Best value knife sharpening system?

[Rich@CCC]

Rich,
The trick is learning how to raise the handle to keep the curve flat on the stone and maintain the bevel angle at the same time. Buy a couple cheap POS blades and practice, practice practice. There are a ton of tutorials on youtube. Some of them are actually informative. Some of them will teach you what not to do!

I avoid combo blades and stick to full serrated or non serrated because I'm lazy when it comes to sharpening! With a combo blade treat it as two separate edges. Sharpen the non serrated portion then touch up the serrated part. Most times just hitting the flat side of the serrations is enough. If you need to truly sharpen the serrations, a slim steel or triangle stone(Sharp Maker) is necessary.

[okie john]

Rich,
The trick is learning how to raise the handle to keep the curve flat on the stone and maintain the bevel angle at the same time. Buy a couple cheap POS blades and practice, practice practice. There are a ton of tutorials on youtube. Some of them are actually informative. Some of them will teach you what not to do!

I avoid combo blades and stick to full serrated or non serrated because I'm lazy when it comes to sharpening! With a combo blade treat it as two separate edges. Sharpen the non serrated portion then touch up the serrated part. Most times just hitting the flat side of the serrations is enough. If you need to truly sharpen the serrations, a slim steel or triangle stone(Sharp Maker) is necessary.

Good advice.

For me, the hardest part by far is keeping the angle consistent. I find that it helps to stand up, with the stone in the same place on the kitchen counter every time. It's like getting my natural point of aim. Then I lock my wrist and start trying to take thin little slices off the top of the stone.

I also find that it helps to alternate sides. For instance, when a blade just needs a touch-up, I'll start on the red side of the folding steel I mentioned before. I take 10 strokes with pretty firm pressure on one side of the blade, then 10 on the other. Then I repeat that cycle with 9 strokes, then 8 and so on until I'm down to one or two. If that doesn't do the trick but I do notice progress, I'll repeat the whole thing but with a little less pressure. After that, I'll move to the green side and repeat the cycle again. That will make nearly anything made of decent steel razor sharp.

If the blade is really dull, I'll start on the coarse stone, then move to the medium, then move to the fine. If you do it right, you can put a razor edge on a hoe.


Okie John

[Malamute]

...If you do it right, you can put a razor edge on a hoe.


Okie John

I keep my drawknife shaving sharp with a two sided round ax stone. Using it with the bevel side down only makes a huge difference in how easy it is to sharpen also (as if people were wondering about how to use their drawknives....)

[SLG]

I keep my drawknife shaving sharp with a two sided round ax stone. Using it with the bevel side down only makes a huge difference in how easy it is to sharpen also (as if people were wondering about how to use their drawknives....)

Actually, I need to sharpen my draw knives, so good info. I often use both sides, depending on how deep or how controlled I need to go.

[Lester Polfus]

I'm actually shopping for a draw knife right now so that was timely. Thanks.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Not sure that this would interest anyone but something I find useful to consider when sharpening knives is simply that a sharp ANYTHING is just something with a very uniform, basically triangular cross-section.

Whether that's a tooth on a saw blade or an axe or a razor, as long as you can create two intersecting, uniform faces, that's all that matters.

Now if you want you can make the edge intentionally a bit jagged by finishing with a coarser grit; that will result in an edge that saws. Cutting steak, for example, I like an edge finished around 400 or 600 grit. But for that I'll give some direction to the finish strokes because I'd like the edge to remain fairly uniform.

This all came to me when I was tearing down an old TH350 transmission. One of the bolts inside the pan was stuck and I was careless breaking it free. I rapped my knuckles on a well-machined aluminum edge that was just part of a hydraulic channel in the transmission, but it was two smooth faces intersecting very smoothly at 90 degrees.

Cut my knuckles like crazy. Blood everywhere on an edge that, if it were on a knife, most would call "blunt". But it wasn't blunt, if was obtuse.

That's when I realized that "sharpness" is actually "smoothness of intersecting faces".

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[Malamute]

Actually, I need to sharpen my draw knives, so good info. I often use both sides, depending on how deep or how controlled I need to go.

