What Did You Sharpen Today?

I've ran out of things to sharpen.

Time to ask if any of the ladies behind the counter at 7/11 would enjoy a sharper edge.

I haven't seen one that doesn't carry a knife. One had a CRKT clipped on the neck of her shirt. Others have something in the hip pocket.

Women. They know that'll be the first place you look. Hip pocket. Butt region. Smart Girl.


I'm gonna see if I can sharpen some knives.
 
TheOne45 said:
Yesterday I sharpened three kitchen knives.
Click to expand...
Here we go...
-My kitchen knives sharpener (prototype version 2) with magnetic table
-Cheap diamond plates #240 and #320 (1mm thick) on home made 5mm thick 'blue' aluminium bases
-Strop made of thin leather with 7 micron diamond compound on home made 8mm thick plexiglass base

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u8yVMIro4thE-y7db5Lj7Tv1_sv6uGES/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xk-eeZ0TYXpMM1tGTKlXY5dI5mkqizxp/view?usp=drive_link
 
Here is my LionSteel Roundhead (M390) chucked up in the low angle adapter on the Wicked Edge. I have been feverishly practising my freehand technique lately, and I needed a break and a re-set.

RwjmWDs.jpg


Not too many pieces here.

RmyoW7B.jpg


I found that I could get down to 20 degrees per side on this little blade. At that angle, I started to shave the clamp a little before I was done. I had to get down to the 600 grit diamond stone to get re-profiled, then proceeded through 800/1K/1.5K diamond stones and 1.4 and 0.6 mu ceramics. I put it on the BESS tester.

3P3exqt.jpg


I can live with that! A shiny M390 blade at 20 dps is a formidable pocket knife. My pocket is very happy.

One revelation was how far my freehand attempt at 17 dps (using a blue plastic angle guide to set the angle) was from the measured angle. I thought I was freehanding at 17, and I was actually getting over 20! I will have to look into all that!

It was useful to compare my freehand results with the Wicked Edge results. I may have been getting a little too sure of myself. My freehanded efforts work fine, they perform all the tasks easily, but they are nowhere near as sharp and crisp as my WE results. The BESS scores are about 30 grams lower off the WE.
 
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I got a Spartan Blades Enyo Elite Gold Class, S35VN, a few years ago. It was quite dull out of the box, over BESS 600 near the tip. At that time, I had the older Work Sharp Precision Adjust. I tried and failed to get a burr on the Enyo. I think I spent about half an hour and gave up. Never got a clear idea of the angle using the marker method.

Then I got a laser goniometer and discovered the edge bevel was 28 DPS about midway between tip and heel. It's hard to use the laser near either end. But 28 DPS? WTF??

Later, I got a TSProf Kadet with the TSProf diamond stones down to 150 grit. I reprofiled a Lil Native S90V from 18 to 15 DPS pretty easily. So I had another got at the Enyo, aiming for 20 DPS. Finally got a burr near the middle of the blade, but very little progress at either end. Put it away again.

A new Work Sharp Professional Precision Adjust barely did anything to the Enyo, but the stones go down to only 220 grit.

Then I got a Hapstone R2/V8 with Hapstone CBN stones down to 50 grit. The 120 grit had little effect on the Enyo, but after more than an hour, I got a burr about an inch long along the edge using the 50 grit. But progress was still very slowly at either end of the blade.

I read on this forum about the Poltava CBN 120 grit. Spent half an hour with the Poltava 120 and finally got a burr all along most of one side. But I was stuck for a long time with the edge as shown in this photo below of the half inch of the blade nearest the tip. (Sorry, my stupid phone is lousy at photographing knife blades.) The black stuff is just filings. The important thing is that bright, shiny strip right along the apex that the stones have not touched yet. I got out the new, expensive laser goniometer. After a lot of fiddling, I finally got a reading of 35 degrees on that shiny strip.

Next I got a Poltava CBN 60/80 grit. Half an hour later, the shiny strip was gone, and there was a burr along the whole edge. Another half hour with the Poltava 60/80 and I had a burr on the other side. Another half hour going through the finer stones and I got BESS scores in the 160 to 180 range.

The Poltavas seem to cut quite a bit faster than the Hapstones of similar grits.

