Recurve Sharpening, I need some advice....

[Marlinaholic]

Hi guys, I'm really looking for some help here, and I know a lot of you are way more experienced than I am at sharpening. I have just acquired a nice Kershaw Storm and SOG Tomcat 3.0, as well as a couple SOG Stingrays. What are the best tools to use to sharpen small to medium recurves like I have now? I have an APEX that I am good with on normal shaped blades, but its stones are pretty wide when it comes to small recurves. I can freehand sharpen very well with my DMT Double sided flat Diafold and Schrade Flat honesteel, but there again, they are both wide and won't work here. What I am considering now is the Sharpmaker OR some sort of free hand round or small oval ceramic/diamond/steel rods. I am leaning toward the rods, as I can control the angle to match the factory edge, where with the Sharpmaker I guess I'm stuck at 30 or 40 degrees. What do you guys think? If I go with free hand rods, who makes the best ones? I'm kinda trying to narrow this all down but am lost as you can tell. I don't really want to just get by with abrasive wrapped on a rod, ect. I want some sort of quality tool that will let me sharpen my recurves with the same success I've had with straight edge blades.

 

[orthogonal1]

Free hand is what I usually do. Partial to the Spyderco 701 Profile rods with an assortment of other tools such as wooden dowels with metal sanding paper, the Spyderco Duckfoot thingy, etc.

However, even when hand sharpening one tends to re-bevel the edge. I know I do. And you can use the Sharpmaker rods when hand sharpening, as I do.

So get a Sharpmaker as a decent start is my thought.

I've never been satisfied with one sharpening tool, sharpening method, etc. I use a variety of tools aquired through the years and suspect as time goes on you'll buy other things too.

 

[cbwx34]

You can use your Apex... you'll find that enough of the stone contacts the blade to sharpen the recurve portion. It helps to smooth the edge of the sides of the stones a little... so the 90 deg edge doesn't cut into the blade. 1/2 in. wide stones are also available from Edge Pro specifically for recurves.

Take a look at this.... http://www.edgeproinc.com/sharpenrecurve.html

cbw

 

[me2]

If you have decent free hand skills, try www.congresstools.com. They have various size round rods and half rounds in a wide variety of grits. They have a line of dry stones too.

 

[Marlinaholic]

I forgot about the 1/2" stones for the Apex. Here is what I am thinking, I'll get a couple of their 1/2" stones, the 320 and 600 are what I use most, and then grab a oval diamond stick maybe followed with a fine ceramic stick to do touch ups. I really like the looks of the Kershaw Ultra-Tek diamond oval sharpener, its 600 grit, which is about right. The ceramic rods I see are all like 1000, and lots of the diamond rods just don't say what they are, unlike the Kershaw, which is upfront about what grit you are getting. The Sharpmaker looks tempting, but I just hate being a slave to fixed angles. That's why I like the Apex, I can set it to copy whatever the maker ground the blade at get a nice edge without a lot of work.