What Did You Sharpen Today?

While watching(!) olympics, i sharpened my Zwilling chef knife. It was still sharp to begin with but it had some chips (from chopping fish bones) and i wanted to sharpen just anything out of boredom because operating the silver RRS is so much fun/amazing. Just with one single AX ruby i did everything (and i concluded the session without stropping!): grinding, sharpening, deburring, honing. Btw deburring at the bevel angle isn't a good recipe for Zwilling steels; with a much raised angle, the stubborn burr was gone after the first attempt, noice! I couldn't get the chips out this time, never mind. Apart from the chips the blade slices phonebook paper very well and also passes the 90°-tomato test. So even without the use of more expensive rubies, i have reached the career point where i can get consistently edges which pass the 90°-tomato test, fast and without fail (no more fear the blade would fail the test!). For use in kitchens, that's sharp enough, where i draw the line of sensibleness:
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It's ridiculous how much more effort/energy/time it would have taken to get the same sharp result with the Ruixin Pro III including guided rod stropping (e.g. PTS method). Absolutely ridiculous. Or with benchstones: no way i could have followed an olympic event at the same time!
As one can see above, just one sheet of toilet paper was needed during the entire session including cleaning. And that paper goes into the trash bin. Very environmental-friendly and neat/effortless. i'll still use the 204-freehanding method as often as i can (especially for a change, because sharpening has gotten too easy/boring by the advent of RRS); in particular, I wouldn't sharpen/maintain straight-edge knives or Spyderco PM2/delica/endura with the RRS (or Sharpmaker) but for all other blade shapes (convex blades, concave blade sections), especially the bulk of kitchen knives, this is now my reconfirmed goto sharpening method, even in preference to the Sharpmaker. — But i'll also understand why most people, beginners or aficionados, woht follow suit: like MP3's and streaming subscriptions spoiled the CD music buying/collection hobby, the RRS has the potential to ruin the fun of sharpening-as-a-hobby (or even the sharpening products market and business). Also, even if i regard the RRS as silver bullet/secret weapon, not everyone will be able to operate it to its full potential. It's more powerful in the hands of an advanced user than a beginner. Same with an expensive professional table tennis racket in the hands of a beginner: no dice either way. Anyway, to each his own. Most of my future posts in this thread will continue to involve the RRS (instead of 204-freehanding, or 302UF, or benchstones, or Ruixin), i am confident.

One thing though: The ruby is fast-cutting (generally, that's what we want, doht we?) and consumes a lot of steel, so i'll keep an eye out for finer rubies. From then on, the bevels will look mirror-polished after the ruby treatment, you'll see …
 
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Technically yesterday...

Used my Valiant Company Golok for some yard work. Cleaned, then sharpened, oiled and while putting it away it slipped within the non-retention scabbard...I didn't realize that part of the blade was exposed when it shifted and got 7 stitches in my right ring finger, and six in my right pinkie for that failure.

If you feel the knife shift in such a scabbard, be alert and don't end up like I did. (At least I got it sharp. :rolleyes: )

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I sharpened this bunch of knives today.

The low grit big boy is the Nubatama 220 Black and then went to the Suehiro Chemical 320 and finished off with the Cerax 1K.
I have started using my newer Chemical stone as my first one, although flat on both sides, is not parallel side to side and is getting thin.
Probably will cut it up in pocket stones soon.
 
Here are a few items some might be interested in!

This is a picture of a Miyabi Artisan 8" santoku. One ass-kicking knife! Sharp as blazes, light, well balanced, fairly stainless, and we haven't had to put it on the stones in the first year of ownership. I used German style blades all my life, until I tried Asian style blades. Very thin, light, and very easy to handle. For typical use in the home, these blades are wonderful! No good for bones or frozen food, as the steel is very hard and more likely to chip than thicker, softer blades.

The Messermeister ceramic hone has maintained the edge. I gave away my steel hones after using this ceramic rod. It is much faster, as in it only takes two or three strokes per side to get it cutting receipt paper and arm or leg hair. It is a lot more aggresive than a steel, but that keeps the blade off the stones. Like anything else in this area, you need to learn to use it, but I have found it to be a great timesaver that leaves a fine, refined edge that glides through food!


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The knife in this picture is a cheap Chinese Eafengrow, with a very thick D2 blade. I use it to open packages and perform other rough tasks. I sat down with a good hard Arkansas stone yesterday, and spent about 20 minutes trying to get it up to speed after many months of hard use.


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The hard Ark, which laughs at more typical knife steel, was helpless! It absolutely would not remove any material, and that is a well-proven stone. D2 is tough!

