Some knife sillyness–cheap blades

I just cleaned my G3 vise this AM, so wanted to try it out on some thin blades.

I also wanted to do something less serious, where the results weren’t all that important. I’d still like nice, but don’t need to strive for perfection (still a bit out of my reach, anyway).

First up was this one:

The tang bears some Kanji, which I can’t even begin to read, and the words DP.Gold.V. I think this little knife cost $10 new. I used to do a lot of backpacking for fun and work and would often spend 8-10 days out at a time. Freeze-dried food sucks after a while, and is too expensive, so I often took some fresh ingredients and this tiny kitchen knife. I cut up some “cutting board pads”, thin, stout pieces of flexible plastic, and could use one of the 4X6″ pieces for a mini-cutting board.

Now it’s Wicked Sharp. I took it to 1K grit @ 14 dps, polished the bevel free–hand with an old ceramic razor hone, then added a 1K micro-bevel, 5 strokes per side, at 16 dps. The steel is very thin and somewhat soft, so this was pretty quick and fun. It didn’t hurt that I had never really put much of a bevel on it over the years. It’s a little scary now!

Now this oddball:

An Ontario knife, of sorts. I think this was once a carpet- or linoleum-layer’s knife, from the days before disposable blades. I mostly use it around the brewery for cutting and fitting foam pipe insulation, where I need a longer blade than a ute knife. Some day, I’m going to haft and sharpen a hacksaw blade for larger insulation.

This one I just flattened the bevel and took it to 1K @ 22dps. I usually cut on a cardboard pad, so it will dull quickly, but can also be touched-up quickly. I didn’t really worry too much abut removing every trace of previous stone scratches.

The newly-cleaned and lubed vise works much better n0w. Lately, I’ve been really clamping down and having to use tape or shims to get even fairly thick knives to hold. Both of the these were mounted at lowest tension, and never moved a hair.

Enjoying the WEPS!

• This topic was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Timm.