What's the purpose of a sharpening choil ?

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As noted by Danbot, it's intended to aid in sharpening by keeping your stone only on the edge, and not allowing it to ride up on the ricasso due to a poorly implemented plunge grind, which can cause other issues like a recurve later on in a knife's life. Depending on the tools you use and the design of a knife, a sharpening choil may or may not be required. For example, very few spyderco knives have sharpening choils, but due to their properly done plunge grinds, they're still pretty easy to sharpen all the way to the heel.
 
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I'd rather endure 1% or 2% of the blade being unsharpened or poorly sharpened rather than have the sharpening choil catch on everything - as they do. They may only be 2% +/- of the blade's length but seem to be in the way snagging on things a highly disproportionate amount of time.
 
I've always wondered if there was any functional benefit to them.
They look cool, is about all I can figure.
Other than that, it always seemed to me to be a built in snag.
 
It's mostly there for cosmetic reasons, and could be eliminated from most designs with a little tweaking in the design phase. It helps eliminate a cosmetic recurve much much later on in the knife's life from improper sharpening...or earlier on, during production, where it's not uncommon for the base of the blade to get unevenly ground. ;)
 
It can cause a recurve or a smile for some when sharpening if there is no choil. The fact is not everyone has a belt grinder to sharpen the knives the maker used to sharpen without a choil. They can absolutely catch on some things. If you make a proper choil it doesn't have to do that.

Either way a choil is necessary when sharpening to the base of the knife. Else you have to stop short or make a so called smile at the plunge or a recurve near the plunge depending on the geometry of that specific knife.

Same topic on this link via @DeadboxHero
https://www.instagram.com/p/BtkNo_8BZkT/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=wg3f6sdo10e8

Here's one example The bottom knife stops short due to the plunge.
sharpening-choil.jpg


This one's a nice choil, but it may catch on things. However using a cone shape sharpening rod one can make it a serration to make it less of an issue...

17-Essential-Knife-Terms-You-Should-Know-gear-patrol-choil-1.jpg


The base of the pm2 is really time consuming to do this...

zv3pbaeev7i01.jpg

So most will do this

KP-CHOIL.jpg


miso2 said:
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this is not idea for sharpening. Almost always looks bad and not the right way to sharpen.
 
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SALTY said:
I'd rather endure 1% or 2% of the blade being unsharpened or poorly sharpened rather than have the sharpening choil catch on everything - as they do. They may only be 2% +/- of the blade's length but seem to be in the way snagging on things a highly disproportionate amount of time.
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That's not the point. It's not about not sharpening the whole edge, it's that the sharpening stone rides up on the unsharpened part by the ricasso, which in the long run will lead to an unevenly sharpened or slightly deformed edge, because some parts of the edge will receive different amounts of pressure from the stone.

If you have clearance behind the edge by the ricasso, it gets easier to sharpen evenly without deforming the edge, since you don't have to even get close to the corner of the stone with your edge.

This is extra useful on Chef's knives, since they have thin edges and one of the reasons why they usually have a lot of clearance behind the edge:
large_G-2__08610.1480634861.jpg

On a knife like this, there is nothing that can ever get in the way of the sharpening stone while sharpening. You could basically sharpen it on a stone floor.
 
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