my blades are sharper towards the tip

Joined
May 20, 2015
Messages
106
Another duh moment for me. I've been working with my new Kershaw Link M390, first reprofiling to 13-14° per side with the KME and a full roster of diamond stones and then using the Sharpmaker with brown, fine, and ultrafine rods to micro bevel the edge at 15°. In testing the edge after this sequence I thought the blade toward the tip was much sharper than the segment toward the choil. Long story short, I have been neglecting the near segment. Looking at my American Lawman I found the same inequity. The impediments of the plunge line and/or thumb stud and the desire not to abrade the front of the handle as well as my inattention have resulted in my neglect of this portion of the blade. I have reworked the Link with satisfactory results, though it could be better. Future resharpening of all of my knives will, I hope, concentrate on correcting this error.
 
What was your general method of sharpening the neglected portion? I am a relative beginner sharpener and I sometimes find I unintentionally avoid sharpening the tips of my knives. Do you concentrate on the dull parts separately or go over the entire blade making sure to include the more dull section?
 
More the latter and I use a lot of sweeping "fore to aft" strokes to try to blend the segments.
 
M390, first reprofiling to 13-14° per side with the KME and a full roster of diamond stones
I'm with you so far :thumbsup:
Lusting, lusting . . .
Just go to the edge that way; what's with all the back tracking on the other stuff ? Oh . . . the angle thing.
See Cliff Stamp on YouTube for how he spaces up the corner of the Sharpmaker to dial in the angle. Or not.

The impediments of the plunge line and/or thumb stud and the desire not to abrade the front of the handle
I hear you. It is possible to remove the thumb stud.
Then add heavy coat of tape on the handle near the blade.
This is where square cornered stones come in handy to get that plunge shaped to the angle of the rest of the edge. That said you want to ever so lightly chamfer the corners of any water stones you square the edge on . . . I mean any edges that aren't going to be rounded over in use. This keeps waterstones (Shapton Glass etc.) from edge chipping at the surface of the stones as they dry.

But yah I once left the thumb stud off my 940-1 after sharpening, heck it drops and swings open like a Big Old Dog.
Who needs it ?
That was dumb.
I put the thumb stud back on later on.

Use a touch of Purple LocTite if you must. Mine has never come loose with nothing on it.
 
I think much of my difficulty came from inattention. Maybe the distal part of the blade has more glamour. Anyway, on my redo of the American Lawman with the brown rod today I created a wire edge along perhaps 4/5 of the blade before going through the rest of the sharpening. Better than that I cannot do. “Perfect is the enemy of good” (i.e. I’m too old and tired).
 
I had to go to a steeper angle near the tip when using a rod guided system like the Lansky in order to keep the edge angle the same. It depends on the blade shape. A straight edge with a short curved belly near the tip, where you can't clamp the guide close to the tip will have this problem more so than other edge shapes. Along the straight part, the edge angle will be constant but when it reaches the belly the angle will rapidly decrease. A blade that curves from tip to heel will not suffer from this problem as much.
 
I had to go to a steeper angle near the tip when using a rod guided system like the Lansky in order to keep the edge angle the same. It depends on the blade shape. A straight edge with a short curved belly near the tip, where you can't clamp the guide close to the tip will have this problem more so than other edge shapes. Along the straight part, the edge angle will be constant but when it reaches the belly the angle will rapidly decrease. A blade that curves from tip to heel will not suffer from this problem as much.

On knives like that I usually just take the easy (lazy?) approach and microbevel them. If it starts at, say 20° near the heel, and gets more acute or obtuse towards the tip, a 25° microbevel will work pretty good for me in most cases. Eventually I'll just reset the whole bevel to 20°.
 
That's one reason why a hole is much better than a stud. Always there but never in the way.
 
The Link has neither stud or hole, pure flipper...and almost all belly

One benefit of getting freehand sharpening down is the ability to apply different pressure with the fingers on the blade to isolate the sections of the egde that needs more love.
 
Back
Top