Who's good at sharpening freehand?

fulloflead, I'm confused...but you were the sharpening kungfu master, right? I remember that post of yours of years back :confused:
 
I learned to sharpen freehand in a butcher shop with one of those tripple benchstones that have a resivoir for oil in the base. Those things are wonderful.

The thing I pay attention to the most for keeping the angle consistent is letting part of a finger slide on the stone while also touching the spine - this gives a really good feel for any slight changes in angle. The other hand is on the handle and the focus is keeping the wrist locked.

All the folks who were really good at sharpening would use a figure-eight pattern on the stones rather than linear, and would sharpen the tip seperately from the rest of the edge. And counted to do the same number of passes per side, of course.

One more thing to pay attention to is keeping your body, hands, knife, and stone in a consistent position each time you sharpen.

Put this together and with practice the muscle memory will build up and it will become a relaxing and rewarding activity, just like any other kind of sharpening.
 
A trick I use is to lift up one end of the hone and put something underneath to maintain the angle, then I draw the knife along from low end to high end keeping the blade horizontal, the hone does not move and the blade is always horizontal so the angle is the same in every pass, I can rotate the hone around without changing the angle to do the other side.

OR what I often do is place the inclined hone near the corner of a table with the higher end to my left and I do the right side moving the blade right to left, then I move around the table without moving the hone so that the high end of the hone is away from me and I do the left side of the blade pushing the blade away from me.

I also have a homemade inclined plane jig to hold the hone and keep the angle but then it's not freehand.

View from top:

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!...........................!
!.......Table............ !
!...........................!
!.....................___ ! Sit on this side
!......Hone ==> !___!! to do left side of blade
!-------------------!
Sit on this side to do right side of blade


Luis
 
I could never sharpen free handed but I am interested in it so I recently bought Murrary Carter's DVD on hand sharpening. On the DVD you learn how to sharpen free handed one thing I picked up on is the three finger test for testing knife sharpness.
It's one of the best training DVD that I have ever seen :D
 
fulloflead said:
Who's so good at sharpening freehand that they can offer me some suggestions on how to get off the angle guide wagon?
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ABS Mastersmith Murray Carter is the best I've ever seen on sharpening a knife freehand. I get mesmerized watching him put and edge on a blade, and I'm not the only one. Murray uses a two stone system and draws the blade backwards across the stone like he was stropping it. He contends that maintaining a constant angle while sharpening isn't as important as some would have you believe. I think he sells the set of stones that he uses as well as a sharpening video. They're not inexpensive, but if you master his technique you will be sharpening with the best of them.

I'm not bad at freehand sharpening and I do own and use a Sharpmaker, but one of these days I will sharpen like Murray Carter.
 
spyken said:
fulloflead, I'm confused...but you were the sharpening kungfu master, right? I remember that post of yours of years back :confused:
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Yeah, I didn't get that smart until after I started using guide systems. As long as I have one and don't mind reprofiling I can get an edge that scares the heck out of me. But, since I got that good using "systems" I never went back to doing it by hand. NOW, when I'm in the field or in a hotel room I'm not happy with what I can acheive by hand in comparison.

I wanna get that good by hand too. It's still Kung Fu, but I wanna take it to a whole new level. ;)

I gotta check out this Murry Carter stuff.
 
Getting a consistent angle is all about feel. Its easier to pick up if you've got a stone thats really smooth and hard (ceramic comes to mind, but others work)
Then take a knife that you've got profiled real well (thicker blades will work better learning because the edge bevel will be wider and easier to feel) and put the edge on the stone like your going to sharpen it. Rock your angle up and down real slow and you should be able to feel when you hit the flat bevel of the edge. Its really subtle.
When you get it there, start moving the knife back and forth across the stone in a big figure eight. Push and pull, really lightly. If you really pay attention you can feel when you get the angle wrong. Too high and the edge is going to hit and increase the drag. Too low and your going to be riding on the the upper corner of the edge bevel, it will have a sloppy feel. Riding flat on the bevel though has a feel all its own.
When you get the hang of feeling when your on the edge, it will get easy :D
 