Enyo sharpening.jpg
 
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Another Shepherd said:
Another half hour with the Poltava 60/80 and I had a burr on the other side.
Click to expand...
Strange.
So, you went through all those stones and sharpening systems (not to mention all the time you've spend) trying to reprofile the edge on S35VN.
If you knife was made out of carbide hardness or ferro-titanite I would understand. But S35VN....strange.
I use cheap $3 diamond plates and have no problem reprofiling my HSS high carbide knife (~65HRc) with #180 or #240 plate.
It would be interesting to take your knife in our lab to do some analyses what's in there. Must be 'hard as a rock' and loaded with carbides. Even Maxamet is not that hard to reprofile. The only knives I know that are so hard to sharpen are Sandrin knives made out of Tungsten carbide.
 
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TheOne45 said:
Strange.
So, you went through all those stones and sharpening systems (not to mention all the time you've spend) trying to reprofile the edge on S35VN.
If you knife was made out of carbide hardness or ferro-titanite I would understand. But S35VN....strange.
I use cheap $3 diamond plates and have no problem reprofiling my HSS high carbide knife (~65HRc) with #180 or #240 plate.
It would be interesting to take your knife in our lab to do some analyses what's in there. Must be 'hard as a rock' and loaded with carbides. Even Maxamet is not that hard to reprofile. The only knives I know that are so hard to sharpen are Sandrin knives made out of Tungsten carbide.
Click to expand...
Yes, I was very surprised. I've had no trouble with S90V.

I expected that reprofiling from 28 DPS to 20 DPS would take a long time, but not this long. Then near the tip, the original angle turned out to be 35 degrees on one side. The other side I never could get a reading from the goniometer. I had never tried to change an angle that much.

What sort of lab do you have?
 
Another Shepherd said:
I got a Spartan Blades Enyo Elite Gold Class, S35VN, a few years ago. It was quite dull out of the box, over BESS 600 near the tip. At that time, I had the older Work Sharp Precision Adjust. I tried and failed to get a burr on the Enyo. I think I spent about half an hour and gave up. Never got a clear idea of the angle using the marker method.

Then I got a laser goniometer and discovered the edge bevel was 28 DPS about midway between tip and heel. It's hard to use the laser near either end. But 28 DPS? WTF??

Later, I got a TSProf Kadet with the TSProf diamond stones down to 150 grit. I reprofiled a Lil Native S90V from 18 to 15 DPS pretty easily. So I had another got at the Enyo, aiming for 20 DPS. Finally got a burr near the middle of the blade, but very little progress at either end. Put it away again.

A new Work Sharp Professional Precision Adjust barely did anything to the Enyo, but the stones go down to only 220 grit.

Then I got a Hapstone R2/V8 with Hapstone CBN stones down to 50 grit. The 120 grit had little effect on the Enyo, but after more than an hour, I got a burr about an inch long along the edge using the 50 grit. But progress was still very slowly at either end of the blade.

I read on this forum about the Poltava CBN 120 grit. Spent half an hour with the Poltava 120 and finally got a burr all along most of one side. But I was stuck for a long time with the edge as shown in this photo below of the half inch of the blade nearest the tip. (Sorry, my stupid phone is lousy at photographing knife blades.) The black stuff is just filings. The important thing is that bright, shiny strip right along the apex that the stones have not touched yet. I got out the new, expensive laser goniometer. After a lot of fiddling, I finally got a reading of 35 degrees on that shiny strip.

Next I got a Poltava CBN 60/80 grit. Half an hour later, the shiny strip was gone, and there was a burr along the whole edge. Another half hour with the Poltava 60/80 and I had a burr on the other side. Another half hour going through the finer stones and I got BESS scores in the 160 to 180 range.

The Poltavas seem to cut quite a bit faster than the Hapstones of similar grits.

View attachment 2404075
Click to expand...
It's stories like this that me glad I have a Tormek with CBN wheels. 😃

Not that I didn't put in many hours reprofiling with my old KME system!
 
I was just looking at S35VN specs: C 1.4%, Cr 14%, Mo 2%, V 3%.
The maximal hardness you can get after quenching is about 64HRc (1095 degrees Celsius, Oil + Cryo at -80 degrees Celsius). After tempering you aim for hardness of 59-61HRc.
Even if the blade was not tempered and it's at maximum hardness of 64HRc this should not be a problem and 3% of Vanadium should not make so much carbides it would slow down the sharpening.
So; there must be something else.
 
r70knUd.jpg


This ESEE-3 is an excellent knife for a wide variety of tasks, from digging roots and cutting branches outdoors to much finer tasks, including a few involving receipt paper! The thick paint made it way too thick behind the edge, so I knocked down the paint along the edge with 220 sandpaper, then smoothed it with 320. It makes a difference for many but not all tasks.

