Wicked Edge: Skipping 800/1000 stones?

Yeah, I've seen that before, with the mis-angled tip. Typically, that's caused by not following the directions on the WEPS setup, and clamping the knife all the way at the heel of the blade, or very close to it instead of finding the correct clamping point before you lock it down. Put it THAT far off center, and you can get some weird things like the varying bevel there.

For blades longer than 10-12 inches, I honestly wouldn't be using the WEPS in any case, I'd be on the belt grinder. It's faster, easier, and in *my* opinion, bigger blades tend to work better with convex edges anyway. YMMV. I typically do smaller stuff on the WEPS or EP for fun, and larger stuff with the belt. A reprofile-and-sharpen on a Gerber machete with any hand-powered method would suck.
 
somber said:
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This knife doesn't has distal taper - probably designed for stronger toward the tip. So forcing it to have 1 bevel angle, which weaken area near the tip. In return, you get a better cutting tip. There are plus/minus on guided vs freehand. There are plenty of posts on convex creation/maint already.
 
bluntcut said:
Because Murray decided to use white#1 exclusively, doesn't elevate it to super steel. Otherwise 1095 would consider super duper steel too. White#1, 2, blue#1,2, V2,52100,etc, are known to be easy to sharpen, so doing it while dealing with his daily agenda or brushing teeth is :yawn:
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So what you're saying is is that it's completely possible that I can sharpen a knife in less than ten minutes by freehand, easily? (looking at you BePrepared) While you may consider it boring and writing it off as an attribute of the steel, it still speaks to how quickly you can sharpen multiple knives freehand when compared to a system. With all the unclamping, screwing, switching grits -- while it may be quick with the Wicked Edge system, it unquestionable that grabbing the next grit, setting it on your counter and sharpening the knife you have in your hand is still faster.

bluntcut said:
In my 5yrs experience EP, I didn't learned much about sharpening until I freehand. Ppl should enjoy sharp-hobby, their way.
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I'll leave the discussion with this quote. Take care.
 
somber said:
Look at the height of the tip when compared to the height of the flat, you can see it getting higher as it moves up the belly of the blade. How can you say that that is the same?
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My understanding is that's what happens when the angle is the same throughout the entire length of the blade. Knives that don't have that probably aren't at the same angle at the tip. I believe it has to do with blade geometry. It doesn't look bad to me so I don't care.

What does all this arguing about freehand vs WEPS have to do with the op's question?
 
Fanglekai said:
My understanding is that's what happens when the angle is the same throughout the entire length of the blade. Knives that don't have that probably aren't at the same angle at the tip. I believe it has to do with blade geometry. It doesn't look bad to me so I don't care.

What does all this arguing about freehand vs WEPS have to do with the op's question?
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Not the slightest thing, but i decided to play along because it was amusing
 
BePrepared said:
Not the slightest thing, but i decided to play along because it was amusing
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It's pointless. People have been arguing this issue for years and there are countless threads on the matter. Yes freehand can be more versatile because you can sharpen at any angle you want and there are a lot of choices for stones, but with a guided system you get precise, repeatable results every single time. I don't care how good anyone is freehand, there's no way they are as precise as a machine every single time to within 1 degree. Freehand can be done anywhere. Guided systems require the system. Who cares? If your knife is sharp it's sharp and it should stay sharp until it's not sharp and then you sharpen it again. I think that's Newton's 1st law of knife sharpening. With a supersteel it shouldn't get dull very fast so this issue is irrelevant. I don't see how switching between stones is any faster than swapping out paddles. We're talking about a difference of a few seconds at most. Who cares?

People wasted more time typing up posts in this thread than it would have taken to reprofile a knife with either method.

To answer the OP's question, yes you need to go up in small increments of grit without too big of a jump or you will not erase the scratches from the lower grit. Jumping from 600 to 1200 grit is too much of a jump. If you really want a perfect mirror polish try to stay within about 200 grit for each step at least til 1000. I think that's why sandpaper and the WEPS stones go up in increments of 200, it seems that's about the right amount of coarseness/fineness to increase for each level until you get into the really high grits. For 1000 and under it's probably best to jump up by about 200. YMMV but that seems like an easy, methodical way of producing a mirror edge.

If you don't want to buy the $60 paddles just get yourself some 800 and 1000 grit 3M wet/dry sandpaper and use that for the intermediate grit. It's cheap and those high grit sandpapers last a long time. I used a few strips of 1500 grit to polish probably a dozen knives. I'd suggest 800/1000/1500 and after that go with your ceramics. I can get a pretty nice polish with 1500 grit 3M sandpaper so I bet if you continue after that with ceramics and strops you'll get a mirrored edge fairly easily.
 
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