What knife/steel has been your worst sharpening nightmare?

T. Erdelyi

T. Erdelyi

Joined
Feb 3, 2001
Messages
32,359
What shape blade or type steel do find most difficult to sharpen?

Overall I've had relative success sharpening most common medium to better quality steels from High Carbon Steel O1,1095 on through the higher end steel alloys, ATS 34, 154CM free hand, and with my Edge Pro every edge gets scary sharp.

Two materials seem to give still try my patience freehand, the first is my Boye Prophet made with David Boyes Dendritic Steel, and a Beretta Avenger, with a single bevel chisel ground Tanto made with a carbon fiber, VG-10 laminate.

The Prophet gets sharp, but not scary sharp like the my Pat Crawford One Hand Knife, and the VG-10 because of the acute single bevel edge just chips little microchips,(is that a word?).

So what are your nigmare blades or steels, the ones ya can't seem to get an edge on that makes ya happy? :(
 
Well, I must be lucky, skilled at sharpening, or just have plain ol' easy to sharpen steels. I have: 1084, 1095, D2, A2, S30V, the Becker steel (numbers/letters escape me at the moment), AUS-8, and Carbon-V, and some unknown stainless on a couple of slippies. All take a nice edge quite easily. I use several systems: Norton fine/medium stone, diamond stones, Spyderco crocks, and mouse-pad with wet/dry paper.
 
Benchmade 154CM- It just wont cooperate!
Talonite- I love how long it will hold an edge, but just trying to put that edge on there takes forever
 
My worst sharpening nightmare would be if I have no knife to sharpen. :D
 
Reprofiled an S30V Lil'T from about 18 deg to 15 deg. Not really a nightmare as it came out really nice and sharp, but damn, did it take long! My nightmares are more related to factory angle than to steel. I really don't like the factory edge of Buck knives (at least how they were 5 years ago), way too large an included angle for my taste. This is really not saying anything against Buck knives in general, as the angle can be changed on a coarse stone.

Tok: I hear ya! Right after I got my nice set of waterstones, I started sharpening everything in sight.....and ran out of things to sharpen :grumpy:....how terrible!!! :D
 
I let my BM 806D2 get dull. I'll never let that happen again!! It took damn near a week of on-and-off work to get it back.
 
I can sharpen everything in the house EXCEPT for a cheap POS Farberware kitchen knife that my wife absolutely loves. I'm starting to hate that thing. I have no idea what steel it is, but it must be real soft.
Dave
 
My worst nightmare is the Camillus EDC.

I don't have any idea about why I find it so hard to sharpen. And I'm talking about the belly, not the recurve!

I hope one day I will put a good edge on it again :(


BETO

====================
Sorry for my english :o
 
I had someone give me one of those S&W folders. Thing was dull as a brick and I could not put an edge on it to save my life.
 
420HC Gerber that my poor sharpening skills gave a thick edge on. Took forever to reprofile. never cut like new again, nor did it shave too well
 
I have a Queen Whittler in D2 and I've never been happy with the edge on the large blade. I admit that I've never really put much effort into it because I don't use slip-joints very often. If I were any kind of man at all I would reprofile it and put a shaving edge on it, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon.

Mike
 
The worst steels I have seen are the really low end stainless. They refuse to take a fine edge, and if you leave them coarse you can get a burr so big it is visible, 1-2 mm wide. When then I just file an edge, take a diamond stone, and give it a couple of passes to try to knock off the burr. On some really bad cases I had to use a carbide scraper to cut it off, refile and reset the edge with the diamond stone.

-Cliff
 
Benchmade Stryker in ATS-34. I could never get that damn thing sharp. Now that I know more about this whole endeavor, I realize that the angle was probably wrong and I needed to reprofile it, but at the time it drove me nuts.
 
I was bragging about having been able to sharpen every knife I've tried with my Spyderco Sharpmaker 204 when my brother in law said he had a knife that could use some sharpening.

He brought it to me then said how he found it the day before in the sand on the beach. It was a cheap POS linerlock from China, corroded and about as sharp as a marble. I gave it about 30 minutes before giving up. It was just not worth the effort.

Oh, by the way, if you ever want to pick up some very inexpensive autos :barf: and are in the Southport NC area there is a dealer there with plent of them who also sells swords and insence. We were at Oak Island on vacation and noticed the place. When I went in I asked if they carried Spyderco or Benchmade and the lady behind the counter said no but they have "anything I want from any company exactly the same right down to every nut and bolt". So I said OK, do you have anything with an axis lock? They did not know what it was so I showed my 806SD2.

Anyway, I'm going off in a tangent just because that POS knife that my brother in law found was at the same vacation as visiting that POS knife "store".

Sorry, back to difficult to sharpen knives...

Chris
 
I've sharpened 154CM, VG10, ATS-34, D2, INFI, S30V, AUS8, 440A, 1095, 0170-6C, 5160, S60V (440V), among others. The carbon steels behave the best while sharpening; 440V is definitely the hardest. I gave up and sent it back to the factory, and they couldn't reproduce the original edge.
 
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