Today, I pulled out the new Spyderco CBN (cubic boron nitride) bench stone (see the shiny rectangular thingy!). CBN is touted as second only to diamonds in hardness and cutting ability. The finer side of the CBN stone put a toothy edge on the stubborn D2 in about 3 or 4 strokes per side, no exaggeration. Holy cow does it cut fast! The fine side feels like about a 600 grit proposition, I haven't tried the coarse side yet. I suspect the coarse side will not see much use until the neighbors show up with an 8" chef's knife as dull as a butter knife!

This was the first use, so the Spyderco CBN will need a little use to get broken in, but I was extremely impressed with its performance. Hopefully it will hold up to extended use.

I finished the edge up with a 1K Shapton glass stone, a high end ceramic waterstone. Sharpening D2 or a supersteel blade would be a long haul with this stone, but it does a great job of refining the somewhat coarse edge left by the CBN. Then I gave it a few minutes on the homemade leather strop, charged with 5 micron diamond polishing paste.

Now that fat little blade will pop hair and cut printer paper reliably, and even cut receipt or cigarette paper to a point, although the geometry of this working blade limits its performance in what I call "the paper tricks"!

A sharp knife is a wonderful, loyal friend. A dull knife is just another blunt object.
 
The other day i sharpened my Tupperware peeler, it was challenging because the blades (the cutting bevels) are constricted not free-standing: I could get the sections nearing either suspension point super sharp but not the consumed center section because it had developed a recurve. it's a geometry problem which cannot be easily solved with my flat file. With repeated sharpenings i could get the edge back straight again, i believe. Peeling with this resharpened peeler is really amazing: for example, peeling a carrot leaves a shiny peeled carrot behind: the peeled parts are so smooth that they become shiny (reflective). Chefs know this sight, to me it's a new experience.

I also sharpened a small pair of scissors (or how do you cut your nose🤥 hair? 🤣). First time ever sharpening scissors, naturally with edge-following movements. Used the same fine ceramic flat file. While the scissors cut better now (more effort less), there's an interesting unwanted side effect: when i try to cut a loosely lying sheet of paper, the scissors would not grab/bite right away but the shears would push the paper a few millimeters away before they do grab'n bite into paper. The main reason for this cutting behavior is the slippery smooth mirror-polish on the shearing bevels; my Zwilling kitchen scissors have grippy bevels, in contrast. The other reason could be that i didn't sharpen the bevels sharp enough lol.

Today i sharpened the blade of mower1 and took a picture this time:
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I can confirm that neither the Spyderco round file nor my cylindrical rubies, —clogged or unclogged—, were able to produce a mirror finish, which the 204UF would have done. I left it like that and test-mowed the lawn, success lol. I doht take sharpening my super low-riding mower blades too seriously because there's so much which happens during a single short mowing session (cutting into walnuts, branches, stones, earth, ground, soil) which takes off the fine edge right away.
 
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Today i finished sharpening scythe4 (i doht have scythes, they are all sickles, i caht distinguish the two words even in geman sohri). I ground off the secondary bevel (cutting bevel) with the retractable diamond sharpener, went thru a sequence of (fresh or clogged) cylindrical ceramics to raise a burr but couldn't get anywhere near a mirror finish with them. After deburring with Spyderco 400F1R, i taped the very apex and mirror-polished (incl. micropitting 🧐😩) the bevel face with compound-loaded felt (WHITE, BLUE, ORANGE):
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There was no point in reaching a defect-free mirror polish result, so i'd grade the total (efforts+time+result) with a C-, which is still satisfactory FWIW. It's the best polishing result I ever got on any of the four sickles. The apex is unpolished (the felt would have rounded it) and cuts through phonebook paper nicely. Like a Mora scandi grind, this sickle has now a primary grind only, i.e. no secondary grind, no microbevel. It is very thin 'behind the edge' and would deform/fold easily if i hit a pebble stone with it, by accident.

btw I doht need the sickles often or much. It's just a fun exercise to sharpen them with the few cheap tools i have: cylindrical diamond, cylindrial ruby are perfect for the task (edge-following movements). Never again 204M 204F 204UF for this!, you know why.
 
Yesterday i freehand sharpened the Graef bread cutting disc mentioned in the OP. Last time i did it was 18 months ago. This time i took a pic, nothing much to see there:
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It took slow me 2.5h to raise a burr on each of the 36 teeth. Then the whole US OPEN final match women's to deburr. The deburring went more straightforward than in my former sharpenings of that disc iirc, i didn't even flipflap the burr.

Btw the disc was still sharp but the machine needed a deep cleaning after 18 months omfg (it was used for veggies, meat, bread, etc), thanks that Barkeepers is my friend. After the cleaning i had 2.5h left before the match start and thought that i could manage to sharpen and deburr before... well i was wrong.