Matt Shade said:
Getting a consistent angle is all about feel. Its easier to pick up if you've got a stone thats really smooth and hard (ceramic comes to mind, but others work)
Then take a knife that you've got profiled real well (thicker blades will work better learning because the edge bevel will be wider and easier to feel) and put the edge on the stone like your going to sharpen it. Rock your angle up and down real slow and you should be able to feel when you hit the flat bevel of the edge. Its really subtle.
When you get it there, start moving the knife back and forth across the stone in a big figure eight. Push and pull, really lightly. If you really pay attention you can feel when you get the angle wrong. Too high and the edge is going to hit and increase the drag. Too low and your going to be riding on the the upper corner of the edge bevel, it will have a sloppy feel. Riding flat on the bevel though has a feel all its own.
When you get the hang of feeling when your on the edge, it will get easy :D
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Cool, man. Thanks.
:D
 
PhilL said:
He contends that maintaining a constant angle while sharpening isn't as important as some would have you believe.
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It isn't necessary at all to get a knife sharp, it is just necessary if you want to do it efficiently. Just like you can walk across a room by proceeding in a straight line, or move in random directions step after step. You will eventually get there in the second case, but it is a pretty large waste of time unless of course you just like walking and have the time.

-Cliff
 
Actually, I think a softer hone is easier in regard to finding the right angle. This is why I like waterstones. You simply increase the angle till you feel the edge biting, using very small testing stroke, then you back of a tiny bit till it stops biting. You can get within fractions of a degree this way. As a matter of fact, you can actually feel the edge "hopping" over the grains of the hone if you working perfectly on the edge of the hone. Its not quite biting but much "rougher" than when you are "falling of the edge" and are working only the bevel. Some waterstones provide a very nice feedback this way. That's what the japanese refere to as the "feel" of the stone. Its pretty hard to describe.
 
theres always the problem with a knife that has an unintentional convexed edge. hard to feel when the bevel hits the stones
 
I've never done anything but freehand sharpening. I could produce shaving edges by the time I was in the 3rd or 4th grade, and had mastered cutting free hanging hairs by the time I was in 7th grade.

There's a lot of things I don't think you could do easily with jigs and accessories. I use convex edges almost exclusively, which are much easier to do freehand. I've never seen jigs with coarse enough grits to sharpen heavily used blades in an efficient manner, either. Just the other night, I had to sharpen some nicks out of my big bowie, and I was working it so quickly with a 90 grit stone that the steel was actually getting hot to the touch. If I had to use a ceramic stick, that job would've taken all week. (if the edge damage is serious, I just step over to the belt sander. :) ) That brings up another point- on really long blades, it becomes very difficult to stroke them across a stone or stick, and is much easier to hold the blade still and work the edge like you were using a file. Angle guides that clamp to the back of the blade don't work very well for this application, either, since the back edge is also sharpened, and you'd have to keep moving it.

I can maintain the angle to fractions of a degree this way if I really want to, but again I prefer convex anyway. The only real trick to maintaining the angle, is just to make sure you never get too steep. (i.e., make the edge too blunt) I also have several knives that I don't care if I scratch up the sides of the blade, so I can take them all the way down to tiny included angles quickly.

Counting strokes per side or working every portion of the edge exactly the same has always seemed like a waste of time to me, especially since some parts of the edge will always be dull before others. As long as you know the end result you're trying to achieve, you can get there any way you please. Just keep looking at what the burr is doing under good light.

About the marker trick-
I've used a variation of this for as long as I can remember, that I've never seen mentioned here, and it's much simpler. Just rub some oils from your finger (wipe the side of your nose first if you need more oil. :) ) onto the freshly polished edge. The trace of oil will turn the steel a darker blue tint, and you can judge where the stone is contacting the edge by seeing where the oil is removed. A second variation on this method, is to slightly change the way you draw the blade across the stone, so the scratch pattern is different.

edit-
Matt Shade just pointed out another excellent tip that I didn't mention. Heed it! :cool:
 
I want to qualify Cliff's observation: "It (maintaining a constant angle) isn't necessary at all to get a knife sharp, it is just necessary if you want to do it efficiently. Just like you can walk across a room by proceeding in a straight line, or move in random directions step after step. You will eventually get there in the second case, but it is a pretty large waste of time unless of course you just like walking and have the time."

I consider sharpening to take place in stages (assuming that you want to make a major change in blade's cutting performance). The first stage is commonly called reprofiling. It is removing a lot of material at a comparitively low honing angle, either to restore a badly worn edge or to thin the edge geometry from the original to get better cutting performance. The second is a bevel refining stage where you remove coarse scratches left from coarse abrasives used in reprofiling. The third stage is actual edge sharpening where you reduce the apex of your cutting edge to as narrow and accute a pinacle as possible.

