Where to Start with Freehand Sharpening...

Binalith

Binalith

Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
391
I want to start from scratch with sharpening. I have been getting by for years touching up my blades on old stones found in basements and a piece of an Arkansas stone I got from a guy named Ragnar. I am mainly interested in building and refining a free-hand technique and have done some searching around on the forum, finding relevant threads full of good information
like this one:
Question from a Newbie - Arkansas Stones
and this one:
Sharpening softer steels, looking for direction
and this one:
Home Depot Norton stone

So I'm wondering if someone could help us hand sharpening green horns with a more definitive and concise, possibly stickied thread on what popularly available stones to start out with. Maybe we could start with what's the best for say 1095 and the high carbon steels and so on.
I realize it is in our best interest to keep searching around and absorbing as much different info as possible, but it would be awesome if there was a sticky with some straight up suggestions from the experienced hand sharpeners. Or maybe just a nice list of the most relevant threads.

Thanks, and please be kind, so tender as I am, I'm liable to curl up and die under even mild scolding :D
 
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This is an older thread but lots of good advice.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-knife-sharpeners-(freehand)?highlight=advice

As for best stone selections etc, I always recommend a silicon carbide stone (Norton Crystalon or ACE hardware SiC stone) to start just because there's less to go wrong.

I also recommend the sharpening widget (the Washboard) I make and sell through the link in my signature - is a good tool to have for a beginner or experienced individual.

Have made a respectable manual that has a lot of general content and gets pretty good response - you might find helpful, here's the link to the electronic copy.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2359386/Washboard sharpener.pdf

The sale thread has a lot of video content as well - some specific to the Washboard, but much of it general info. Holding edge angles consistently is a big part of making quality edges - I'm not naturally gifted, so the methods I show have evolved to deal with my many shortcomings and yield consistent results.

There's a ton of other content on the forum if you start messing around more with the search function.

Best o luck
Martin
 
I just started a while ago too. Go to Ace hardware and grab the coarse and medium combos stones. Those are hard to mess up a knife on and gives you experience on angles. Don't get high grit JIS stones until you master a steady stroke. I was stropping my Mora a few days ago and cut off a good chunk of my 6000 grit stone. Search up Virtuovice on YouTube. The man pretty much hunts deer and sharpens knives for a living.
 
Best advice is just jump in and try it, practice is the biggest thing when it comes to sharpening. One of the best things I did was to buy a dedicated sharpening knife, personally I think paring knives are great for this as you can pick up 1 decently made one for quite cheap and the blade shape is easy to sharpen. Off hand there's Victorinox, Old Hickory, and I believe Opinel all makes some good cheap ones to practice on, though I am no expert on kitchen cutlery so this is not "the list". Cheap kitchen knives or any old knife you don't care about will do the trick, but I personally prefer having a dedicated sharpening knife of known quality to work with. And over the last few months you can definitely tell I have grounded away some of the blade on my paring knife from sharpening it numerous times and blade reprofiles.

As for the Norton Economy Stone you can pick them up at local hardware stores but I found the ones local to me only carried the 6in variety. Online though I have found you can pick up the 8in stone for $6 with free 2 day shipping if your considered a prime member (hint hint, at who has it). I don't own this one yet but I will probably before the end of next week. If you can't decide on what to get my advice, just spend the $6 and pick this up so you have something to practice on for the time being, who knows you may end up liking it.

One thing I add to the list of what to get though is the DMT Aligner clamp, you can use it with your benchstones. I haven't used mine this way yet, but I heard good things about it being used this way. I would use it to find out what consistency is while your learning. And should also give you a more reliable way to reprofile your practice knife when you screw up the bevel so you have something to work with again. I found that my DMT Aligner (kit, not just the clamp but the clamp should suffice) is invaluable in this regard as it taught me what consistency was and allowed me to cheat and try out different techniques before I was consistent enough to see the difference while free handing, along with the easy blade reprofiles it proved invaluable.

The amount of time you use the Aligner clamp though is up to you. I personally would use it sparingly to just remind myself what consistency was and for blade reprofiles on the practice knife so you could get a more consistent bevel. But other people may learn better from using it more often than this. Either way it's used it's an invaluable learning aid in my opinion, and it's pretty cheap too.

After I made the post you linked HeavyHanded posted a video which helped me, not only in giving me the information I wanted but I adopted some of the things he did which made sharpening with the diamond stones more doable. In fact I just got done reprofiling my Wenger Patriot by free handing which is a first for me as it was too small to use the DMT Aligner and the results were excellent till I decided to rush towards the finish line and screwed it up a bit. Trust me when I say I was nervous as I have never attempted to reprofile a blade by hand before but I decided to quit procrastinating and try my luck. I am quite sure that round 2 of that blade reprofile will be better, I have learned from my mistake.

As for my post on diamonds on softer steels again, I found that it was a very large part in doing with my technique which gave me those bad results. Once I changed it and practiced it more I can consistently get that knife quite sharp. The diamonds are still very abrasive, too much for my taste in this steel but it's doable it's just not the easiest thing to do.
 
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Looks like lots of great information in the first thread.

My sharpening technique is pretty much based on Murray Carters technique. Check out the video, he's got many more on sharpening.

[video=youtube_share;ozZF2EgnYm0]http://youtu.be/ozZF2EgnYm0[/video]



We use a norton 220X AO stone for coarse sharpening and nick removal. Then 1000 and 4000 grit king stones to refine and finally polish the edge. (down side of Nortons AO stones is they wear quickly, but they cut very quick too)

My advice would be:
-Get decent quality stones (2-3) in a good range of grits (covered in that thread)
-watch videos on the theory and the does and don'ts
-start practicing

Once you know the theory its a matter of practicing (like most skills!), figuring out which techniques work for you and building up that muscle memory. With some focused practice you'll start to see results fairly quickly. The sharpie trick is useful too to keep an eye on your angles.

-mike
 
[video=youtube;ZtsDPVohg1k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtsDPVohg1k[/video]



This video is pretty valuable for anyone wanting to get into hand sharpening.


This one is good also. This kid knows how sharpen knives.

[video=youtube;ICiZ-ZYyEQo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICiZ-ZYyEQo[/video]


Here he takes a dull knife, and turns it into sharp, all on camera.

[video=youtube;sb7ue8NH0OA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb7ue8NH0OA[/video]
 
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