What is your touch up process ? Not shaving but still sharp?

I go to my sharpmaker, and do a few passes on my strop, back to hair splitting in less than a minute, unless I have a REALLY dull edge. IMO, an edge maintained on a strop lacks bite and performs like crap
 
I have a vintage Smith's crock stick that has a black rods. They are heavier than white rods and have a slight texture to them. They honestly out perform anything else that I have. Including my Sharpmaker. I've never seen them for anywhere in the last 15 years. The closest that I've found are made by Kat'z knives and are a good deal lighter in weight. They just don't perform like the old Smith's.
 
mossyhorn said:
I have a vintage Smith's crock stick that has a black rods. They are heavier than white rods and have a slight texture to them. They honestly out perform anything else that I have. Including my Sharpmaker. I've never seen them for anywhere in the last 15 years. The closest that I've found are made by Kat'z knives and are a good deal lighter in weight. They just don't perform like the old Smith's.
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That sounds kinda familiar. I have an old 'Kwik-Sharp' crock stick set, bought back in the '80s I think. It's round rods are 3/8" diameter and ~ 9" long (GREAT for big blades), and are the best ceramics I've ever used. Very similar to the Sharpmaker's brown rods, but perhaps just a tad more aggressive. I noticed even back then, I could put some real 'bite' into an edge with these, even when my own (pathetic) skill set wasn't capable with anything else. I dug them out recently, and discovered that the rods are just the right size to fit snugly into my Sharpmaker's base, to take advantage of it's 30 & 40 degree settings (the original Kwik-Sharp base only had one setting).

I was searching the web recently, to see if there were still any of these sets out there. Didn't find any, but I did come across this old newspaper ad for them. It reveals the true beauty in this set:
 
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Obsessed with Edges said:
I spend so much time tinkering with different methods, I wasn't initially too sure what my real routine is.
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This sums me up pretty well. Add to that I rotate a fair number of knives through EDU I almost need a notebook to remember what kind of edge each one had. If waterstones I'll just backhone on the 4000 grit stone and strop on dry newspaper. I recently reconditioned the machete I used on a hiking trip. Had been done on a 6000 grit waterstone, after being hammered repeatedly into seasoned American beech the edge was beat up pretty good (although still pretty darn sharp by most machete standards - Tramontina = good steel/heat treat). Wrapped newspaper around a benchstone, rubbed in a few drops of mineral oil and followed with a bit of Sears black emery compound. Stropped on this for twenty passes or so till the bevel took on a nice satin appearance. Followed with Sears white compound (prep'd the paper with mineral oil again - I really like how this works out, almost like a slurry), finished with dry newspaper. Ahhh, back to face-shaving sharp and in less than 10 minutes.
 
The wicked edge pro pack is the best in my opinion it get the best outcome even in a short amount of time
 
Dewberry said:
where did you get such aggressive stropping coumpounds(28u and 14u)?
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I got them from ebay. They are pretty cheap too and they actually work. I tried out the 14u first because it was around the abrasive size of a 600 grit stone. I really like it for touching up because it gives my edge bite and it doesn't scratch up the polish on my bevels.
 
My knives usually come off the stone shaving sharp, then Hit a bare leather strop to polish it. I can strop it after every day of cutting and keep it shaving sharp for a good month depending on how much heavy cutting I do.
 
singularity35 said:
I got them from ebay. They are pretty cheap too and they actually work. I tried out the 14u first because it was around the abrasive size of a 600 grit stone. I really like it for touching up because it gives my edge bite and it doesn't scratch up the polish on my bevels.
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what did you type into the ebay search bar to find it? or could you just PM me a link to it?
thanks in advance for the help
 
Honestly, I rarely end up with a knife that will not shave.

It really depends on the steel the knife is made of though. My choppers get stropped pretty regularly (after ever few hours of use) and they usually still are rough shaving sharp at that point, but I will strop them back to clean shaving sharp (6, 3, 1 micron loaded strops). After 4 or 5 cycles (use-strop-use) I will go back to the diamond hones. This is done to remove a bit of the micro convex that occurs after 4 or 5 stropping sessions. I find that they perform best with slight convex, but not too much;)
 
knifenut1013 said:
I return to the last stone used for that knife and depending on the damage I will progress backwards in grit until the abrasive removes the correct amount of material without wasting time. After the stone I use a bare leather strop to finish the edge off.

Most of the time I just use my finishing stone to "strop" the edge, doing this often means I actually only sharpen my knife a few times a year when the bevel needs to be reset.
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Am I reading that correctly, knifenut? You progress backwards in grit, from high to low grit? Doesn't that waste a lot of time, since you just have to go back up the grits again to polish out the lower grit scratches?
 
With experience you gain the knowledge to simply pick the right stone, but until then you start with the last stone used and if its not coarse enough to remove the damage then you move on to a coarser stone. 2 or 3 times of doing this and you will be able to start picking the correct stone.

You remove the least amount of metal because you are not over-grinding.
 
Red jewelers rouge on the back side of leather belt. Ten runs. Check sharpens. Re do if necessary. When it shaves whit ease. Then olive oil and no rouge on the other side for ten runs.
 
I use pink scratch-less buffing compound on a homemade leather strop made of 6-7 oz leather glued on some hardwood
 
peppen108 said:
Red jewelers rouge on the back side of leather belt. Ten runs. Check sharpens. Re do if necessary. When it shaves whit ease. Then olive oil and no rouge on the other side for ten runs.
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Red jewelers rouge is Iron Oxide, it is not hard enough to cut blade steel.


Did you get the oil on strop idea from YouTube? FYI, that's really bad advice.
 
Either a strop or a Sharpmaker. I used to steel, and am exploring going back to that for some of my knives. I don't have may really hard knives. I have some 60-62 and I am leery of steeling those. I gave steeling up altogether despite pretty good results. I am working my way slowly back into this. I really think even for sporting knives (all those outside of a kitchen anyway) there may yet be a place for the steel. I am fixing to get a Victorinox Forschner Fibrox polished honing steel. All my other steels (two are downright heirlooms) are the grooved kind. I have the little field steel thing that gerber makes. I polished it. I think it may not be hard enough but it works. We'll see.
 
Most of the time 10 to 20 passes on a green compound loaded strop will bring the edge back, especially on the simpler steels like Cr13MoV and the carbon steel on Opinels. My high-grit stones are waterstone and I am hesitant to use them for simple touch ups due to the set-up time and mess they create, so I will try to get it done with just the strop.

As for steeling, I do this a lot with my kitchen knives, but I don't have a real steel. I use whatever hard smooth material is at hand like a wine glass or a coffee mug.
 
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