Wicked Edge Newbie

[watershipdown451]

Nice, for instance if my knife is 20 deg per side, should i strop it at 20 deg per side or should i bring it down 2 degrees then strop? (or 2 degrees in)

Thank you! This is some valuable info here. Bookmarked. You and razor-edge-knives have offered tremendous tips.

 

[hvychev77]

Gotcha. thanks again guys. Cheers, hvychev77

 

[REK Knives]

Nice, for instance if my knife is 20 deg per side, should i strop it at 20 deg per side or should i bring it down 2 degrees then strop? (or 2 degrees in)

Thank you! This is some valuable info here. Bookmarked. You and razor-edge-knives have offered tremendous tips.

You would want to bring your angle in, measuring w/ the angle cube, and strop at 18 dps.

 

[watershipdown451]

You would want to bring your angle in, measuring w/ the angle cube, and strop at 18 dps.

I took your advice and watched your videos. You are absolutely right about the angle cube. I got used to figuring out how to use it effectively. I worked on my girlfriend's dragonfly in vg10 and when I was finished, I was in awe by the quality in sharpness. I touched it up with the 800 and 1000 stones and stropped it at 18 dps and wow. My sharpmaker produces great results but the wicked edge made the blade laser sharp! Thanks again. I'm new to sharpening so the resources definitely helped.

 

[REK Knives]

2. The issue w/ only building up a burr one time is that you may not be hitting the very apex on the subsequent grits. While some people don't even sharpen w/ burrs at all and only sharpen by the amount of light reflecting off of the edge, that does not work for most of us, especially beginners. So if you are not building up a burr at each stage then you need some type of way to view your edge under magnification to make sure you are hitting the very apex of your edge. You will especially notice this when you switch from diamonds to choseras to ceramics etc. And you cannot fully rely on the angle cube alone, because they do have a margin of error and are not correct 100% of the time (if you don't believe me just pick up and set your angle cube down several times at the same angle and you will get different readings.). Also, the stock diamonds vary somewhat too, so you need to check this before you can be reasonably confident in not using the angle cube/magnification.

Just my .02

Came across exactly what I was talking about here... If I didn't have a USB scope then I would not have seen this (it can even be on a smaller level too!) I was not hitting the very apex...

 

[oXObsidianXo]

Just thought I would post an update and pics of the most recent knife I sharpened. This is my Socom Delta, the one I messed up a little. I started at 600 grit, and did a lot of work making sure the edge was apexed and using very light pressure. Then I did 800 and 1000 grit, again with light pressure and really taking my time. The other change I made was that I instead did up and away strokes towards the handle (knife was backwards in the clamp). This gave me grind lines which would be preferable for slicing (like razor-edge-knives was talking about). Lastly I stropped at 1.5 micron.

I did not reduce the angle of my strop at all. I simply continued at the same angle as before. Oddly enough however, my angle changed changed on both sides (18.00>17.30 & 18.00>18.50) which I noticed early on and corrected. I think this was caused by the knife shifting in the clamp, which would be my fault not the system. This new edge does whittle hair though, which makes it the wickedest edge I've gotten so far.

P.S. Let me know if you can see where I oversharpened this knife the first time. I tried to minimize how noticeable it was.

 

[REK Knives]

Just thought I would post an update and pics of the most recent knife I sharpened. This is my Socom Delta, the one I messed up a little. I started at 600 grit, and did a lot of work making sure the edge was apexed and using very light pressure. Then I did 800 and 1000 grit, again with light pressure and really taking my time. The other change I made was that I instead did up and away strokes towards the handle (knife was backwards in the clamp). This gave me grind lines which would be preferable for slicing (like razor-edge-knives was talking about). Lastly I stropped at 1.5 micron.

I did not reduce the angle of my strop at all. I simply continued at the same angle as before. Oddly enough however, my angle changed changed on both sides (18.00>17.30 & 18.00>18.50) which I noticed early on and corrected. I think this was caused by the knife shifting in the clamp, which would be my fault not the system. This new edge does whittle hair though, which makes it the wickedest edge I've gotten so far.

P.S. Let me know if you can see where I oversharpened this knife the first time. I tried to minimize how noticeable it was.

looks good! thannks for sharing!