The reprofiling stage is the heavy lifting phase of the job. You remove the most steel in this stage and necessarily spend some significant time in this process. So at this stage it helps a lot if you don't try for a honing angle that is terribly lower than you need (and thereby remove a lot more metal than is necessary) or higher than you want (you'll have to go back and do it again). On the other hand you may be perfectly happy with your results somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees. I generally just try and stay under about 12 degrees and use a technique that lets me work hard and fast without concern as to what angle I am achieving. The second stage is where I care about angles. When I am cleaning up my reprofiling I don't care what angle I am using except that if I don't match my reprofiling angle I will essentially be doing another reprofiling (with a finer grit) around my inititial reprofiling. This is where I see the big truth of what Cliff says. I need to match my reprofiling grind angle or I will spend a lot of time missing my target while using a slower tool. The third stage is where I again see some freedom for freehanding. I finish my edge by light honing at a higher angle than my reprofiling angle. At this stage all I need to be able to do is lightly hone at a slightly higher angle than my reprofiling. This microbevel has an amazing tendency to blend into the underlying bevel and the cutting performance of the blade will not be very sensitive to the angle I use for this microbevel. Since this step doesn't remove a lot of material or take a long time there is minimal wasted time if you do not tightly control your honing angle.

So the big way to save time is not to control your absolute honing angle, but to do a good job of matching your reprofiling and profile refining angles. I use the side of my thumb or my index finger to keep my reprofiling angle steady. When I refine that profile I again use the side of my finger and feel and sound to insure that I am reasonably matching my initial profile angle. This is the step where it can help to use the felt pen technique to insure that I'm doing this correctly. If I do this well it is as efficient as using an angle fixture and actually may be faster. The last step is when I switch to the fine hone that I use to set my edge. I use the side of my finger or if the bevel is wide enough I just feel for the angle of the bevel against my hone. Then I slightly elevate my honing angle and just do my left-right-left-right honing freehand and without benefit of angle guide.

Now actually on blades shorter than ten inches I usually do the last step on a Sharpmaker. I have done all my reprofiling at angles well under 15 degrees and I just do a few strokes on the Sharpmaker at 15 degrees to finish things off. It is not critical that the Sharpmaker rods actually be at 15 degrees rather than 13.5 or 17 degrees. It is also not critical that they are both at precisely the same angle. It is also not critical that I do a perfect job of holding the blade verticle as I hone. I don't need extremely tight angle control at this point either for performance or speed. The Sharpmaker is sort of optimally quick and sloppy for this work. It even allows me to intentionally tilt my blade slightly for the last couple very light strokes to insure that I work out to the extreme apex of the edge for those final finishing touches.
 
[secondary bevel]

Jeff Clark said:
I don't need extremely tight angle control at this point either for performance or speed.
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Yes, but if apply the secondary bevel next time in the same way, and further again next time, angle control is critical to efficiency. But yeah, two stage sharpening, relief and then edge grind is fundamental to ease of sharpening and makes a *huge* difference.

J.J. talked about this a lot in the Razor's Edge, Lee discusses it as well in his book on sharpening. Essentially it comes down to make the "edge" that you sharpen as narrow as possible so the honing can be done in a few passes.

A lot of knives now are coming with angles so that the first step isn't necessary, this makes a *huge* difference for novices, and even for advanced users when the steels are hard to machine and you don't have access to power equipment.

-Cliff
 
Great post, but the following confused me:

Jeff Clark said:
Now actually on blades shorter than ten inches I usually do the last step on a Sharpmaker. I have done all my reprofiling at angles well under 15 degrees and I just do a few strokes on the Sharpmaker at 15 degrees to finish things off. It is not critical that the Sharpmaker rods actually be at 15 degrees rather than 13.5 or 17 degrees. It is also not critical that they are both at precisely the same angle. It is also not critical that I do a perfect job of holding the blade verticle as I hone. I don't need extremely tight angle control at this point either for performance or speed. The Sharpmaker is sort of optimally quick and sloppy for this work.
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It sounds as if you're changing the angle of the Sharpmaker rods. How? :confused:

I've thought about taking them out of the base and locking them in a padded vise at what ever angle I chose, but decided it was better to learn to do freehand really well.

What's the "fine" that you use for the final microbevel?

Obvously, you're also not worried about looks. Not being particular about the reprofiling angle can cause it to waver a bit and not appear uniform in thickness or texture. For someone (me) used to putting a perfectly uniform mirrored edge on with the EdgePro, that would be sort of a change in philosophy.

