Winchester Black Box Sharpening

M

Murdamook

Joined
Nov 3, 2010
Messages
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I bought a coffin Jack from an auction site recently. I like it a lot. Honestly, it’s a bit of a grail for me. The best would be a Bose custom, but I don’t see myself being able to justify that cash, or the cash for a Case/Bose collab in the near future. I have two kids under the age of 2 that I have feed. Anyhow, I believe the Winchester Coffin Jack I got is Queen-made. Tang stamp states 1987 for the date. I am decent at freehand sharpening and have experience with everything from 1095 to ZDP and a lot in between. I’ve never had too much of a problem getting knives sharpened, but some of my GECs have had to be reprofiled. This CJ though has been a pain. It came relatively dull and the edge is really thick for a slipjoint. I am thinking I’ll have to do a full reprofile to get the edge knocked back a bit. Is this typical? Has anyone else experienced this with the 87 black box knives?
 
I have a black box Winchester from Queen. Even though it‘s 1095 it took a lot of work to reprofile. I used diamond rods and the Sharpmaker. Before the diamonds I used a carborundum stone and/or 400 grit sandpaper.
 
brownshoe said:
I have a black box Winchester from Queen. Even though it‘s 1095 it took a lot of work to reprofile. I used diamond rods and the Sharpmaker. Before the diamonds I used a carborundum stone and/or 400 grit sandpaper.
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Jeez. Okay. Looks like some sharpie and Diamond stones are in its future then. Thank you.
 
I have also had a few of those which were super resistant to sharpening, seemed harder than Queen's D2. Just keep at it!
 
Some do seem very hard- a Stockman and Whittler I have but the Swell Centre Pen was OK to sharpen and it has, I believe, the same master blade as the Coffin J.
 
An American mutt from baryonyx knife might be able to cut that bad boy pretty quickly. I've used mine on everything from tramintina machetes to Chris reeve s35vn and it gets the job done in a hurry... All for the princely sum of about 10 bucks.
 
I have sharpened a couple of those- the steel is hard and the edges (as you mention) are thick. Just be patient and take your time! If you have diamonds that would make the job much quicker:)
 
I’ve sharpened several of these for customers and I was shocked with the first. I’ve sharpened a variety of “Super Steels” and the steel in these is as difficult to sharpen as these modern varieties. I’ve used the diamond hones on the KME system and it just takes a good bit of time to reprofile. They seem to do best left with a ”toothy” edge at 1500 grit.
 
Thanks for all of the help everyone. Tried it with the diamonds and it seems to be even more dull. Haha. I’ll attempt again tomorrow.
 
I don’t recall the steel being excessively hard but I had to sharpen quite a lot of metal off to get the blade edge ding out of my 2935 Norfolk pen. And the grind was definitely not even. Still, very neat knife at the end of it.
 
I didn't have any trouble sharpening either of the two that I have.
 
I reset the bevel with some DMT diafolds getting progressively more fine. It actually made it more dull, but I pushed down the grind enough to get to where I was able to use the back bevel side on the Sharpmaker, then the standard side and now I’m cutting phonebook paper.
 
Seems like I reset the bevel on everything I sharpen when it arrives…some more than others. Go slow…it’s just a knife. If it’s special go even slower. I find sharpening kinda like meditation in some ways. Perfectionist I am a bit though.
 
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