When is a knife oversharpened (aka please help me stop worrying)

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Hey brother, did you do all your sharpening of the 25 on the Spyderco Sharpmaker? Cuz if so, I really don't think you have to worry about taking out too much steel. It's pretty hard to remove tons of material on the Sharpmaker, though admittedly I don't use the diamond rods on mine. Also, from what I can see in your pics, your bevel is not overly wide, which is a tell-tale sign of taking a lot of steel out of a blade. So I think you may be just fine.

I totally feel you on this one. I reprofile almost everything on my Wicked Edge and after I'm done I'm just staring at the belly on whatever knife compulsively wondering if I took too much out somehow. It's a very real sickness.

 

The 25 photo looks pretty similar to my 25. I carry mine much, cut little. Usually tune up with a stropping on the bottom of a coffee cup. Perhaps not as sharp as on a device intended for that purpose but certainly sharp enough for my uses. Results in a nice "toothy" edge, and not sharp enough to be fragile.

Good luck.

 

those blades will last you a lifetime so quit worrying and use the damn thing!

 

You might want to watch the Chris Reeve factory tour. its two parts and I think Chris was talking in the 2nd part about how he constructs each blade (but could be the first too) . . .

He talks of his designing the blade so that its curved, but he specifcally adds extra metal just behind the edge along the bevel so the blade can last 20 years from sharpening. In his factory tour he actually addresses exactly what you are concerned about.

Check it out. Its one of the reasons I will only collect CRK’s now because of his attention to detail is extraordinary IMO.

I too use a wicked edge as I think it takes off the least amount of metal when re-profiling an initial edge.

 

Life's too short to worry so much about the sharpness of your blade 24 hours a day. Yes, I have been told this many times as well ha. I love replacing lanyards, sharpening, cleaning ext. My advice is get it good and sharp and do your best to stick with an ultra fine stone to touch up before heading out. I do 2 slow feather strokes per side with my ultra fine rods on whichever sebenza's leaving with me that day. Same with whichever hip knife is coming with me. Then when home from work I touch up damn near every knife i own. This process has been repeated for about ten years or so haha. Worry none, sharpen away. Just stay away from diamond and brown stones unless absolutely necessary

 

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Not to make things more complicated, but you may want to consider using a hard strop, like a piece of wood loaded with compound. The soft strops will make the edge convex when it's stropped too much.