Clamping

[Jerry Stephenson]

Hello,
I’m new here. Haven’t bought the wicked edge yet but am about to. Just looking for the best “pro pack” deal to get something to take me from the reprofiled edge to the mirror. I currently keep most of my knives sharp enough to shave your arm using a combination of a DMT system and a lansky. I grew up in Missouri where my dad had much more time than money and we sharpened our knives by hand on Arkansas stones and indeed it sometimes took hours and days to get a new knife sharpened. Of course you might only buy a new knife once every 10 years. But now I have a collection and I’m an engineer and I appreciate precion, repeatability, and a mirror finish. So after quite a bit of internet research, I’m sold on the Wicked Edge.

Here is my main concern. How do I clamp knives that don’t have a parallel area to clamp to? Here are a few examples from my collection:

1. Double edged knives such as the Benchmade infidel.
2. Tapered spine knives such as the benchmade 470.
3. Flat ground knives such as the Benchmade/Paul 230.
4. Hollow ground knives such as the CRKT Kommer 30-30. Hollow ground to top edge.
5. Clamping the sharpened side of a knife to put an edge on the spine: example a Besh wedge. Probably different than the infidel since the infidel can be clamped in the middle. The besh wedge is a large blade that will have to be clamped on the taper.

looking through other knives in my collection, I see the Benchmade 9500 Mini auto stryker has a tapered spine but had a flat section that the clamp is probably deep enough to grab so that shouldn’t be a problem. One of my favorite dress knives, the Paul/Benchmade 245 with cocobolo scales, has a very small flat section that was big enough to clamp the Lansky clamp onto so I assume it will be ok for the WE.

Otherwise, I’m probably going to be able to figure out the rest of the questions I have like “do I really need every one of those steps between 600 and the finest diamond or just 2 or 3 of them?” and do I need the extra course stone for reprofiling heavy knives like the besh wedge? I’m kindof an obsessive technogeek so I’ll probably end up with all of them.

Thanks in advance for your help. –Jerry

[Leo James Mitchell]

Hi Jerry
Welcome and thanks for a fine first post.
What an interesting set of questions! I am not going to attempt to answer most of them…I will leave that for the Sifus Clay, Tom and Ken! Their knowledge is deep and wide when it comes to the knives you mention and the art of sharpening.
I will only venture one comment and that is that I recommend the heavy coarse stones for any kind of reprofiling and also I suppose when working with a brutish Besh tip.
As to your question about needing all the steps…the answer lies within you! In my case I got into this so I could come up with edges that were sharp in the real world sense. Since I started with the WEPS, I have not run into a cutting, slicing or chopping situation where my knives failed. They did it all in spades. On occasion when my energy level is high, I pull out the stops and get busy with all the diamond paddles and ceramic paddles and on to the Chosera wet stones then the strops to see just how sharp and mirror like I can get the edge on one of my special knives.
You may be one who goes totally into the depths of sharpening and creating mirror edges, in which case, yes, every step is necessary and then some…Chosera stones, Shaptons, kangaroo leather strops, balsa strops, micron grit membranes/cloths et al! How sharp is sharp enough? You will decide finally.

Best regards
Leo

[Jerry Stephenson]

Leo,
Thanks for the warm welcome. Especially after reading your reply I’m looking to buy as complete a set as I can. There is a guy on ebay who offers 100 thru 4 finenesses of diamonds but he only offers the paperstone base and I thought I’d like to upgrade to one of the stones.

Still haven’t heard form anyone on clamping….is that the great challenge?

–Jerry

[Leo James Mitchell]

Leo,
Thanks for the warm welcome. Especially after reading your reply I’m looking to buy as complete a set as I can. There is a guy on ebay who offers 100 thru 4 finenesses of diamonds but he only offers the paperstone base and I thought I’d like to upgrade to one of the stones.

Still haven’t heard form anyone on clamping….is that the great challenge?

–Jerry

You are welcome Jerry!
I think the reason nobody has responded yet is that very few would know the answer unless they ether owned or had treid sharpening them, otherwise how would they know. I suspect Clay has sharpened the greatest variety of knives int hat category of blades, but I fear he is so busy…I haven’t seen him around the Forum much of late. He has many facets to him…the WE, with the myriad of chores involved with running and evolving new tools, his Ranch, his family, preparation for knife shows, etc. With any luck he will get a chance to get on the boards and perhaps answer all your questions.
If I were you I would wait a bit and put aside your shekels until you can get the rig you want. BTW I love having the heavy granite base, so I agree with you that it would be the best.

Later Jerry!

Leo

[Scott Babineaux]

Jerry,

Some people, myself included have found that wrapping the spine of full flat and hollow grind knives with chamois works well. A little experimentation with multiple folds will usually allow you to find a way to “backfill” the space between the knife and the vice to keep the edge centered and held firmly. You may not be able to pick up the WEPS base and all by the knife handle but it does the job.

