CRKT Ignitor Sharpening Help

[Jayelled]

Hey guys,

I recently bought a CRKT Ignitor, and while very happy with the overall fit and finish of the blade, (I'll probably do an extensive review after more...extensive use of it.) I'm having a little trouble with the sharpening. Now, I'm not overly skilled in the sharpening area, all I'm really using are an old whetstone and a honing steel. Not really in the position to invest in another sharpening system as of yet, so freehanding will stay for the moment. I've been doing fine on one of my other blades, cheap knockoff of an Ontario XM-2, which appears to have a hollow-flat grind. I'm not sure if I'm using the right terms here, frankly a lot of the sharpening talk has me confused a lot of the time, so I figure I'll throw out a line to ask for help.

From what I understand, a knife can have two grinds, one in the blade and another on the edge. If I'm right (and not a complete ass) the XM-2 knockoff is hollow ground in the blade and the edge is flat ground, simply continuing. The CRKT Ignitor however, seems to be hollow-sabre ground. While not a big issue, I've noticed that the cutting edge seems a little thick? It isn't separating material as well as I'd like.

I suppose my question is, with my current set up, would it be possible to bring the sabre ground edge closer to a flat grind? And what would be the best way to do this.

Apologies if you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, sharpening/blade grinds are still a little confusing to me, despite the myriad of threads, articles and diagrams I've scrolled through. I'm a slow learner that way.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks guys.

 

[richard j]

i would skip the old stone and steel for doing what you are wanting to do. you can get a piece of glass and a good brand of wet or dry sandpaper and use that to sharpen your knife on which will work just fine. if you have a lot to take off to thin the edge i would start off wtih a 280 grit and work your way up to 400. if you need more help feel free to send me an email with your questions. rje196021@gmail.com

 

[Jayelled]

i would skip the old stone and steel for doing what you are wanting to do. you can get a piece of glass and a good brand of wet or dry sandpaper and use that to sharpen your knife on which will work just fine. if you have a lot to take off to thin the edge i would start off wtih a 280 grit and work your way up to 400.

That sounds like good advice. I'll give it a shot. I don't have too much to take off to thin the edge, so hopefully it'll go alright. Once it's thinned would you go any higher than 400 to make the edge more mirror-finished? Thanks a lot.

 

[Komitadjie]

The wet-or-dry paper is a great solution to your problem, I think. Personally, since you can freehand well already with the gear you have, I would use the sandpaper up through whatever level of finish you would like to have on the bevels, then increase your angle just a tiny bit, and sharpen the edge as you normally would. The sandpaper will do just fine for that as well, but if you're comfortable with your existing whetstone and like the edge it gives, I'd be tempted to leave it alone.

You can go all the way up through 3000 grit on the sandpaper if you have a decent auto-parts store around, but I have to admit that I'm woefully ignorant of what kind of retailers you have in Malaysia. I like highly-polished bevels, even if I'm ending with a rougher edge for slicing work. Having the bevels polished out well makes it slide through the material with less friction.

 

[richard j]

i'm not big on going over 400 grit on anything i sharpen and i sharpen a lot of knives. most of the time i never really go over 120 grit on a v edge but on a convex edge i never go over 400. i use paper wheels to sharpen on and the slotted wheel polishes the edge when removing the burr but thats sort of a by product of the process. i like a toothier edge for general all around cutting. sometimes too polished an edge will not cut very well or not cut at all.

 

[Jayelled]

The wet-or-dry paper is a great solution to your problem, I think. Personally, since you can freehand well already with the gear you have, I would use the sandpaper up through whatever level of finish you would like to have on the bevels, then increase your angle just a tiny bit, and sharpen the edge as you normally would. The sandpaper will do just fine for that as well, but if you're comfortable with your existing whetstone and like the edge it gives, I'd be tempted to leave it alone.

You can go all the way up through 3000 grit on the sandpaper if you have a decent auto-parts store around, but I have to admit that I'm woefully ignorant of what kind of retailers you have in Malaysia. I like highly-polished bevels, even if I'm ending with a rougher edge for slicing work. Having the bevels polished out well makes it slide through the material with less friction.

I'll definitely be doing that to thin it down. I think polishing out the bevels sounds like a great idea too. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with the edge, I like what I can get with my tools, but I'll probably use the sandpaper for a finer grit than the stones I have to see what kind of edge I can get on that. I'm just hoping I don't screw it up too badly and thin the edge out too much for it to be of any practical use. I'm not sure how soft the 8Cr14MoV that CRKT uses is.

And hopefully getting the sandpaper here isn't gonna be too hard. Though just finding a decent blade supplier down here was a pain. >.<

 

[Jayelled]

i'm not big on going over 400 grit on anything i sharpen and i sharpen a lot of knives. most of the time i never really go over 120 grit on a v edge but on a convex edge i never go over 400. i use paper wheels to sharpen on and the slotted wheel polishes the edge when removing the burr but thats sort of a by product of the process. i like a toothier edge for general all around cutting. sometimes too polished an edge will not cut very well or not cut at all.

That makes sense. From what I've read around here, polished edges can lack that "bite" that edges that aren't brought up to that shiny finish have. I'll give it a try and let you guys know how it goes. Thanks for the tips! And phew, I'm glad my explanations were clear enough. I wasn't sure my understanding was even right. >.<

 

[Komitadjie]

I think I might have been slightly misunderstood, actually. I like to polish the primary bevel highly, to ease passage through the work. The actual edge, the secondary bevel (if I put one on) can be whatever grit you like, suitable to providing whatever level of 'bite' you like on your blades.

It's highly unlikely that you can go TOO far by hand, unless you REALLY work it over. The coarse sandpaper could in time, although if you get the edge a bit too steep and it starts to fail prematurely on you, you can just use the finer grits to add a bit less-steep microbevel until it holds up the way you want it to.