working one side of the blade at a time without lifting or stopping the motion. You'll get way better consistancy that way free hand. Our scout master had us take a blade and lay it on the stone at 'about' the angle we wanted. He told us not to worry about angle because close was good enough. I've found that to be true. Using a dry erase marker, it's easy to see how you are holding the knife and what kind of angle you're getting, but don't worry too much about it. It's not going to matter at all in the real world if your angle is off 5 degrees. It won't even matter if one side is a few degrees more or less than the other side, it will still be razor sharp and cut what you need to cut.

Mark up the bevels of the blade with a bright color marker like red or bright blue. Don't use black as it will be hard to see once you get down to a fine line. When marked, lay your knife on the stone strait up and down, like you're going to saw it in half. Now lay the blade over half that distance and look at it carefully. Now lay it over some more till you cut that angle in half. That will do for 99.9% of cutting jobs. Start honing the blade with moderate preasure in small circles starting at the kick, and working your way slowly toward the tip with overlapping circles. Take a full minute to get to the tip. Now look at the marker on the edge. Is there any marker left or do you have a nice clean even bevel about what the factory one was? Now do this to the other side of the blade, again taking a full minute to do the length of the blade. Repeat as many tmes as you need till you have a sharp knife. This should be a faily short time, but it gets faster once you have the edge bevels established.

When you get the knife sharp, finish by stropping on the back of a belt. You'll end up with a shaving sharp knife after you do this a few times and get practiced in it. With this way of sharpening, you can re-sharpen your knife in the middle of the woods, out on a boat, anywhere or anytime, under most any conditions, in a few minutes.

People obsess over the edge when the don't really need to. A few degrees of angle will not make a knats hair bit of difference. My friend Danny is a prime example. Danny is not a knife knut, does not really care about knives exept that he knows as a sportsman he needs one. He likes to hunt and fish, so he carries a sharp knife, and a small hone in his wallet like I do so he can touch it up in the field if need be. His choice of knife is a Gerber LST. He took about 18 or 20 years to wear out his first one, so he bought two more. One to use and one to stash. Loves them because its cheap and light weight and disappears in his pocket till needed. He sharpens his knife like I descibed, and he field dresses his deer every year and cleans whatever fish he gets with his little LST. He uses that knife for EVERYTHING. It's his go-to knife. It's always sharp enough to skin a critter with or open a UPS box and his mail. That's all he cares about. I've watched him field dress his deer on opening day, then sit down right there when he done and touch up his knife because after cutting through that hide and hair, it's not quite razor sharp anymore. He'll hone it for a minute or two, then take off his belt and strop it for a few minute while having a smoke, then shave a little patch of hair off his arm and he's done. I know his bevel angles may be off a bit, but it doesn't seem to matter. His blade glides right through the deer hide or fish belly, or whatever he's cutting. But Danny is not a knife knut, so he doesn't know his blade may not be up the standards of some people.

If you like the gadjets and gizmos, thats okay, room enough in the boat for everyone. But if all you want is to sharpen your knife, you don't really need anything but a good stone of some kind, (diamond, India, even carborundum) and a leather strop of some kind. Thats it. You really don't need a gizmo to get your knife shaving sharp. Heck, my old man used to use the unglazed ring on the bottom of a coffee mug to touch up his Case peanut. Drove mom nuts when he'd do it in public at a diner. But dad's little knife was always razor sharp.

Sometimes simple is good.
 
sodak said:
Well good luck with whichever direction you choose to take it. Keep in mind, a lot of us that like refining our edges are old farts too. Too often, in these kinds of discussions, people tend to get stereotyped depending on their interests...
Click to expand...

So true. So very true! :thumbup:
 
Ya, your first sentence is how I'm doing it, Jackknife.

I'm going to try your suggestion of the little circle method. One of the guys I worked with at the trucking company, before they shut us down recently and kicked me into early retirement, used to work at the old meat packing plant in town. He used to sharpen his knife that way. I never talked to him about it and never tried it on my knife. We just kept a very small, probably 3/4" x 3", arkansas stone around the terminal to touch up our knives. (All I ever carried was a small Buck knife, with black plastic handles that I carried on my key ring). I figured he had his method, and I had mine. That was before I discovered KnifeForums and became interested in knives and sharpening. It's a shame - he probably could've taught me a thing or two, firsthand.