I used to use the flat side down, and was having a lot of trouble getting a decent edge on them. a neighbor stopped by once to see what I was up to as I was building a cabin, he mentioned that hed built 60-some cabins. I asked how he got a good edge on his drawknives, he said "show me how you use it". I did, and he immediately said, "use the bevel side down", then it will be easier to keep it sharp. After adopting that, and fighting through the worn flat side to get a good sharp edge on the tool, I discovered that with only short minor touch ups, I could easily keep my knife shaving sharp, which made log peeling much easier. If I loaned a knife out, I could instantly tell by looking at it if they used it with the flat side down, even though I emphatically told them not to. I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me to correct the wear. I sometimes use the flat down to get in close to knots and grooves I'm not going to work out, but all the main work is bevel side down now, and no complaints. I keep the flat side perfectly flat when sharpening them, no extra bevel, the bevel side is the only other angle to form the cutting edge, just like a chisel. Keeping those bevels keeps it working well and I think is less work overall in sharpening it.

Ive owned and used several newer draw knives, but find I like the old ones a LOT more. They have thinner blades with much finer bevels and are much easier to get really sharp. I also heat the handles up and bend them out a bit so I can work larger logs without skinning my knuckles, and can use a slightly sideways stroke. In peeling dead standing dry lodgepole pine and other local mountain species, I get peelings about 2-3 feet long much of the time.

One of my older knives had folding handles. I had them welded in place and spread out about the same angle as the fixed one. The older ones seem to cost less than new ones when I was buying them.

I have more drawknife nerdism if anyones interested. I don't know everything about them, but have learned some after building several cabins.

Old knives below, newer ones above.



pvc guard

[redbone]

So, while there are probably dozens of knife-sharpening videos out there, it'd be useful for me to get a few pro tips.

Could you share a few pointers to start me off?

My last freehand sharpening attempt was in Boy Scouts, uh, a while ago.

Knife is a Benchmade minigrip with combo serrated / smooth blade. Is it more complicated than steady even pressure, at the angle of the current blade, as if I was trying to slice a sliver out of the stone? Does the blade move in angle? (I assume not.)

Thanks!

Chefknivestogo.com has a series of tutorials that is pretty good. It's geared toward kitchen knives and waterstones, but the principles are the same even if you are using a oilstone and a EDC blade. http://www.chefknivestogo.com/knife-...tutorials.html (Though this might be your first look at section sharpening, rather than using full strokes.) The technique shown is based on what Murray Carter teaches. Murray is a famous knifemaker

Some tips:

*Use a sharpie. Otherwise its hard to know if you are removing metal from the apex. If you aren't, you aren't making anything sharper.

*Develop a burr. Don't move to the other side until you have a burr on the full length of the blade. Don't move to a higher grit stone until you have developed a burr at the current stone (doesn't necessarily apply when you get to really, really fine stones in, say, the 5K grit range). I suspect this is the biggest mistake people make - jumping to the next stone after some arbitrary number of passes rather than moving up when the edge tells you to.

*Holding the blade on the stone at a consistent angle is key. There will be some wobble (so any knife sharpened freehand is naturally a convexed edge, and that's ok or even desirable.) A lot of people hold the knife at a 45 degree angle to the direction of travel on the stone, rather than perpendicular. When I started doing that, it became easier to hold a consistent angle. (SOmewhat in the same way that rotating your weakhand on the pistol downward seems to lock the wrist - if that helps.) Chefknivestogo doesn't use that technique, but Jon at Japaneseknifeimports explains it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECfH...F55079F53216AB

[Malamute]

*Use a sharpie. Otherwise its hard to know if you are removing metal from the apex. If you aren't, you aren't making anything sharper.

*Holding the blade on the stone at a consistent angle is key.

To beat the drawknife topic to death, in sharpening, I use spit on the stone, and work the stone on the blade. The black muck that forms shows exactly where you are working the stone on the blade and keeps you on track (stone totally flat on the flat side and flat on the full width of the bevel when working that side). I use circular motions. I don't when sharpening knives, but on drawknives, it seems to work well, and gives a true shaving edge in 5 minutes on average I believe. Using the flat side of the blade down takes about 45 minutes or more of tedious work to achieve the same degree of edge.

[JCS]

Sharpened an Cold Steel American Lawman in cts-xhp last night with the sharpmaker. It took me less than 9 minutes. When I began I couldn't cut through printer paper cleanly. Now it shaves hair off my arm and slices through phone book paper with ease.


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