The original Graef sharpener accessory (separate purchase) looks like a sham shame
 
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I pulled out my old Sharpmaker and touched up the edge on my EDC (CRK Mnandi) followed with my black and then green strops. Nice and sharp again. I try not to let it get too dull.
 
B3726B2C-A89E-404F-AA88-8402FB276CF7.jpegWas using my Cold Steel Pendleton Lite and noticed a bit of rust on the bevel.
So I took them out with my Kohetsu 2K.

I have not used this stone in a while and it is such a joy to use.
Excellent feedback and it really is fast and somewhat aggressive for a 2K.

I am pretty sure these are manufactured by Suehiro.
It has a lot of the same great characteristics of the Cerax 1K and the Rika 5K.

I was surprised to see rust on this as I do believe it is 4116 which is somewhat stainless.
But I could of put it away wet in the sheath and it is one of the old fabric type ones and in those conditions really most steels will corrode a bit.
 
Today I tried out stone in hand sharpening like Michael Christy does. Only I don’t change hands. My left hand is basically useless for sharpening… I’ve been practicing with pocket stones a fair bit lately because I figured if I get that technique down I’m set for in the field sharpening with pocket stones.

I sharpened these three:
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All three measured between 95 and 130 BESS. I still can’t get scores under 100 BESS reliably. Don’t know if it’s something that has to „click“ someday or if it’s simply more practice and muscle memory.
 
My cheapo straight razor. It didn't really need to go all the way to stones, but I was playing with some Arkansas stones that I got from Dan's, and a nice little blue-black Ark that I bought on an auction site years ago.

That little blue black, semi translucent stone still blows away any other Ark that I've used. If you ever see one, snatch it.

I'm still a novice when it comes to straights, but I got very good results and a good shave.
 
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I sharpened a couple of cheap knives that accumulated in my father’s drawer over the years.

I used the American mutt stone from BYXCO for the coarse work and then went to a 1000 grit vitrified diamond stone. After that I stropped on leather with Bark River black compound for burr removal. For the Opinel I used Bark River white compound after the black.
 
Put a KME job on this Pro-Tech Malibu I recently picked up from the Exchange. Factory edge seemed to be 20+ degrees and not especially sharp (220 BESS). Now about 16° and sharp. I used the CGSW bonded diamond stones and KME lapping films, followed by balsa strop and a couple runs through a rock-hard felt cube.

 
Great topic, very interesting)) Today I was sharpening a Buck 501 s30v with a china ruby stone, factory is marked with 3000 grit. It seemed to me that there was less than 3000 and the surface was not very flat. On a piece of mirror with SiC powder flatted one side to F600 and the second side to F360. Now knife sharpens perfectly, but there is still a very small burr after the F600 side of ruby, then I used a piece of black arkansas that was also flatted on the F600. The burr is gone and the knife cuts very well)) Black arkansas from Norton, has a light piece in the middle and it has a very resonant sound, it rings like a small gong at any touch, is this normal? The label has to be destroyed to grind the stone

 
Testing these new Venev bonded diamond stones today. Two-sided stones: F240-400 and F800-1200. So far I'm liking them alot. In the foreground is my Ruike beater which I use for testing. Background is a Boye Basic 3 in dendritic cobalt.

 
Last night I had to quickly sharpen Schrade Uncle Henry folder several times. At work, a friend began to freeze due to drafts at about 2 am, with the help of a candle we found the main air flows and decided to close up the remnants of the ancient ventilation of the 50s. We have a modern ventilation system in a concrete building, we shut it off when it's cold, but there is an old system somewhere inside the walls and through some old lattices it continues to draw warm air, cold air from the street goes to the place from all the other gaps. We found pieces of PE and scotch tape. We applied PE to the lattice, cut it to size and glued it with tape. And so 8 times. Naturally, PE was cut directly on the concrete around the lattice, so the knife quickly became dull after first lattice. It's good that I had a piece of a sharpening wheel lying around at work, most likely silicon carbide, since the color is the same as that of crystolon. A few strokes and the knife is toothed again and can cut a few more strokes. I think that any knife made of any steel would dull just as quickly with this use.

 
Today I sharpened a couple cheap kitchen knives (I hate cheap kitchen knives...) and a new knife I bought, a Civivi Elementum button lock in 14c28n. These days I usually sharpen on vitrified diamond stones, but since both the cheap kitchen knives and the Elementum aren't rich in vanadium carbides I thought I'd use my trusted Naniwa Pro stones again. Haven't used those in a while.

Anyway, with the kitchen knives I went from the 400 to the 800 and then straight to the strop with Bark River black compound. With the Elementum I went from the 400 to the 800 and then to the 3000. After that I stropped on the black compound, and after that on the Bark River white compound. The way the edge felt I was hoping to be under 100 BESS, but 115 isn't bad either.

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