Never sharpened a knife before, read the faq on the HI site and bought the stuff, DTC diafold, strop, and green compound for the strop. I have an ASTK that arrived with a few rolled spots and if I'm going to clean it up I might as well put a good angle on it and sharpen it up.
Ahh. If you've never sharpened before, learning the angles and getting a feel for the process can take time. I've only been freehanding for about 6 years now, give or take a few months. I started out on a Sypderco sharpmaker, and eventually just started using the stones freehand when the pre-defined angles no longer seemed appropriate to the blades I was buying, whether thinner or thicker than the typical knife.
My own advice for a beginner (and bear in mind this is only one of many possible approaches to take) would be to invest some money in a cheap but serviceable belt grinder with some sharpening belts to learn on. Since you've already got some DMT stones and a strop, You can get away with only buying the more coarse grits of belt I'd recommend practicing with some cheap dull kitchen knives. The combination of thin steel and dull edge seems to me a good specimen to start on.
The speed of a belt grinder lets you appreciate the effect of the angles more readily than slowly grinding away by hand. Of course, don't overheat the blade by lingering too long or using too much pressure. First, you'll be able to visibly see where the edge is being ground, and you can check it with your fingertips to see if there's an appreciable change in the feel of it. I usually start with a narrower angle for as much grinding as I have the patience for, then slowly increase the angle, getting slightly more obtuse until I can feel a burr forming. once I've got a burr on the entire edge (or MOST of the edge with the most stubborn dull blades) that's when I usually switch to hand honing with diamonds and ceramic stones. Going by feel at this stage is all the more critical to me, since the effects on the edge will be less noticeable to the naked eye. It's also important to get the burr off with a low-medium grit stone. I work up to higher grits after feeling the difference with each stage, and once it's about shaving sharp, I strop to finish it off.
It sounds easier to read it laid out here, but grasping the ideas and getting the proper feel can take practice.
So what is an adequately obtuse angle anyway? I guess for small knives most go for a very acute angle of 20 degrees.......by this definition even a 45 degree angle would be a big improvement for a Khukuri. 90 maybe? Or is that unrealistic?
90! WHOAH!
Even 45 degree, way too steep. If you have a protractor, go take a look.
A rule of thumb I use is that it's generally much easier to make a narrow profile a little more obtuse than it is to remove a lot of steel from an overly thick profile. I'd get the thinning of the profile out of the way first. One can always increase the angle later if it ends up a bit on the delicate side.
I couldn't really get any of the DMT flat diafolds to do anything, they are too short. Same for the strop, just ended up shaving off chunks of leather.
I ended up getting a very long DMT ceramic rod. It lets me get the whole length of the blade and I try to hold it at 45 degrees. Hopefully I did a decent job.......I did remove all of the rolled parts, but it didn't get shaving sharp. The only downside is carelessness made me hit the tip coming back a few times.......damaged the rod and pushed a minute amount of metal of the tip I think as it was crazy sharp before and maybe a barely noticeable amount less now.
With stropping, you want to be stroking AWAY from the edge. Lead with the spine, edge trailing, as they say.
Depending on the grit of DMT's you're using, and the initial state of the edge you're trying to sharpen, it can be a VERY tedious process to get a serviceable edge. Much as I like a lot of HI's stuff, almost every blade I have has needed a lot of initial grinding to get rid of most of the dull spots. This is where some kind of power grinding comes in handy. A REAL time saver. You may draw scorn from hand-sharpening purists, but life's too short, especially if you're working a full-time job between sharpenings.
The length of your DMT's can, to an extent be overcome by using multiple, short strokes along overlapping sections of a long edge until you span the whole blade. Don't worry a lot about keeping the same length or number of strokes each pass... as long as your angles are relatively consistent, a sloppy, organic approach is probably better for avoiding too much wear on any given spots on the blade.
And more pressure doesn't often help, but can increase the chance of developing a wire edge, which can seem deceptively sharp at times, then completely lousy other times. It's basically a very thin ribbon of steel along the edge that, while sharp, is flexible and can bend from side to side with pressure. Basically it's like a long smooth burr... treat it as such and get rid of it!
This is harder than I thought. I think my attempt at putting a 45 degree edge on this knife ended updulling it.
I did something like this with my Everest Katana when I was using waterstones for the first time. I used an approximated 2 degree angle for each side on a coarse stone, which was probably bad enough, but then I also didn;t account for the slurry that builds up on a waterstone, which basically "wraps around" the edge in a semi-liquid form, increasing the angle all the more. The Everest has never been shaving sharp, I'm afraid, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to reverse that mistake without a LOT of time or a professional grinding setup.