I do see a problem with the backbevel/microbevel (2-faceted edge) program, though. In future sharpenings, say on the Sharpmaker, you're always removing more off that microbevel and making it thicker as you approach the shoulder of your backbevel angle. This means that, before long, you have to open up that pail of elbow grease again and reset your backbevel. However, if you only use ONE angle and maintenance that angle, you're not in a constant process of grinding more and more metal off your knife and making your knife smaller and smaller. At least not as quickly anyway. Just a thought. ;)
 
IIRC, Jeff is the one who actually is changing the angle of the Sharpmaker rods by "teeter-totter" the sharpmaker on one of those brass rods....(or am I mixing up the sharpening habits of different people? :( ) but that's a different story. What Jeff is saying, that at this stage the precise angle control is simply not necessary and the angle of the Sharpmaker could be (within a range) pretty much anything.
 
While I do vary the angle on my Sharpmaker, that was not primarily what I was talking about. My comments were kind of directed at people who worry that they are not skilled enough to use a Sharpmaker since they can't control their honing to a half minute of angle. I was hinting at several dirty secrets of honing fixtures in general and Sharpmakers in particular, they are not perfect, they do not produce perfectly repeatable angles (particularly as you swap hones) and they won't produce exactly the same angle on both sides of the blade. In order to be able to be taken apart and to be able to swap hones the fixtures are made with a little extra clearance. This allows the hone tilt to vary a bit. The hones themselves are not perfectly the same size so they won't sit at perfectly the same angle when they are swapped. Clamps can be slightly assymmetric and can move around as you attach them. In the case of the Sharpmaker the holes for the rods may be tilted slightly differently or be slightly different sized (either due to manufacturing flaws or due to wear). My point is that there are many ways that even a fixture-based sharpening tool can produce imprecise and assymmetrical honing angles, and yet edge performance won't suffer perceptively.

Now your comment about bevel appearance does have merit. With my techniques the only edge bevel you really see is the reprofiling. When I reprofile this is often very wide and conspicuous. I go to some pains to see that the bevels are of similar width. This is also part of the reason that I go to some pains with my second step where I polish my back bevel. If you do a nice polish here the bevel finish is closer to the finish of the rest of the blade (assuming an uncoated blade). While I am at it I work on the cosmetics of the bevel to make it look nice.

When I do my maintenance sharpening I usually do a progression of strokes from flat on the back bevel up to my normal finishing angle. This sloppy convexing isn't conspicuous if you are using fine grit hones like Spyderco ceramics.

As to finish grits, the selection depends on whether I am being practical or going for a bragging edge. I go through phases. For years I have finished my edges by working my way up to basic "fine" white ceramic rods (not alway Spyderco brand) for microbeveling. If the blade was going to be used for push cutting like, like a chefs knife, I would leave the blade with that finish. The very slight roughness of the fine ceramic rod would also provide slightly enhanced slicing performance over a fully stropped and polished edge. If the knife was likely to be used for slicing, like a boning knife or just about any pocket or field knife, I would go back and do a few light strokes on medium ceramic rods to enhance microserration. This would be the edge on my EDC. Unfortunately I have sharpened too many knives for too many people and know I am known as the "knife sharpening guy". Everybody wants to check how my knives shave. Up at 7200 foot elevation the air is so dry that hair gets hard and it is more challenging to dry shave than at sea level. I have to put a finer edge on knives to maintain conspicuous bragging sharpness. So I have been puting a less practical finish on many of my knives. I continue polishing at my back bevel angle up to the edge then I finish with Spyderco Ultra-Fine ceramic rods at less than 15 degrees (except for maybe a couple feather light swipes at 15 even). This edge is so sharp that it slices as well as my utility edge, but it is more time intensive to maintain.

I adjust my sharpmaker angles by puting things under the base. One quick way is to put something under the center of the base and tilt the base left and right as I work (like a teeter-totter). I can adjust the thickness of the object to adjust the angles. I sometimes use half of the angle by putting my support alternately under the right or the left end of the base. This is less convenient so I only use it for a few finish strokes. It is best to put things under the base that are narrow so that you can tilt as if around a pivot. I typically use round or triangular objects. The natural things are the triangular hones or a round rod.

Part of the reason that I use a microbevel is for strength. The back bevel angle is so low that the edge can roll. The microbevel provides a bit more lateral support. There is a universal problem that as you sharpen a knife blade your bevel will get wider unless you are always working flat on the back bevel. Having a fixture doesn't change the problem it just standardizes it. If you don't sharpen flat on your back bevel the fixture insures that as you work that bevel will get wider and wider. When I go freehand I am free to attack the back bevel a little, the micro bevel a little, and the area in between a little.
 
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