What Did You Sharpen Today?

3D Anvil said:
Was touching up my cleaver on the Hapstone. Cautionary note: do not jam your finger into the blade when the knife is mounted in the clamps. :rolleyes:
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I've had a couple of close calls just since I got my Hapstone. I'm pretty sure my time for a cut is coming sooner or later. Here's hoping it's not too bad, and a clean cut.
 
I already know that once I get started on my day, I'll forget to post to this thread. With that said, I bought Mrs. McGee a 5" santoku yesterday. It was only $5, and labeled "high carbon steel." She used it for about 3 minutes before telling me it needed a better edge. So freehand sharpening that one will be my first project of the day.

ETA: I'm also going to use the Hapstone to take a nick out of a carving knife edge. I bought that one at a garage sale for practice, but it's nice enough I've decided just to fix the edge and keep it for our kitchen.

ETA #2: That little santoku was not cooperating with my freehanding, so after about 6 tries, I threw it on the Hapstone.
 
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Have not sharpened anything today, but finished making these. Kangaroo leather on some aluminium backing plates, 2 plain and 2 with diamond spray.

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I forgot to post: Saturday, my nephews came into town for a few hours, and they wanted to learn how to sharpen a knife. I may not be very good, but I know enough to get them started. So I trotted down to the store and bought 3 paring knives of indeterminate steel for the princely sum of $3.81. Total. I let them work on all of my freehanding stones, and they showed no interest in my Hapstone. Won't either one of them be getting hair-whittling edges tomorrow, but we spent a couple of hours on it, and each got burrs raised on his knife. We also had a couple of accidental-redulling events, but that was to be expected. It was definitely quality time, and the boys each took their paring knives home. I will be ordering a couple of Tri-Hones and angle guides for them today.

Yesterday, I cleaned a bunch of my freehanding stones, and then started in on my paring knife (of the 3 mentioned above), and freehand sharpened it. It's not screaming sharp, but it's certainly better than it was. Then I touched up my Kershaw Volt. I like sharpening that one, because of its size, and the fact that it takes a pretty good edge. For whatever reason, I always want to use my stones "in groups." It's not logical, but if I want to use my Arkansas stones, that's all I want to use. Up until yesterday, I almost never used my coarse diamond plate followed by my Arkansas stones. But yesterday, I broke that pattern, twice. With the Kershaw, I used the coarse diamond plate to set the initial edge, followed by the medium and fine Arkansas stones. And I got a better edge than I usually do.

Emboldened by my success, I got out my Native 5 (S30V), and put it to the stone. My Native and my BM Sequel are my most expensive pocket knives, and I've been hesitant to freehand them, at least until I got some basic freehanding skills developed. I started with the diamond plate, got it good and sharp, then moved to the medium Arkansas stone. I've had some problems with the fine Arkansas stone, in that I get a good edge on the coarse stone, refine it on the medium, then promptly dull it on the fine. So when I got a shaving sharp edge coming off the medium stone, I remembered the old adage: "The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good." Accordingly, I stopped right there. I did not pass Go, I did not collect $200, and I did not proceed to the fine stone.
 
Couldn't help myself and ended up getting an S110V Native 5. This one is going on an upcoming hiking/biking trip so it needed an edge tuning to get it to my preference. Maybe 20-25 minutes to get it done. Deep carry clip installed. Hope this knife is prepared for adventure, because it's going to get it. I really like the Native 5 in the short pockets of my hiking pants, the solid back keeps the edge protected from other stuff in my pocket (have had issues with Para 3 edges getting hit by keys etc.).

Triple B super vitrified stones are awesome. Main edge bevel is finished to 400, microbevel at 1000 then 1 micron diamond strop.

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Highly recommend getting a loupe to check on your sharpening while in progress. I went for many years without, and while I can still sharpen just fine without one, it is very nice to be able to more closely check progress and see if my angles are where I want them to be.
 
I'd love to get one of those 400 grit stones but they always seem to be out of stock.

I recently reprofiled my Manix 2 in s100v. Wasn't hard to get it sharp, but it was hard to get it hair-whittling sharp.
 
Decided to get back to freehanding with my new Civivi Conspirator. This one is in Nitro-V. Really impressed with Civivi's near-full flat grind, if not the factory sharpening. It came in at 210 BESS, which isn't terrible, but the edge angles were 24° and 26°, which is kind of ridiculous for a non-hard-use knife. The great thing, though, is that it measured .0125" behind the edge before sharpening, and even after taking it slightly below 15° dps, it still measures .0145" bte.

I reprofiled on a Shapton Pro 120 and also did a little work on a small Venev F80. Then Shapton Glass 500 and 1000, Ultrasharp 3000 plate, and Venev F800, followed by 1 micron leather strop. Final BESS: 105. Yes, I did put a little smile on it. This will be a user so I wasn't being especially careful.

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Sharpened my Cold Steel Voyager and Kershaw Random Vapor. I do remove the thumb screw on the Voyager. It doesn't hit the stone, but it makes me move a tiny bit to try to avoid hitting the stone. 220/1000/Sharpmaker Medium for the Voyager and 1000/4000/Sharpmaker Fine for the Random Leek. And yes, I'm carrying them both.
 
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