Long term carbide scraper use

Jason B.

Jason B.

Joined
Jun 13, 2007
Messages
11,148
I got a few knives in last week from one of my dads friends that needed sharpening. The only sharpening tools this person has is a carbide scraper and I think he also tried using a file. One of the knives was a old schrades lockback that had seen a rough life, I didn't even want to touch it at first because of how damaged it was but I've seen worse and knew that I could fix it.

I was not even going to post this but with what seems like a recent wave of people saying that they use one of these type of sharpeners I figured it would be good to show what the long term effects are. More than a scraper was used on this knife but the scraper was the main sharpening tool according to the owner.

I'll let the pics do the rest of the talking.

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All fixed up
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It actually looks suspiciously good. Maybe he has been using a draw-through sharpener that uses crossed abrasive rods rather than sharp-edged carbide scrapers.
 
Jeff Clark said:
It actually looks suspiciously good. Maybe he has been using a draw-through sharpener that uses crossed abrasive rods rather than sharp-edged carbide scrapers.
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I think he uses some sort of grinder on it last, the scraper was the main use though you can see the marks on the side of the blade where the scraper dragged above the bevel. He showed it to me too.
 
I know this is like heresy...

And I feel heretical saying it....

But, I have a friend who does a passable job with the carbide scraper sharpener.

Marion
 
Marion David Poff said:
I know this is like heresy...

And I feel heretical saying it....

But, I have a friend who does a passable job with the carbide scraper sharpener.

Marion
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But I'm sure you have given your friend some pointers on sharpening. Its more about the person that has never even picked up a stone and has no idea how to sharpen, they get sucked into the wonders of a carbide scraper and end up with knives that look like the one above.

You should really inform you friend of the extreme damage he is doing to the edge of his blade, no matter how good a job he thinks hes doing he's still hurting the knife.
 
Like anything, it takes some skill to use a carbide sharpener and produce good results. I've gained some respect for freehand carbide sharpening in the past few months. The pull through ones can really tear a blade to hell, but they can also provide a casual user with a usable edge. If you understand the hows and whys of a knife edge, you can get superior results. The average user just knows if you pull the knife through the thing, it's better than before. And if it isn't better, you pull it through again, probably with more force, until it is better. The point is, it usually does get better, even if the blade suffers a great deal of unnecessary wear.
 
bout the only thing a carbide is good for is very soft, thin carbon steel blades that don't need top class edges, like field machetes. Even then I get much better results with a belt sander and a quick deburr with a fine file.
 
I'm going to buy one and some batteries for my camera, I have a old cold steel folder that uses 440A that I will test it on, I'll take some up-close pictures so we can all see what it really does.
 
I'll have some 400x pic's up in a bit but after you see these I don't know if its really going to matter.

When using one of these tools one of the biggest problems is that you can not use light pressure. It works like a hand plane does on wood, you must use enough pressure for the carbide teeth to shave away metal. If you use light pressure then it simply does nothing, I tried.

I even put the sharpener in a vice to be better able to hold the blade straight and apply even pressure for the best results. When I started the existing edge was last sharpened using diamond stones and was shaving sharp. Its been a mule for my brother to practice his sharpening skills but was last sharpened by me with a pair of dia-folds just to show a friend their effectiveness.

Now on to the horror.

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After
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Yeah, those images tell the tale.

And, I have told my friend, and he knows that I will sharpen his knives for free, but he is like a 5 yr old and has to do it himself. Or, he wants to know that he can do it, in the field, on his own.

And yoda has it right, he is mostly working his beaters over that way.

Marion
 
Marion David Poff said:
Yeah, those images tell the tale.

And, I have told my friend, and he knows that I will sharpen his knives for free, but he is like a 5 yr old and has to do it himself. Or, he wants to know that he can do it, in the field, on his own.

And yoda has it right, he is mostly working his beaters over that way.

Marion
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It would still be better to use a coarse diamond stone, I know he's using it for his beaters but even with the ceramic "V" next to it I could not get the knife shaving sharp. Tell him HF has a cheap set of diamond stones for about the same price as one of these sharpeners, hell, buy it for him and teach him a few points of freehand. At the very worst he would end up with a sharper knife and a new skill, you don't have to be good to get a blade sharp with a coarse diamond.
 
I found a nice V shape carbide sharpener, and after years of freehand sharpening, I am experimenting with this on some of my Wife's cheap kitchen knives. I am using it to quickly remove the "shoulders" from these really dull edges, basically re-shaping the blade quickly. Then I go on with a DMT diamond hone, and a ceramic to clean up the edge. I get pretty good results in about 3-5 minutes. PS, my wife doesn't want her knives too sharp. She learned how to use dull knives when she was growing up. She cuts herself if I sharpen her knives to my standards.

I feel a little guilty as I see the steel peeling away, but it's a faster way to remove the shoulders from one of her dead kitchen knives so I can move on to the sharpening process. I feel like I would have to remove this material anyway, this is just much faster that my diamond hone.

Comments???
 
The rough edges on a scraped blade really slice well. For cheap throw-away kitchen knives they help keep a novice cook productive with a minimum expenditure of money and time. When I was young (two-score and five years back) a friend's mother asked me to provide sharpening help. She didn't want her knives sharpened, she wanted the blades in her scraper restored. I didn't have a diamond hone at the time, but I was able to flip the carbide inserts around to provide fresh surfaces. She considered me a genius at sharpening after that.
 
Comments on the original knife: You must have power tools knifenut. Nice job!

Comments on the experiment: That's pretty cool to see before and after pictures. I can't figure out what the "bump" on the blade in the 4th picture is though. It almost looks like a thumb stud, but obviously it's not as it's on the edge. Weird.

There's a guy who sets up a table at every gun and knife show around here selling a two step pull through sharpener for like $8 or $10. He talks a good game, as he's an old road salesman and has been selling this one for many years now. Something about a particular day and his sales pitch caused me to lose my mind one day and I actually bought one.

He does a demo with cheap knives that he abuses and then restores to paper slicing sharpness in just a few minutes. My favorite is that he sharpens a butter knife after beating it with various objects to dull and dent the edge. He gets it paper slicing sharp too. Too bad he doesn't tell you that it won't hold an edge at all, and only gets sharp fast because the metal isn't heat treated at all and is as soft as proverbial "butter". :p

Anyway, I tried it on a few cheap knifes at home and one not so cheap knife. I got nothing. I haven't used it since. I felt stupid for a while, but now I feel smarter that I know that most of these just don't work with a darn and remove lots of steel in the process; as these pictures show quite vividly!

Brian.
 
That thing that looks like a thumb stud is the metal shavings produced by the scraper :eek:
 
Wow that is some serious damage.....I've got one I use for broadheads and it seems fine for that use- I was once tempted to use it in the midst of cleaning a deer, but thought better and muddled through. Glad I did.....
 
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