Re: My first knife on the Wicked Edge
Leo, my friend, you have made my day! And at least the next week! You should have seen my smile today.
On the program was a beautiful Laguiole knife I picked up in France last summer. It has got a blade of Sandvik 12c27 stainless steel, HRC 56. The knife was made by Robert David, a well-known knife maker from Thiers. It is a nicely crafted knife, but the finish was not good. The bevel was barely visible with the naked eye and certainly well over 25* per side. Here is the knife:
Creating the initial burrs went relatively fast: I think I spent about 15 minutes on the 100 grit stone. Then I tried to follow your advice and not create a bevel anymore with stones on the higher grit sizes. I spent a few minutes per stone doing up-and-down or circular movements. Then I made 50 sweeping motions (which have become known as “Clay motions†in our house) on each side of the blade before going on to the next stone. I did the 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1600 grit stones.
Then on to stropping, which I had never done before. But it was actually quite easy now I had built up some muscle memory for the sweeping motions. The Wicked Edge also comes with good instructions on how much stropping compound to apply and how to apply it. I stropped with 5 micron and then 3.5 micron diamond paste.
All together it took me about an hour.
And then the result… a mirror edge! This was what I was after! Here’s the proof:
Having created a mirror edge in about an hour, as opposed to spending 5 hours on a knife, which I did yesterday, I wondered whether I could do it even faster. So I decided to literally follow the advice Leo had given me in a mail.
I took a Le Thiers folding knife, also by Robert David, with a blade of Sandvik 12c27 stainless steel, HRC 56, and hardly a visible bevel:
I got the initial burrs quickly: I spent about 10 minutes with the 100 grit stone. Then I just did 50 sweeping motions on each side of the blade using consecutively smoother stones. I did the 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1600 grit stones. Then stropping: again 50 sweeping motions on each side of the blade, first using 5 micron diamond paste, then using 3.5 micron diamond paste.
The complete sharpening process took me exactly half an hour.
And the result… a mirror edge again! It is too dark now to make a photograph of it, but I hope you trust me on this.
From hardly any edge to a mirror edge in half an hour! Man, I love this Wicked Edge more and more.
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge