KaBar USMC

Not every knife is able to be sharpened with the Wicked Edge.  In most situations there are helpful workarounds, two of these you mentioned:

Modernflame wrote:

   I’ve decided I don’t want to cut off the plastic finger guards on the platens. Do some people carve a small choil into the edge? How would you approach a knife like this if it belonged to someone else and carving a notch were not an option?

If you find that you’ll be facing this sharpening situation from time to time, it may be helpful to buy a set of W.E. stones that you do remove the plastic finger guards.  You can still don a pair of cut free gloves to use those stones safely.

Another option might be to acquire a set of Whetstones to use for this situation.  The profile on new Shapton Pro Stone whetstones are quite tall.  They allow you to work closer to the ricasso then you would normally be able to with the shallower diamond stones.

 
These Shapton Pro Stones are “spritz and go”.  They only need to be misted with water to use them properly so they’re not very messy to work with.  They will afford you lots of hours of sharpening use before they wear done enough that you’ll need to replace them with new taller stones.

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Dwight Glass, Kenny Fey, Modernflame, Brewbear, 000Robert

Rather than starting a new thread on the same knife, I figured I would post here. Aside from the issues related to the heel, I’m having a hard time mounting this knife in my WE120. First, I struggle with the position of mounting this style of knife. Using the Sharpie method, I keep coming up with a position that is very far forward and highly angled. I’ll post a picture with an Ontario SP-1 (a cheaper knife in a similar style) in the position where I get the best result.

The second problem I am having is getting the clamp to hold the knife in this position. With most of the weight near the handle, it just wants to rotate toward level and the clamp is not able to stop it from moving. When I lock in  FFG kitchen knives I can pick the WE120 up by the knife handle it is so well locked in. With this style of knife, I have much less success. If I try to pick the sharpener up by the knife handle, the knife just moves.  I’ve tried bare metal, painters tape, and electrical tape with the same result. I’ve cranked down on the clamp screws as much as I can with the provided hex key and would not want to go further for fear of bending the vise. Any advice on how to approach this style of knife is greatly appreciated.

Thank you not only for the help, but also for the outstanding story. I am clearly making some foundational mistakes with the Sharpie test. When I place the knife as you have it, I hit the apex on the straight part of the blade just fine at 20 degrees, but as I go from the belly to the tip, the stone comes way down into the shoulder, leaving the apex untouched. To compensate, I keep moving the blade further back in the vise and increasing the forward tilt on the blade until I end up with the position in my earlier photo. That hits the apex at all points, but is clearly not the correct approach. Rather than moving the blade back and tilting it down as I have been, what other adjustments should I be making to hit the apex? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Ideally, the edge would follow a constant distance from the pivot point of the rod to the apex, but this assumes that the blade is the same thickness at the shoulder of the bevel.  But some knives are shaped rather thick at the tip (for strength) and you simply can’t avoid leaving a wider bevel there.  The same situation applies where the previous sharpener did not maintain the same low angle when he was sharpening the belly/tip.  If he followed a higher angle there, it will simply require more strokes (probably many more) to reach the apex at the lower angle.

In the case of the KABAR in my photo, you can see that you simply cannot move the blade much farther to the right.  Doing so will increase the angle through the belly, and the tip will increasingly approach the vertical, at which point the bevel angle will become undesirably high.  As Marc suggests, you could move the belly so that it falls directly above the vise, with the straight section sloping down towards you.  If the rod length doesn’t let you reach the heel, you could sharpen in two steps – one, with the belly over the vise and two, with the straight section horizontally and above the vise.

As you experience sharpening blades of widely different shapes, you’ll find it helpful to consider the shape of the blade relative to the sweep of the stones as they rotate about the pivot point of the rods. Try to align the center point of the belly’s radius with the pivot point of the rods.  At this point, the bevel angle will vary the least.

In this case, I would sharpen the entire length in one step, as shown in my photo, accepting that the bevel width at the tip will be noticeably wider.  Good luck.

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Steve

000Robert wrote:

Sometimes knives just need to be reprofiled. All 3 of the brand new M7 Bayonets that I bought had terribly profiled edge bevels. I had to reprofile all of them.

Whether simply sharpening knives or reprofiling them, the process is essentially the same…it’s just a matter of degrees, how much steel is removed.  You still need to find the best, most efficient clamping position, “the sweet spot” to carry either one out.

The poster, “Steve” who resurrected this old thread is aware and already using the techniqIue to find “the sweet spot”.  His problem is the knife clamping position he found using this technique does not lend itself to be very practical. Sometimes you need to work with a second choice position and just be aware that the second best “sweet spot” will lead to some edge reprofiling the first time that knife is sharpened.   In reality, with fixed angle guided sharpening systems, like the W.E.P.S., every knife you clamp and sharpen for the very first time will undergo some small amount of edge reprofiling.  Just the first time to get the knife edge aligned with the stones and the system.  Subsequent sharpening if positioned and clamped the same way, the edges will match right up across the entire length and should only require a touch-up.

To actually decide to reprofile a knife edge, that is, to intentially change the edge shape, and the angle is really sharpening just to a greater degree.  I like to believe the knife maker profiled, that is shaped the knife as they did, for a reason.  I try to work with the profile and only make the minor reprofiles that come with using a guided angle sharpening system.

Intentionally reprofiling, for me, is only for removing damaged edge steel and is the exception.  I reserve to do this when it’s required as part of sharpening a knife or repairing it.

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Steve, 000Robert

000Robert wrote:

Yep, it’s tough sometimes. I’ve tried using tape, cloth, and leather and stuff. Some knives just don’t want to be clamped. For them I try to use my Tormek small knife holder. I’m not sure how well it would work for a large knife though.

That’s why I’m a proponent for using creative thinking, accessories and modifications to help W.E. user’s to use their sharpeners easier, more efficiently and effectively.  The W.E. alone cannot easily clamp and sharpen every knife. There are too many sizes, styles and varieties.  Sometimes the W.E. needs help and we have to get creative and intuitive.  Afterall, the W.E. is really just a well engineered bench top vise to facilitate a hands-free operation.  By that I mean, the vise clamps our knives stabily, freeing our hands of the need to hold the knife, so we can use both hands to sharpen the steadied knife. Our hands are freed to use them.

The Low Angle Adapter, (LAA), is a W.E. accessory, the Tormek Small Knife holder is another helpful one, RAM mount accessories and riser blocks are a couple more. Using whatever you need to help you clamp and sharpen your knife is using one tool to help or enhance the capabilities of another.  It doesn’t mean the one tool alone, the W.E., is faulty or inadequate, just that our needs exceeded it’s design and basic capabilities.  To meet all our needs sometimes we need to “think outside the box”.

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Steve, 000Robert