Your Showoff Sharpening System?

B

Barehunter

Joined
Feb 6, 2009
Messages
65
I'm new to the forum...been interested in knives all my life, but recently got infatuated with making and sharpening them. Lots of good info on this forum. I've learned a lot. Push cutting newsprint. Shaved my face etc. It can get addicting and expensive....but you all know that. It can also get confusing. Diamond this, leather strop that, this compound that compound, Sharpmaker, KME, 10000 grit water stones, Tormek, paper wheels, this angle that angle! I know...that's what makes it FUN!

Anyway here is my question for you. Just say a friend hands you his EDC Benchmade folder which is very dull with maybe a few nicks and wants you to sharpen it. You want to really show off your sharpening skills and impress the guy. Tell us the exact system/method/equipment that YOU would use. It would be great if you can be as detailed as possible as to what grits, what kind of stone, what kind of leather or whatever.

Maybe also you could follow it up with how you would demonstrate the sharpness to the guy. Push cutting newsprint, hair whittling or whatever.

I'm a newbie that has a lot to learn, but for me at present, I'd work thru the standard stones with my KME sharpener at maybe 22 degrees. Working coarse stone on one side until I have a continuous bur then other side til bur, same process with medium, then with fine doing more alternating sides.Finally go to my home made leather strop loaded with green ultrafine compound from Woodcraft and alternating sides. I would be confidant of push cutting newsprint and not be too surprised to be able to "treetop" arm hair.
 
I’m going to quote Jerry Hossom for this sorry but he explains how to use a 1x30 belt grinder so well. Sorry but I sharpen everything this way.:

Jerry Hossom said:
This is what I wrote elsewhere. Maybe it should have a thread of its own since what's here usually leads to more questions and answers that finally make it all clear.

This assumes you have a 1x30 or 1x42 belt sander. They can be had from discount equipment suppliers such as Harbor Freight or Enco for as little as $40. Get one. You'll find a lot of other uses for the sander so the money is well spent.

Now go to Lee Valley Tools for sharpening belts. http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=...,43072 I'd suggest the following to get started. (Started as in these will probably last you forever.) Understand that you don't use all of these on all knives or steels. It usually depends on how bad the edge is and if it's tool steel or high alloy stuff.

Aluminum Oxide Belts: 180, 320, 500, 1200.

15 Micron SiC belts (get two, you'll probably use these exclusively after you get your knives sharp to start with.)

Leather Honing Belt. This is what makes owning a belt sander worth it. It's basically a power strop and can put a fine polished edge on a blade in no time. You might want to get two. Use one with compound for polishing and keep the second one clean for just stropping.

Then go to

http://www.popsknifesupplies.com/compound.html

Buy the 525 white compound. It should last you for the rest of your life. You might also want to get some of the HF1 compound which is finer, and for very fine edges on small knives could be a good choice. While there, brouse around. There are many other ways to spend money, including getting your own Bader BIII Variable Speed Grinder.

Start with the finest belt first and move to more aggressive belts as you get a handle on how they cut. If you have some cheap kitchen knives, they're great for learning on. Once you get a feel for this you'll be starting with a belt that's close to what you need for each kind of knife and how dull it is. 500 grit, 1200 grit then 15 micron is probably good for most knives. If the edge is in pretty good shape, jump right to 15 microns and be done with it. If it's in really bad shape start with 320, or if you are entirely reprofiling the edge on a large knife use the 180.

What you are going to be trying to do is to raise a fine wire edge along the blade, holding the blade at about 15-20 degrees to the belt (edge down). You'll know what a wire edge is when you first see it. It will look like the edge is falling off, and in a way it is. Use a light touch until you see how each belt cuts, and gently press the edge into the belt with the edge held on the belt in a slack portion just below the top idler wheel or above the platen at the bottom. (Oh yeah, throw away all the safety shields; they just get in the way.) You want a slack belt, but not too slack so stay near where the belt is supported or has backing.

In all cases, except with the leather polishing belt, take one pass of the edge across the belt, then dip it in some water (a bucket is nice) and wipe dry. Repeat. This will be a drag when you get started, and when you get a feel for how the heat builds up on the edge you can probably take 2-3-4 passes before dipping. But DON'T let the edge get hot. DON'T let the edge get HOT!! This isn't all that difficult or threatening to the blade; you just need to be aware of heat build up.

Once you have a very fine wire edge with the 15 micron belt, put on the leather belt and apply some white compound, not too much. Strop the edge against the leather belt - at the same angle. This will polish the edge and strip away most or all of the wire. If some wire is still there, you can remove it with a wad of paper towel run along the length of the edge.

