Spyderco Forums

Just curious what you guys do if you want to sharpen your knives to a more extreme or steeper angle. Do you just try for 2dps lower than factory on each side? How do you determine the limits of the steels angle? What is a good test to see if it’ll chip, or roll.

I’m curious on what inclusive angle everyone is using and what knife is it?

I’d like to push both of my knives a little further, if possible.

I'm certainly not the best resource, but 15dps is my go to for most things Spyderco. You can go lower with many steels, but first be sure you aren't going to eventually hit that clamp on your new WE before you reach the apex.

I usually go for 15° per side too. Sometimes a little lower. I may get brave one of these days and try 10 dps on something.

I do a 12-15dps backbevel and an 18dps microbevel with 200/400/800/1500g diamond plates followed by 6/3/1.5 micron diamond lapping films. After that, I finish with 4/2/1/0.5 micron emulsions on nanocloth strops at 17.5dps.

I get some nasty chipping in most of my steels when I go lower for work. Even steels like hap40 and xhp are completely dull by the end of each day regardless of the edge angle.

Full resharpening takes 10-15 minutes on a wicked edge 2017 gen3 pro.

Where’s that man Vivi?

Zero grind on all high carbide steel knives and they have the primary grind in the 2.5/5 dps.
If you do that they continue to tear things even when they have the edge like a ball bearing

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:52 am

Just curious what you guys do if you want to sharpen your knives to a more extreme or steeper angle. Do you just try for 2dps lower than factory on each side? How do you determine the limits of the steels angle? What is a good test to see if it’ll chip, or roll.

I’m curious on what inclusive angle everyone is using and what knife is it?

I’d like to push both of my knives a little further, if possible.

I sharpen my knives around 10-12 degrees per side, then apply a 15 degree microbevel.

I have never seen a pocket knife show edge damage at these angles regardless of blade steel.

Smaller knives I tend to take a bit thinner.

My favorite test for edge durability is aggressively carving knotty, seasoned hardwood. It will chip or roll the edge if the steel was ground too thin.

If you search through my posts I have some edges ground so thin you'd swear they'd chip if you looked at them funny, but they pass the wood test. They work great on stuff like cardboard and veggies.

Most people never determine how thin their pocket knives can be ground. I have. I've taken multiple blade steels past the point of failure, and studied how and why they failed, to get the angles I chose.

10-12DPS with a microbevel is a little overkill for my uses, but it still cuts extremely well.

I can slice cardboard with my knives until they are completely dull, then touch them up in less than one minute using my medium bench stone.

Typically I only use two stones from start to finish.

I grind a bevel with an extra course DMT diamond plate. I refine the edge as much as I can on this stone to minimize the bur.

From there, I apply the microbevel on my medium Spyderco benchstone. It only takes 5-10 strokes per side. Any more than that is wasting steel.

My edges are sharp enough to whittle individual hairs and pop off arm hairs 1/2" from the skin using this process. No polishing past that, no strops, just set the bevel on the DMT then apply the microbevel on my medium stone.

I could never do the 1 hour + grit progressions some people do. I can think of other ways to spend my time.

Nice post vivi

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

Bloke wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:59 pm

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

This, or you have a nice edge, but it's not centered.

Bloke wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:59 pm

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

Blade is perfectly straight. Checked angle on each side of the flat portion of blade, and check that it is level. Checked angle of stones laying on the edge as well. All of this triple, and quadruple checked each side. Even stopping during sharpening, to confirm no movement. My left edge looks slightly taller and flatter. While the right edge looks shorter and more angled “better looking” I dunno, it’s a minor difference really. Nothing drastic, I dunno why there not perfectly even though.

mattman wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 6:07 pm

Bloke wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:59 pm

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

This, or you have a nice edge, but it's not centered.

Ohhhh! I misunderstood before! Thank you so much. So if one side is taller, the edge is misaligned. Sharpening the shorter bevel will correct this. I’ll fix it Tomorrow.

Bloke wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:59 pm

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

My edge is slightly misaligned. I’m gonna fix it tomorrow. I was freaking out. Thought my angles changed or came loose on my wicked edge, I thought it moved during sharpening. But, apparently it can be corrected by sharpening the smaller normal looking bevel. Thanks

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 7:25 pm

Bloke wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:59 pm

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:49 pm

If you sharpen both sides at exactly 13 degrees, but 1 side looks flatter than the other. Is the flatter side simply not finished yet? The knife is stupid sharp. But 1 side of the edge looks totally different.

Was the blade clamped plumb prior to sharpening?

Blade is perfectly straight. Checked angle on each side of the flat portion of blade, and check that it is level. Checked angle of stones laying on the edge as well. All of this triple, and quadruple checked each side. Even stopping during sharpening, to confirm no movement. My left edge looks slightly taller and flatter. While the right edge looks shorter and more angled “better looking” I dunno, it’s a minor difference really. Nothing drastic, I dunno why there not perfectly even though.

You’re obviously confident all was well when you clamped the blade and it didn’t move so you can’t do more than that.

As you may imagine everything is built to a +/- tolerance i.e. the FFG, the distal taper, the sharpening arms position on your WE, the thickness of the hones, the angle block etc. etc. and it can and often does amount to enough accumulative error to see what you’re seeing.

In simple terms all you can really do is fudge it so both bevels look about the same. :)

This could be a wild guess, but could it be that one hand is applying more pressure than the other causing the uneven sides?

No it was my own fault. I wasn’t counting my strokes from left side to right side very well. And it had slightly drifted my edge to one side a little more than the other. I honestly didn’t know such a thing existed, or could even happen lol . It was very easy to fix. It was pretty minor.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am glad tps3443 is here and giving the play by play on all he is doing. I am learning a lot watching him learn and seeing the advice people give as he asks questions.

Tucson Tom wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:27 pm

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am glad tps3443 is here and giving the play by play on all he is doing. I am learning a lot watching him learn and seeing the advice people give as he asks questions.

This is a Very helpful forum. I tried to prepare my self as much as possible before I started sharpening myself. And I read so much about counting your strokes side to side. But I never read one time about what could happen to your blade if you didn’t count strokes. Not even in my very detailed owners manual Did it mention it. So I used a guesstimate when counting each side. And it didnt work well for me. Just make sure you count each side the same when sharpening, especially with diamonds. It’ll drift your edge fast.

tps3443 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 25, 2018 8:08 am

This is a Very helpful forum. I tried to prepare my self as much as possible before I started sharpening myself. And I read so much about counting your strokes side to side. But I never read one time about what could happen to your blade if you didn’t count strokes. Not even in my very detailed owners manual Did it mention it. So I used a guesstimate when counting each side. And it didnt work well for me. Just make sure you count each side the same when sharpening, especially with diamonds. It’ll drift your edge fast.

Everybody uses a technique that works best for them but I've never counted how many strokes I do per side. Never had any noticeable issues with the bevels being off.