I sharpened my first knife today on the WE130 from start to finish, its one of those old cheap “survival” knives that probably costs about $10. at the end one bevel is definitely skinnier than the other I was going for 20 dps, am I correct in saying that when you start out setting at a certain degrees you will need to re-adjust the rod every now and then because I am assuming the stone will be sitting on the shoulder of the bevel when you start?
Sorry, our power went out at noon on Monday and just came back on. But Marc pretty much covered it. You just need to check what the bevels look like and see what your angles are using your sharpie. Then you can make a plan of attack.
I sharpened my Kershaw Launch 1 for the first time early Monday morning. The apex looked good and the angles were close to 19dps. The right side was right on 19, and the left side was closer to 20. So I reprofiled the left side using up/down strokes starting with my 200 grit stone until I, “nearly”, reached a burr. Then I cleaned up the right side starting with the 400 grit stone till I reached a burr. Then I went back to the left side with my 400 grit stone and sharpened it till I reached a burr. Then I worked both sides with alternating edge-trailing strokes until I got the scratch pattern on the edges matching. I then progressed through my stones to a nice toothy 800 grit. I always make sure no burrs are left with a couple of edge-leading strokes before I move to the next grit, or at the end of the last grit.
But I am kinda OCD about removing steel. I hate to remove any more good steel than I need to. So even if the edges don’t look exactly alike, I will use the knife and slowly bring the two edges even over time as I use/resharpen the knife if making them even right away would remove more steel than I want to. Unless I want to collect the knife. If I am collecting it and will not use it then I will bring the edges looking even when I reprofile them. And then mirror polish the edges the best that I can. But I will still try not to remove any more steel than I need to.
