unit wrote:Practice leads to mastery. Purchases just lead to more stuff most of the time.
A corollary could be "Practice makes permanent. Praticing perfectly makes perfect".
If we do a thousand strokes a day incorrectly, we will master an incorrect technique.
Joe Talmadge wrote:ghostrider, I'd quibble with that particular quote -- in fact, I'd say that 9 times out of 10, believing that is the cause of sharpening problems... assuming that what you mean by magic marker test is marking up the edge and sharpening it til the marker is all gone. If that's not what you mean, ignore the rest of this post . The magic marker is really useful to gauge your progress, as a visible indicator as to how close to being done you might be. But very often, the magic marker will be gone, or not visible to the naked eye, before the bevel is quite at the end of the edge. The one indicator that I've found is always reliable and spot-on, 100% of the time, is the formation of a burr along the entire length of the opposite side of the edge. When you feel that, you know you've reached the end, and it's time to switch sides. When you've gotten that on both sides, you spend the rest of the sharpening process refining the edge and removing the burr. If you didn't form a burr, it's a crap shoot how sharp the final edge will end up -- maybe it'll be super sharp, maybe it won't, maybe it'll just be sharp in spots.
As a benchmark, coming off the white fine stones, an edge should easily shave hair. I can tell you I'm not very good with my hands -- "mechanically inept" wouldn't really be a lie -- but by looking for idiot-proof clues, like the burr, I've been able to consistently produce really sharp edges. I can get an edge hair-scraping sharp off a DMT x-coarse!
As soon as I read your post I realized the error of my statement.
I would say one thing about it though. I don't normally use anything other than the gray/brown rods on the SM, and those rods give a edge that will shave arm hairs. If you can't shave off the med rods, then you need to go back. Rarely will I use the fine or ultra fines.
First they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Trade Unionist.
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Thread for tying tips: http://spyderco.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18317
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Hawkbills- Sink in the tip, and let it rip!!! :D - Axlis
I think this may be where I go wrong. I get a burr off the course stone and then switch sides but as soon as I switch to the medium and beyond I go one pass and switch to the other side, so I never really produce a burr. Also, I see that sometimes the scratches from the last stone aren't completely gone before I move to the next one which leadts to scratches that the UF won't remove. I'll have a polished edge that appears to have sone scratches under the surface when really certain spots have places that are too deep to remove with the UF. I think I may have learned something. SO even on the medium and beyond a guy should work ONE side until a burr forms and then work it off the other side? How do you know when to switch to stroke for stroke switching sides?
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.":spyder:Robert Heinlein
Nonprophet: sorry, you're doing it right: raise the burr once, on your coarsest stone. After that you'll be switching sides -- at that point, as you move to finer stones, one of you key goals is to grind the burr away while refining the edge, you don't want to re-raise the burr each time.
Aha...good. So at least that wasn't a mistake. I just need to practice. I seem to be pestering people to let me sharpen their stuff cause everything in my house has been sharpened at least once. Next, I suppose I'll reprofile some of them to different angles just for practice or sharpen already sharp ones again!
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.":spyder:Robert Heinlein
Joe Talmadge wrote:I can get an edge hair-scraping sharp off a DMT x-coarse!
Joe, I deleted all of your post except the above statement. One day I wanted to see the difference an edge has as I progress through the stone grits. I wanted to see which grit stone would give me a shaving sharp edge. I was surprised to see I could shave my arm easily after a 220 water stone. I left the edge like that and found it worked great on string and rope or things you may normally want a serrated edge for. The coarser stones seem to leave a toothy edge that really bites into material to be cut. That was my theory anyway. Would you agree with this or is there more to it?
Jack, I have found the same thing. I can actually get a shaving sharp edge from the DMT course stone and then it seems to actually dig into things when it cuts. It's an ugly edge but if you want bite, it's got it!
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.":spyder:Robert Heinlein
Nonprophet wrote:Jack, I have found the same thing. I can actually get a shaving sharp edge from the DMT course stone and then it seems to actually dig into things when it cuts. It's an ugly edge but if you want bite, it's got it!
I have a knife with a VG-10 blade and a slight re-curve in the blade where it is normally straight (between the heel and the belly). The slight recurve acts a little like a hawkbill by holding rope and such on the edge a little easier. I used a coarse stone on the very edge the other day to leave the toothy edge just in the re-curve section. What I'm wondering now is how long the edge will stay sharp. I'm thinking the "teeth" may round off, roll over, or just break off easier than a fine edge. We'll see. I really feel a ZDP-189 blade toothy edge may not hold up as well because I've found ZDP chips right at the edge when the angle is low. The "teeth" may chip off very quickly. I keep a 20 deg. per side angle on the very edge and a low back bevel on all my ZDP knives.
Well the teeth would seem to my way of thinking be easier to round/break the larger they are but what do I know? Looking forward to hearing how it works out!
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.":spyder:Robert Heinlein
Yes, it's the rougher edge and "teeth" that gets you the greater slicing ability, and yes, they will dull more quickly.
Thanks Joe. I think you are right as a result of a scientific study I performed today. I used the knife with a re-curve toothy area and a "normal" edge from the belly to the tip to whittle for about 20 minutes. At first there was a definate saw type feeling when using the toothy area and a sliding/slicing cut and great cutting performance. The belly area did much better just pushing the blade through the wood with no slicing movement. It wasn't long though before the sawing feel was gone with the toothy area but the toothy edge still cut about as good as the belly did. So I'm thinking the toothy edge may be better if you are mainly cutting string or rope but not beneficial if the tasks were more dificult like wood.
I don't want to do too much of this testing because I don't want to run short of bushes or trees in my yard like sometimes I've run low on arm hair. :)
. The magic marker is really useful to gauge your progress, as a visible indicator as to how close to being done you might be. But very often, the magic marker will be gone, or not visible to the naked eye, before the bevel is quite at the end of the edge. The one indicator that I've found is always reliable and spot-on, 100% of the time, is the formation of a burr along the entire length of the opposite side of the edge. When you feel that, you know you've reached the end, and it's time to switch sides. When you've gotten that on both sides, you spend the rest of the sharpening process refining the edge and removing the burr. If you didn't form a burr, it's a crap shoot how sharp the final edge will end up -- maybe it'll be super sharp, maybe it won't, maybe it'll just be sharp in spots.
