A Brilliant Yellow from a Fine Black

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Feb 11, 2016
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Some of you may remember a thread I started late last November inquiring about the Wenger Canyon and Viking patterns. I have a thing for clip secondaries and had just discovered that both of those models sported one.

Over the course of the thread, my friend and esteemed member of The Porch Jack Black Jack Black very generously offered to gift me a Solingen-made knife having the same configuration as the Viking. That was an offer that was too tempting to turn down and I gratefully accepted. In true Jack fashion, the knife was in the post shortly thereafter and I received it in early December.

I promptly thanked him privately, but a public thanks is well past due. I've been waiting for a chance to tune up the knife for whittling and take it for a test drive and I was finally able to make that happen today.

Here's the knife as it arrived in its original packaging:

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Incidentally, I did a bit of research on the logo and it turns out that this it is from a previous incarnation of Volvo Construction Equipment. That seems very fitting for a knife that will be put to use making things out of little blocks of wood.

I had a two-item to-do list before taking it on its maiden whittling voyage. First up, the key ring attachment had to go. I never use that feature of a SAK and similar patterns and it gets in the way of the thumb when whittling with the secondary. Fortunately, I have a set of files and am not shy about using them:

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(The smudge on the scale is some green honing compound that was on my workbench. It's now cleaned off).

The second, and most important, item was was giving the small clip blade a proper whittling edge:

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The only thing left was to take it for a test drive. I'm rusty on my face carving, so I decided to do a bit of practice:

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Not my best work, but it's not the knife's fault. It's a delight to use. I expect it will be seeing good use in the future, especially on those occasions when having stainless steel and a cap lifter at hand both come in handy (think post-outdoor adventure relaxation :) ).

Thank you again, Jack. Your generosity and friendship are very much appreciated!
 
Fine post Greg, I always enjoy reading about your whittling knife adaptations. :cool::)

Can you tell us more about your sharpening regime? Are you freehanding a small blade like that, rather than using the KME or Tormek?

Good on ya, Jack!:):cool:
 
Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Can you tell us more about your sharpening regime? Are you freehanding a small blade like that, rather than using the KME or Tormek?

Certainly. I always freehand sharpen small whittling blades on stones or diamond plates. I used to aim for an angle of 10-12 DPS, but at this point go by feel. The result is probably somewhere in that range.

That’s followed up by heavy stropping to further polish the blade and round the shoulder of the bevel a bit. I like a slightly convex bevel for most of my whittling blades. It helps for rolling the blade through concave cuts and I don’t tend to leave a lot of flat surfaces on my carvings that would benefit from a flat grind. (I do have flat ground blades that I use when I do want to leave larger flat surfaces, though. It strikes me just now that they might work better for some final cleanup duties as well. I’ll have to find out....).

In this particular case, it was DMT DiaSharp plates from Extra Coarse to Extra Fine followed by stropping with the leather honing wheel on the Tormek. The latter is a big time saver.
 
Thanks for the kind words, everyone.



Certainly. I always freehand sharpen small whittling blades on stones or diamond plates. I used to aim for an angle of 10-12 DPS, but at this point go by feel. The result is probably somewhere in that range.

That’s followed up by heavy stropping to further polish the blade and round the shoulder of the bevel a bit. I like a slightly convex bevel for most of my whittling blades. It helps for rolling the blade through concave cuts and I don’t tend to leave a lot of flat surfaces on my carvings that would benefit from a flat grind. (I do have flat ground blades that I use when I do want to leave larger flat surfaces, though. It strikes me just now that they might work better for some final cleanup duties as well. I’ll have to find out....).

In this particular case, it was DMT DiaSharp plates from Extra Coarse to Extra Fine followed by stropping with the leather honing wheel on the Tormek. The latter is a big time saver.

Thanks for the detailed answer Greg. That's a very interesting point you make about favouring a slight convex bevel, in order to make concave cuts - that's the first time I've heard of that trait being more easily attained with a mildly convexed edge.

Yes, I think 10-12 degrees per side is about right for those thin acute edges, as the actual flats of the knife - at least on flat ground blades generally come in at around 7dps. I sharpen to a similar angle for general use then apply a tiny microbevel with the Sharpmaker at 15dps, for durability, and easy resharpening. I've not tried this kind of edge for proper whittling though. The nearest I get is shaving tinder, and stripping bark for campfire fuel. I'd conjecture that a microbevelled edge apex would want to steer slightly off course in a concave whittling cut.

Most Moras incidentally, are factory sharpened to 11.5 dps

How do you like the DMT plates for your purposes? I have the Atoma set, which are very nice, swift cutting plates for removing stock and thinning out edges. The diamond pattern is distributed as a kind of raised three dimensional grid of polka dots, or raised braille bumps.

There's some fascinating scanning electron microscope images of fresh and 'broken in' DMT plates here, on the Scienceofsharp blog.

If you haven't seen them, I also recommend the Venev bonded diamond stones, which I've been experimenting with recently. (Konstantin at Gritomatic is a BF dealer.) They're double sided, so you get two grits in one stone, and the feel is much more like a waterstone. The 1200/2000 grit stone has been giving very nice results in refining a crisp, clean edge, before finishing on ultrafine ceramic and stropping. The Russians use the FEPA grit scale, so their 1200/2000 grit is finer than the Japanese (JIS) equivalent: 1200 is 3-2 micron monocrystalline diamonds, and 2000 is 1 micron particles and below. They just need to be scrubbed with a nagura stone to remove loading fairly frequently.

Anyway, sorry to digress, thanks again for the informative answer.
 
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