Angle for Victorinox Cadet

[Daniel James]

Hey guys, new to this particular forum, but I’ve had my wicked edge for about 2 months, really loving it and have achieved some pretty decent edges going up to the 800/1000 grit so far. I’m not exactly a sharpening guru, however, so I wanted to pose a question. I’m looking to sharpen my Victorinox Cadet, and I started wondering, do blades that appear to have a thinner geometry also require a “thinner” angle for sharpening. For instance, i have a sebenza insingo that I sharpened at 20 degrees on each side (required some reprofiling) and it slices great now, but some of my slip joints seem to have much thinner blades, so I was wondering if it would better to sharpen it at, say 15 degrees on each side? Does it really matter? It would be used for all the basic office type cutting, like boxes, letters, tape, paper, nothing extreme by any measure. What has your experience been with sharpening these thinner type slip joint blades? Also, I apologize if any of my terminology is confusing or wrong, I am here to learn after all ;). Looking forward to your advice and opinion. Thanks!

[cbwx34]

Welcome to the forum.

All blades can benefit from thinning (to a point, if you go to thin, they can fail)… I actually think a thicker blade benefits more from thinning and/or sharpening at a smaller angle, than a thin blade does.

My .02 is usually just match what’s on the blade, see how it performs, then go from there… if you want it to cut better, lower the angle, if the edge isn’t holding up well, raise it or put a microbevel on.

On that particular knife, 15 might be too low and won’t hold up well, depending on how you use it. I’d see what’s on it first, then go maybe 1-2 deg. lower if you think it could do a little better.

[Daniel James]

Thanks cbwx34! I’ll give it a try and see what I come up with. I think I’ve read before that the edge from factory is actually closer to 18-20, so maybe I’ll try to start in that range and see how it goes.

[Author]

Posts