Community Sharpening Journal

[MFlovejp]

Well I hope I'm not derailing anyone's conversation but I've been experimenting with some different types of "stropping" lately. The other day I found a couple of really old "razor stones" made by an old Razor company known as "Columbia". One of the stones is kind of a glossy black and the other is a dull looking white. I think they were my late uncle's stones that he sharpened his straight razors with ( so I was told). I've had those stones for quite some time but I never used them because they seemed so fine.

But I got to thinking that they might be good for possibly stropping an already sharp edge. Not sure what those old Razor stones were made of. I used skewing motions just like I would with a leather type strop and it did seem to enhance the edge.
After that the edge would float through really flimsy old paper with ease.

Just wondered if any of you have ever tried anything super hard like that for stropping?

[vivi]

Reprofiling progress.

[MFlovejp]

I’ve been meaning to work on my ZDP Delica for a while. I sharpened it once and touched it up a couple of times, but was never really satisfied with the edge angle or how it cut. It also had a sizeable unsharpened potion at the heel of the blade- more so than the usual Seki grind.

I used a KME for this sharpening with the diamond stone progression of 140, 300, 600. This first photo shows the left side of the blade after my first going over with the 140:

I didn’t apex with the 140 at all- you can still see the thin line of sharpie at the bottom. The unsharpened heel portion was surprisingly easy to even out, I held the stone a little upwards to keep it off the rest of the edge and it ground that heel down very quickly. I took about 10 minutes with this stone.

When I switched to the 300 hundred grit, I was again surprised at how fast and easily the ZDP was grinding. I’d always heard that it was a bear to work with, but it sure seemed easy. Then gradually I noticed that it was getting much harder to grind. I tried cleaning the stone but it really was getting harder, like rubbing against ice. Here’s the first pass on the right side with the 300 grit:

I realized that I must have finally made it through a cooked factory edge and got really excited. It took a bit more time to apex with 300 grit than it took to reprofile with the 140, maybe 15 min.

I decided to go only to 600 grit to maintain some toothiness and I’m glad I did. I passed the burr back and forth for 5-7 minutes before switching to a kangaroo strop with both 4 and 0.5 micron diamond emulsion. The burr came off very cleanly and I was left with a truly hair whittling edge, among the sharpest I’ve ever done really.

This sweet little Delica is about to get a lot more pocket time :)

[vivi]

This should be fun.

[vivi]

In keeping with the theme of "I want this knife to be different," I went maximum polish.



After doing the acid bath, it needed a fresh edge badly.

I started with a 180 grit diamond plate to establish a fresh edge. I didn't try to change the angle, just refresh the bevel. I aimed for 14-15 dps.

After flipping the burr and refining it with light strokes, I progressed to a 300 grit plate, then 600 grit.

From there I switched to a DMT Fine, which I believe is around 1,200 grit.

After that I got my sharpmaker base and a medium, fine and ultrafine stone.

I layed the stones down on the base and used them freehand.



I'd start on the fish hook side and refine the full bevel. Then I'd switch to a flat and use very light pressure on the apex.

Once I could detect zero burr, I'd switch to the second flat side and use the lightest pressure possible on the apex using half the length of the rod. I aimed for 16-17 degrees for the apex.

After finishing up on the UF stone, I stropped 10x per side on the apex angle with my seldom used 1 micron diamond compound strop. Then I did 2 more strokes per side on the UF rod, followed by one stroke per side on the strop.

Cleaned it, tested it, then called it quits. This knife is sharp.

https://streamable.com/qejstc

Not sure how long its been since I did a full polish, but my skills have definitely improved. I think I've spent so many months developing my touch to produce a shaving sharp edge off my 180, 200 and 300 grit diamond plates that doing the same past 1,000 grit has become childs play.

I plan to carry this polished Manix every day for the foreseeable future. We'll see if I stick with the polish or revert back to the coarse edges I've grown to love.

[cabfrank]

Vivi, how long does this process take for you?

[vivi]

Vivi, how long does this process take for you?

That was maybe 20 minutes total. Spent five minutes establishing the bevel on the 180 grit, and a couple minutes on each of the others.

I didn't try to polish out 100% of the scratches at each step fyi.

[MFlovejp]

Looks like you cut yourself there. Sharp!

[vivi]

Looks like you cut yourself there. Sharp!

Didn't even feel it. Only realized once I saw blood :eek:

It'll be interesting using such a polished edge for a change. I'll be carrying this both on the job and at home, giving it a good work out.

[jpm2]

Looks like you cut yourself there. Sharp!

No doubt.

Vivi, did you try the angle finder yet?

[vivi]

Looks like you cut yourself there. Sharp!

No doubt.

Vivi, did you try the angle finder yet?

Yes, not on any of my edges yet. Tested a few factory edges. My Millie 2nd was just under 20dps...18 I believe. Pacific Salt 1 SE was 15.5 degrees inclusive. Pacific 2 SE was 19.5.

[cabfrank]

Thanks.

[MFlovejp]

Didn't even feel it. Only realized once I saw blood :eek:

It'll be interesting using such a polished edge for a change. I'll be carrying this both on the job and at home, giving it a good work out.

That’s how you know it’s REALLY sharp haha. It’s fun to try different edges, and I do like to keep more polished ones on my smaller, dressier knives like a chaparral or the opinel that I use for picnics. Haven’t polished too many bevels since finding this thread though. Have fun!