For right now, I'm just having a ball experimenting and learning what it takes to get a good edge on a knife! I think that once I get to the point where I can shave the hair on my arm pretty easily, that's as far as I'll ever need to go. Not that I NEED to shave the hair on my arm :), but as a reference point, and a point of pride in being able to sharpen a knife to that level. I like the idea of being able to go from the stone to the strop.
 
coyote711 said:
Recently bought a Spyderco Fine Ceramic stone - light blue box. All it takes is a couple of strokes on that to make my edge noticeably WORSE!!!
Click to expand...

I've got the Spyderco profile 701F stick/stone. I'm reasonably sure it's the exact same material as in your larger 8x2 fine stone. The dealer I bought it from said "you don't need it, but I'll sell it to you." When I called him to discuss my lack of results with it, he said almost exactly what you said: "Just seems to make it worse."

I've written that several times here in the past few months.

But I've also been trying to be more careful with my edges and my angles and now, on most blades, I can make the Spyderco fine produce a better edge than the medium. Previously when I went from Spyderco medium to fine, I'd just screw the edge up. Now it gets sharper.

I have some theories, but I'm honestly not sure exactly why it's working better now. I can tell you that I'm doing the following things differently though:

1. Making sure that I get a burr, running full length of the blade, on both sides, starting with my coarse stone.
2. Continuing to feel for that burr, again, full length on both sides, with each successive stone. The burrs get finer and finer, and are very hard to feel on some steels. With others, not as difficult.
3. I'm trying to hold my angles more consistently. I feel silly doing it, but I use pre-folded wedges of paper that I check my angles with every few strokes.
4. Light pressure on the fine ceramic, and lightening up as I'm trying to erase the burr off of that final side.
5. Usually before I start each new stone I run the edge lightly through the edge of some corrugated cardboard two or three times. I learned to do this many years ago with the end grain of soft wood (like white pine), to either straighten up a rolled over edge, or to literally peel the burr off of some steel (like chisels). Cardboard seems to work well for this. I've found that when I'm having some serious trouble when going from one grit to another, that "alignment" step seems to help. Sometimes I do this in the middle of working with one grit when things just don't seem to be working as expected.
6. The microbevel. Putting a microbevel on the edge seems to really increase it's sharpness for me. I only use the medium and fine ceramics on the microbevel.

Like I said, I'm not sure if it's all of the above, or none of it. I just know my edges are sharper now and shave hair much more easily than before.

Brian.
 
What angle are you sharpening at? If you are honing at over 15 degrees per side cutting performance can go down (rather than improve) with a finer grit. If you want razor performance you need razor geometry which is well under 10 degrees per side. At higher angles the surface irregularities of a coarser edge can help snag what you are cutting to work better than a smooth finish. For anything over 20 degrees per side you might as well sharpen with a file. Your blade will slice better with a file edge.

Are you sure you got rid of your burr? A burr will cut paper and shave quite well, but is weak when used on reasonable tough material. If you had a burr and then switched to a fine ceramic hone you might somewhat smooth the burr and push it over sideways. This might reduce its shaving and slicing performance. One way to check for this is to test whether your blade likes to shave better on one side than the other. A truly finished edge will shave the same on either side of the edge. A burred edge can have a distinct preference for one side.
 
All you guys are awesome! Thanks so much for your help.

After posting this thread last night, I went back to the Norton and the Spyderco, and got to the point where it is now BETTER after using the fine ceramic. Just kept at it a while, trying to apply the points made by winbag338.

After having done that, I can appreciate the points made here by bgentry and Jeff Clark. I think you nailed my problem. THE BURR! And you've also given me other things to consider as well.

Jeff, I don't know the angle for sure, but it's roughly 22.5 degrees per side. Set the blade straight up and down on the stone, bend it over half way, then half way again. Perhaps 20 degrees, as I tend to keep the spine a little lower rather than a little higher. I think I've developed a pretty good consistency in keeping the same bevel, based on the magic marker trick.

And I think you precisely nailed my previous problem when you said, "If you had a burr and then switched to a fine ceramic hone you might somewhat smooth the burr and push it over sideways. This might reduce its shaving and slicing performance".

I'm embarrassed. If there's one thing I THOUGHT I'd learned on this forum, it's the importance of forming and then getting rid of THE BURR!!!!! Apparently I didn't learn well enough. Back to kindergarten for me! :D
 
I would suggest trying to convex your knife and see what you warm up to better. All you need is a mouse pad, and some wet dry.
 
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