How do you sharpen a curved pocket knife?

M

Melancholoholic

Joined
Jul 29, 2016
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30
Hey! So, I'm pretty new to knives and am having a heck of a time sharpening the main blade on a Kabar 3 blade pocket knife (using them to carve). They were all pretty tricky bit I cannot seem to get this one!

Any tips or tricks from the vets? I have a 1,000/6,000 Japanese whetstone and a diamond sharpener.

Thanks in advance!

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once you get it sharp, stropping is your friend. I generally use various degrees of sandpaper on a mousepad or work my way to the point of using a loaded strop with some jewelers compound on it.

Recurves can be tricky. So tricky, in fact, that many people give up on them. I have spent years sharpening khukuris, so the they don't bother me much. However, I can see how they would be both tedious and frustrating.
 
I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be any recurve in the edge right there.
BTW I touch my edges up on the uncoated ring on the bottom of a coffee cup.
 
I find the Spyderco Sharpmaker very handy for maintaining edges like this. I only use the corner of the triangle rods, which will adapt to pretty much any blade shape.
 
Or if you do not have a ceramic rod, just wrap sandpaper on a stick to make one.
 
Lol I feel you there! And I need the damn thing razor sharp. Already worked on the sheep's foot blade though, so I'm invested in the thing
 
I'm with Hickory on this. There is a slight recurve to the blade, but it looks as though it's the result of improper sharpening. The edge bevel is widest at the leading edge of the belly, which is fine, then narrowest at the start of the belly. Then it gets widest at the recurve. And you haven't sharpened all the way to the sharpening choil, so a recurve will always start under those conditions.

If the natural line of the edge bevel were continued all the way to the sharpening choil, the recurve would disappear.
 
Am I the only one who doesn't see the recurve? I just see straight blade that has angle downwards, so I would sharpen it just normally.
 
Ideally, you want to finish a sharpening stroke with the tip of the blade on the stone. This will give you a nice sharp tip. This is hard to do on a round sharpening rod. A compromise may be the triangular prisms on the Spyderco Sharpmaker. The sharpening "flat" is 1/2" wide. The edges of the flat will reach into the recurve, and the tip of the blade can still finish on the stone. I am not crazy about recurved blades because of the difficulty sharpening them by hand on stones. A slack belt grinder can sharpen recurves readily, but it can also cause extra blade wear. I usually only sharpen flea market knives with power equipment.
 
The blade is recurved, it is just very slight (hard to show in the picture). It showed the same curve on the model picture on the site I ordered from, so had anticipated it being a little difficult
 
Twindog said:
I'm with Hickory on this. There is a slight recurve to the blade, but it looks as though it's the result of improper sharpening. The edge bevel is widest at the leading edge of the belly, which is fine, then narrowest at the start of the belly. Then it gets widest at the recurve. And you haven't sharpened all the way to the sharpening choil, so a recurve will always start under those conditions.

If the natural line of the edge bevel were continued all the way to the sharpening choil, the recurve would disappear.
Click to expand...

This.^^

It's common on a lot of factory edges, though likely 'unintended'. I doubt the recurve was designed into the pattern, but it happens a lot on belt-ground factory edges.

The best long-term fix would be to flatten the rear-most portion of the edge, just forward of the choil/ricasso, then regrind the edge bevel on a flat stone, to keep the edge straight and minimize any opportunity for the recurve to return. The downside in using a rod-type sharpener, to maintain it 'as is', is that the recurve will just keep getting deeper over time. This will also happen if using the corner of a stone to do the sharpening, as the narrow contact point will continue to remove most of the material in the area forward of the choil/ricasso. It's the same sort of problem that happens to chef's knives repeatedly sharpened on kitchen 'steels' over a long period of time, and they become more difficult to sharpen on flat stones, without completely regrinding the edge straight again.


David
 
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