Play with angles as you see fit. depending on the type of knives and whether you want hair popping sharp and seriously tough. In either case you will get a convex edge which is inherently tougher than flat bevels. Don't try to get the most insane, hair popping edge the first time you try this. You won't. It takes a little skill and time to get a feel for how the belts cut the steel, and for how they interact with each type of steel and kind of edge. That said, you'll probably get the sharpest edge most people have ever seen in less time than you thought possible.


Hope that helps.

I'll add that getting the 16 and 6 micron belts that Thom mentions above is well worth doing. The closer you get to a polished finish with the abrasive belts, the less likely you are to screw up the edge when you strop on the leather belt. Unless it's really soft steel, the wire edge at 5 microns is almost invisible, and fragile so it's pretty easy to remove. http://rshughes.com/ (BTW, that's the worst site I've ever seen for finding what you want. I wasn't able to, but they're probably there somewhere; other Trizact belts were.)
Click to expand...


Sorry for all that but if you learn this method you can be tree topping hair in <10 minutes with ease and never break a sweat.:D
 
I always start by setting a new bevel because most are not stright or even, even from the factory. I like DMT diamond stones because they cut fast on any steel. I use the DMT stones for the heavy work and like to finish with Spyderco Fine and Ultra fine ceramics. The UF ceramic produces the best finish of any high grit stone I have ever used. After I have finished on the ceramic I start using my diamond compounds, I have 10 strop's to chose from with 5 different grit compounds so it all depends on what I want to do. If its a nice knife I would take it to a mirror finish with 0.25 micron diamond paste at this level it will usually split hair up to 5 times. If its a user I will just use my barbar strop that is coated in 0.5 micron diamond paste after the ceramic's, splits hair once or twice.
 
If I'm reprofiling, I'd start with 40grit on a 1X30 belt grinder, then go on with water stones using 300, 1000, 6000 grit, and then I strop with CrO afterwards

If it's just light nicks, I'd just go straight to the stones, if it's pretty bad nicks, I'd start with a 120grit belt then go to the stones.
 
To really show off?

If it's a recurve, I'll use my EdgePro Apex. I'll start with an aftermarket 250 grit diamond stone (EZE-Lap 42C w/o walnut base fastened to a stone blank with 3M 77 spray adhesive) followed by EdgePro's 220 (finer than most 220 grits I've even seen or used), 320, and 600 grit waterstones and then use the EdgePro tape blank with 5 micron silicon carbide, 1 micron aluminum oxide, and 0.3 microns aluminum oxide lapping film.

If it's a straight blade, I'll use a DMT coarse benchstone to remove the nicks and help flatten the bevel and a 1,000 grit Shapton Glasstone (it's a waterstone) to remove the DMT marks and polish the edge.

The reason for the disparate treatment is this: If I'm already going through the trouble of setting up the EdgePro, pulling out all of the stops is easy enough, but if I don't need it, getting a shiny, pretty edge that will just start to whittle hair (nowhere nearly as well as knifenut1013's 100,000 mesh edges, but still good) will be impressive and only leave me with one waterstone to flatten.
 
i dont need to impress anyone that comes to the house to get a knife sharpened. they already know how sharp i can get a knife with the paper wheels, either through word of mouth or seeing a knife i had done for someone else. i usually let the person i sharpen the knife for check out the edge. what usually does impress them is how little time it takes for me to put an edge on a knife. if i want to impress them i'll show them this http://knifetests.com/kII.html
 
I don&#8217;t &#8220;show off&#8221; as you said in you post, but since I do sharpen for a side job here is what I use.
To get the initial edge is the Tormek...
sharpeningservice003wy9.jpg

To strop the edge to razor sharp is a 1"x30" belt...
sharpeningservice005fj7.jpg
 
I'd use DMT stones freehand. I like to do polished edges, but most of my friends prefer the toothy 600 grit DMT edge. If they want the polished edge, I'll go with Shapton Pros and finish on a strop loaded with 1-10 micron diamond paste.

Then, if you have got it sharp enough & really want to impress your friends, use it to do a cutting trick or two. Slicing a rolled up page from a phone book, a cigarette paper, or an empty water bottle has sufficient panache to impress the most hard to impress crowd. And if your buddies are like mine, and are impossible to impress (& even if they are impressed they won't show it), try to win a dollar betting whether the knife will do it.
 
DMT diamond aligner kit ($40). For keeping a consistent angle an aligner-type sharpener is best.

Use the coarse or medium diamond to get the nicks out. Then use the fine diamond followed by the very fine ceramic stone ($16) to get the edge. Last, a light strop to take off any micro-burr that remains.

Showing off is unnecessary. Your friend will find out how sharp his knife is the first time he uses it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top