The ESEE paint job makes the knife harder to lose, and even after using it like a shovel to dig in rocky dirt, you can get it looking almost new with a toothbrush and the same diluted Krud Kutter I use to lube that 10" hard Arkansas stone. I think that knife cost about $75US once upon a time.

zLNSqgp.jpg


This 1095 blade is a joy to sharpen! No matter how much I abuse it, a dozen strokes across a hard Arkansas stone gets it hair-popping, receipt paper slicing sharp. I lube it with well diluted Krud Kutter. No more than four or five strokes across DIY 5 mu. Kent paste on leather. That 1095 gets freaky sharp on hard Ark in a few minutes. It makes me feel like I really know what I am doing!

And speaking of whether I know what I am doing or not, the little blue plastic angle guides shed some light there. I am trying to freehand different blades at different angles, and as Inspector Harold "Dirty Harry" Callahan once spit in his boss's face, "A man's got to know his limitations."

I'm not capable of hitting 20 DPS on one blade, 15 on another, and 25 on that one over there. My edges are a lot closer to where they should be if I swallow what is left of my pride and accept help from the little blue plastic thingys.

If this does not qualify as freehand sharpening, I am at peace with that. Now that I have admitted it, now that I have put the incriminating photo out there, it can no longer be used to blackmail or extort me!
 
Been waiting for the Spyderco Tenacious for a loooong time and it's finally arrived. Actually ... two of them arrived, because I ordered one when I saw them in stock and forgot that I had preordered another one many moons ago! I've decided to keep both of them for comparative testing.

I've always been intrigued by the Tenacious, but as an admitted steel snob I just couldn't pull the trigger on the 8cr version (I know, it's actually FINE). Hence my excitement when Spyderco announced the CPM-M4 version early this year. It's considerably more expensive at $133, but still a good deal IMO, for an M4 knife with G10 and Spyderco's build quality.

Intrigued why? Because the Tenacious is slicier and more compact than, e.g., the PM2 and PM3, which tend to be ground relatively thick behind the edge, and lose a fair bit of blade length to the forward finger choil. The Tenacious has 3 3/8" of cutting edge, versus 3" for the PM2, but the handle is about 3/8" shorter. It has thinner blade stock and is ground to about 8 thousandths behind the edge, versus about 18 thousandths for the PM2.

Both of the factory edges I received were *excellent*, but one was sharpened to 18 dps while the other one was at 15 on one side and 13 on the other. I sharpened the one below to 12-13 dps on a 600 grit CBN wheel and stropped on 1 micron and Tormek compound. I plan on doing some edge retention testing, comparing the 12 dps edge to the 18 dps edge.

https://imgur.com/a/IeOw6eZ

mm4grmi.jpg
 
Hedonizmdan said:
Did up my Tops storm Vector this evening.
Click to expand...
Cool! I was wondering how well the Kazak would work with a machete. Seeing your results, I'll give it a try whenever I have some time.

Is that a KakBritva Sylift Plus Knife Sharpener beside the Kazak? What do you think of it? Have you found the turntable to be useful?
 
Another Shepherd said:
Cool! I was wondering how well the Kazak would work with a machete. Seeing your results, I'll give it a try whenever I have some time.

Is that a KakBritva Sylift Plus Knife Sharpener beside the Kazak? What do you think of it? Have you found the turntable to be useful?
Click to expand...
Yes the kazak does great on larger blades. That Tops is fairly thick as well, and the factory clamps worked great 👍.

Yes that is the Kakbritva Luch beside the Kazak. I actually got the Kakbritva first, and right away had to upgrade the clamps to the 7mm opening clamps. The standard ones would not fit alot of my knives. It's a great sharpener for sure. I really like the sylift system, and the rotating assembly is super solid. The turntable is very useful, especially when dealing with something like a large kukri. It allows you to adjust a little to keep the bevel more consistent from tip to heel. Without having to try and mount the blade just right in the clamps at just the right angle.
 
May be posting the Kakbritva on the exchange this weekend. I don't need 2 sharpening systems, and I prefer the Kazak.
 
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