What Did You Sharpen Today?

Today I used my Leading Edge sharpener and a set of diamond plates to sharpen my whole set of Laguiole steak knives, finishing with a very slight toothy edge on a strop. I re-profiled to 15dps for all of them.

I used some Hapstone R2 Lite clamps mounted on a clamp bar I recently designed for my Leading Edge rotatable clamp system, and I used a floodlight mount I also recently made.

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I've been playing with this Hapstone jig I got from Gritomatic. Same concept as the Norton angle guide, but this one doesn't restrict you to fixed angles. I quite like it, although the shape of the jaws basically prevent you from going much below 14 dps, which is disappointing. Good alternative to a pricey fixed angle system for anyone who has bench stones they like and might want to do the occasional perfectly flat bevel.

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And the result on my Endela in K390 using Venev Phoenix stones (240-400 and 800-1200 @ 15 dps):

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I was just testing so didn't take the time to fix the fiddly bit at the heel. Next time.
 
a bit disappointed after this one, but nothings perfect : )
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Well, technically, it was yesterday. I sharpened my Spyderco Native 5 and a couple of kitchen knives. Despite being a complete rookie at this, I was able to put a pretty decent edge on each knife.

ETA: "Decent edge" by my standards, but I'm guessing they would be subpar for a lot of folks on this forum.
 
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Something a little different:

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Before sharpening the food processor blade on the left measured between 500-750 BESS, and the chopper blade on the right was at about 500. I managed to get them both down to about 200-250, which I think is fine for their purpose. For the serrated one I used KME's tapered diamond rod, free hand, and then did a few low-angle passes on the Ultrasharp 3000 plate on the unsharpened side. I hate serrated blades. 🤬
 
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Today I sharpened two Puukkos. An Ahti Vaara and a whittling Puukko from Juha Perttula.
They were pretty sharp from the get go but I wanted to put my own edge on them. The stones I used were the Naniwa Pro 800 and 3000. After that I stropped with Bark River black compound and white compound.

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Today, I allegedly sharpened several things. More than anything, I wanted to practice freehand sharpening, and play with an Arkansas stone Tri-hone I'd forgotten I had. I won't be posting pictures yet, as I clearly need more practice, and I don't want y'all cringing at my work. I started with a small Imperial lockback, made in Ireland, the acquisition of which is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe a groomsman's gift from a wedding? When I got a reasonable edge on that one, I I moved on to an old Gerber lockback that I got when I was about 16. It was a favorite pocketknife for several years, but also vanished on me for a number of years. Mrs. McGee discovered it in a drawer a few days ago, and piled it with my 'practice knives.' I'm kind of amazed that I still have it. Then I moved on to a Kershaw. A Volt, maybe? I've had it for 4 or 5 years, I guess. I'm not entirely convinced I did that one more good than harm. But I have to practice on something, right? Finally, I got out my Leatherman multi-tool and worked on the plain edge blade. I'd noticed it was dull, but when I looked at the edge under magnification, I could see several chips. So I broke out a diamond plate and worked those out, then went back to the Tri-hone. None of the afore-mentioned are shaving sharp, but they're all better than they were when I got up this morning.
 
My first taste of the fabled Magnacut! Got a Tactile Knife Co. Rockwall and immediately commenced to resharpening the abysmal factory edge (20° per side, average around 370 BESS). Used the Hapstone angle guide jig with Venev Benchstones to take it down to 15°/side and 85 BESS.

Result here:
 
3D Anvil, Good to get first hand report of the Gritomatic guide, thx. Thinking it is a good assistive technology for free hand tool kit. How long did you fiddle with guide before you could start sharpening first time, second and third use? Are you over a tub or sink or a cutting board, how much real estate do you need for guide's "leg"?
 
scottc3 said:
3D Anvil, Good to get first hand report of the Gritomatic guide, thx. Thinking it is a good assistive technology for free hand tool kit. How long did you fiddle with guide before you could start sharpening first time, second and third use? Are you over a tub or sink or a cutting board, how much real estate do you need for guide's "leg"?
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I think it probably took me around 15 minutes fiddling with the thing the first time, between working out the clamp and the screws. After that first time it's probably down to five minutes setup time. I'm using it on a wooden counter top that's been treated with some kind of sealant. You need a surface that's not going to get ruined by water, because some inevitably spills off the stone. I would say it requires an area of roughly 2' by 18". The surface has to be fairly smooth so the screws can slide across it.

I tried setting the angle on one side with an angle cube and then using a caliper to adjust the other screw to the same depth, but for some reason it's usually .1-.2 deg. off, so I set the two sides independently. It's helpful having two-sided stones because that way you get the exact same angle when you flip the stone. The two Venevs I have are close enough in depth that I don't have to adjust the angle when I switch to the second stone.

I'm actually preferring this setup to my KME these days. The bench stones have 6x the surface area of the KME stones (and 4x the area of 6x1 stones), so it goes much quicker. You also have the ability to roll the blade into the belly, which is something fixed angle systems can't do.
 
I used my Gatco system to reset the bevel on one of our kitchen knives. I’m really beginning to see the limitations of the Gatco system.

I also spent some time practicing freehanding on the Tri-Hone with an old Gerber, a Leathernan, and a couple of other pocketknives.
 
I sharpened my Benchmade Sequel and one of Mrs. McGee's kitchen knives on my Tri-hone today. I also . . . . umm, I'm not sure that what I did to my Native 5 or Kershaw Volt can rightfully be called "sharpening." More like "bludgeoning them until an edge appeared."
 
Added a cleaver to the kitchen arsenal, which was long overdue. It's painful cutting bones with a chef's knife, knowing what it's doing to the edge.

I get that a meat cleaver isn't a sushi knife, but this thing came DULL out of the box. Truly butter knife dull. Perfect job for the Ken Onion grinder attachment which very quickly put a *decent* edge on it. Not going for sushi knife with this, but around 200 BESS (versus 950 out of the box) will work for me. 20° per side.

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