[vivi]

Really impressed with how SK-5 sharpens. From what I read its supposed to be like 1080 and around 58rc. Felt a lot like O1 when sharpening...took a screaming sharp edge effortlessly. Arm hairs abandon ship as soon as the edge gets close. Tried it out making a feather stick and it carves like a champ now. Supposed to use it to make a firebow set tomorrow, should be fun.



Touched up my M4 manix on my fine spyderco stone. Wanted to try a more polished edge with M4 for a change. No surprise, it got nice and sharp. Thinner behind the edge than the SRK-C so it did better on the feather stick test.



Put a quick edge on my Dogfather. I'll refine it more later but its a lot better than it was. Its good enough to go chop up some firewood tomorrow.

[TkoK83Spy]

Time for some fresh steel on my 52100 Manix. I've never really been too impressed with it and it was a bit disappointing yesterday. I've read so much love for the steel that it's time. Hopefully get started sometime this week. Going to free hand it with the DMT Diasharp stone and then work on the brown ceramics a bit.

[MFlovejp]

Sharpened two knives for the first time last night- the Spy27 Native LW and the Endela in K390.

Started with the 140 grit Diamond on KME for the native followed by 300 grit and kangaroo strop with 4micron diamond. Spy27 sharpened extremely easily, was so well mannered. I apexed evenly exactly when I wanted to and ended up with a screaming sharp edge. Left this one at 17 degrees per side but I think I’ll be going much lower in the future.



The K390 was a little trickier to sharpen, and my result was not as good as I’d like for this first attempt. I ended up going to the 100 grit stone for this one in order to even out the unground portion at the heel section like I always do on my Seki knives. Took a while until I was happy with the reprofiling. I did take the edge down to 15 dps because I’ve commonly read that K390 is quite happy there.

I progressed through 140, 300 grits easily enough but wish I’d spent more time with the 300 and then some time with 600 or even higher grits. There’s some microchipping that occurred due to apexing too fast with the coarser stones, especially near the heel where I was wailing on it a bit. Nothing too major and the thing got SHARP, but I will definitely be doing a finer edge finish next time. After I do a first reprofiling on KME I’ll generally perform subsequent sharpening freehand on stones.



Ended up with two very sharp knives. I know I’ll really like the Spy27 it was just a dream to grind. Look forward to getting better with the K390 as I see massive potential in the steel from an edge perspective.

[MFlovejp]

Okay so the Spy27 native is still awesome, totally happy with the way it sharpened up. It is extremely sharp and super consistent along the edge. The Endela is another story.

I took the K390 Endela back to the stones today because it just wasn’t the cutting that great. Wouldn’t shave consistently and had trouble across the grain in notebook paper. I realized that I hadn’t full apexed towards the tip and there were some other irregularities along the edge.

I used the DMT 325, 600, 1200 progression to tune this edge up. Made sure I apexed and managed the burr a little more carefully. K390 apparently forms a very hard burr (makes sense) but that burr also can be variable in how big/easy to feel it is. I had to be very sure I’d eliminated or flipped it before going to the other side. The edge I finished with today is of course slightly convexed but that’s okay, it’s much more regular and holy smokes is it sharp!

[The Meat man]

I sharpened my CPM S110V Manix today.

I'd been going on the factory edge for about 2 weeks of good, hard use - carboard, buckets, plastic straps, food, packages, anything and everything. About 1 week in, the edge was feeling a bit ragged slicing paper, so I spent a few minutes stropping: first, 14-micron diamond on basswood, then 4 micron CBN on leather. The stropping took maybe ten minutes max, and the edge was back to shaving sharp, shearing off chunks of phonebook paper with a hoarse, whispery sound.

Another week, with some particularly hard and dirty cardboard, and the edge had again lost its bite, although it was still quite sharp enough to slice copy paper. I decided to try touching it up freehand, on stones. I'm reasonably proficient with freehand sharpening, though by no means a BBB or Michael Christy. Most of my freehand experience is with simpler steels like 8Cr13MoV, 420HC, 1095, etc.

I used one of those 4-sided diamond stones from Harbor Freight, the 600 grit side. Tried very carefully to hold the correct angle, use as light pressure as I could manage. A burr came up pretty quickly and then it was back and forth for 10 to 15 minutes, chasing that thing down until I figured it was gone.

Then, I went straight to the 14-micron diamond strop. I spent some time on this, discovering that there was still a very small burr left. Here I learned again why it's so important to get rid of the burr on the stones. Even with that fairly coarse diamond compound, it took a while to get that stubborn thing worn down.

After I had finished with that, I moved on to the 4 micron CBN on leather. Used very light strokes, not many. CBN must cut pretty quickly because I could see the edge finish start to change after only 4 or 5 strokes. I didn't want to polish the edge too much or risk rounding the apex, so I stopped.

The finished product is a toothy edge that glides through phonebook paper and pops hairs off my arm. It is not the sharpest edge I've ever gotten on a knife, but for freehand CPM S110V I consider it dashed good. I'll be looking forward to seeing how well it holds up in use, and if it will do better than the factory edge.

[bbturbodad]

Finally got a little chip in my Rex 45 Native. Went through a stack of boxes easier than anticipated and smacked into the concrete driveway pretty hard.



I gave it a quick touch up on a 150 grit Venev diamond stone and it's good enough for now. Overall I'm really enjoying these thin edges, they stay sharp for what seems like forever and touch up with almost no effort.

[The Meat man]

Nice work, Turbo. I bet that thing is like a saw. Looks like a pretty coarse finish!