I can’t speak to double edge blades as they are illegal in Texas and I don’t own any. I suspect that you could probably use chamois and place the widest part of the blade in the vice but that would possibly result in the exposed edge being too low in the vice to sharpen. Perhaps the low angle attachment that Clay is developing would solve this.

Welcome to my obsession!:blink:

[Michael Lingard]

From my limited experience, clamping is only really simple if your knife has some nice parallel faces along the spine. Anything else, and the challenges begin. There are tricks to use for some blade shapes like the foam tape for full flat ground blades.

Most of my knives are FFG Spydercos, so it usually means that getting them clamped perfectly vertical is a bit of an adventure but doable with care.

My knives that have spine swedges and tapered spines presented some challenges. My Schempp Rock had to be clamped back far enough on the spine to grab the parallel surfaces. My Benchmade 530 kept wanting to slide up out of the vice due to the reverse spine taper.

Unfortunately, my knife purchases now usually involve me wondering how easy it’s going to be to get a consistent clamp on the blade.

[Jerry Stephenson]

Thanks guys. You’ve given me a good idea. Oring material is available in many diameters and durometers. it is designed to compress but stay firm. You can order any diameter you want from mcmaster.com. a couple of 1/4″ wide pieces of doublestick tape would hold the straight pieces of oring material at the top of the jaws to clamp the blade while the bottom of the jaws makes a line clamp on the spine.

I’ll get busy and post my results. I need to get one of these ordered. Maybe I’ll call the proprieters here once the sun comes up and see if they can put me a package together.

As a newbie, I’m having trouble changing my profile and adding an avatar photo. Are there restrictions on new members?

thanks,
Jerry

[wickededge]

Thanks guys. You’ve given me a good idea. Oring material is available in many diameters and durometers. it is designed to compress but stay firm. You can order any diameter you want from mcmaster.com. a couple of 1/4″ wide pieces of doublestick tape would hold the straight pieces of oring material at the top of the jaws to clamp the blade while the bottom of the jaws makes a line clamp on the spine.

I’ll get busy and post my results. I need to get one of these ordered. Maybe I’ll call the proprieters here once the sun comes up and see if they can put me a package together.

As a newbie, I’m having trouble changing my profile and adding an avatar photo. Are there restrictions on new members?

thanks,
Jerry

Welcome Jerry and thank you for the idea about oring material. I’ll look it up at McMaster and test it out. I’m not sure what the issue is w/ your profile, there are no restrictions on new users. I’ll pass this along to our webmaster to see what can be done. Please give us a shout about setting up a system for you.

-Clay

[Jerry Stephenson]

Just bought the basic system from a knifemaker/dealer that I bought a knife from on the benchmade forum. Can’t wait for it to arrive.

I have some ideas about clamping. I’m an engineer and a hobby machinist. Clamping is one of the keys to successful machining. I’ll post any ideas I come up with and may even come up with some simple clamping devices/products.

–Jerry

[wickededge]

Just bought the basic system from a knifemaker/dealer that I bought a knife from on the benchmade forum. Can’t wait for it to arrive.

I have some ideas about clamping. I’m an engineer and a hobby machinist. Clamping is one of the keys to successful machining. I’ll post any ideas I come up with and may even come up with some simple clamping devices/products.

–Jerry

Hi Jerry,
Thanks for jumping on. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
–Clay

-Clay

[wickededge]

Just ordered some various O-ring materials to test from McMaster. Can’t wait until they come in and I can play with them. I’ll be sure to post my results.

-Clay

[Jerry Stephenson]

I’ve recieved my basic set and bought a wooden cutting block 12x12x2″ and mounted it. couldn’t wait for a granite block. Looks great.

Unless I’m doing it wrong, the 600 grit just isn’t fine enough for me. Seems to me with the basic kit with 600 grit, the “caution, your knives will get dangerously sharp” warning isn’t needed. My dad would say “you can ride to town on that knife”. The hair on my arms just laughs as I try to shave off a few. So I can’t really do any more sharpening until I can get the 800/1000 which seems to be sold out everywhere.

Otherwise, I like the design. I will be calling clay on monday to ask if he is having a manufacturing problem with some of his jaws. My jaws don’t have the upper holes lined up at all. I had to file the hole bigger to use it at all. It is still not smoothe and my guess is clay will send me new jaws.

I also plan to shim the u-joint connection at the bottom of the rods to reduce the angular movement allowed and keep the rods at a fixed angle.

I haven’t had much chance to play with clamping yet but I think I’ll be able to do lots of creative clamping and sharpen about anything.

–Jerry

[wickededge]

I’ve recieved my basic set and bought a wooden cutting block 12x12x2″ and mounted it. couldn’t wait for a granite block. Looks great.

Unless I’m doing it wrong, the 600 grit just isn’t fine enough for me. Seems to me with the basic kit with 600 grit, the “caution, your knives will get dangerously sharp” warning isn’t needed. My dad would say “you can ride to town on that knife”. The hair on my arms just laughs as I try to shave off a few. So I can’t really do any more sharpening until I can get the 800/1000 which seems to be sold out everywhere.

Otherwise, I like the design. I will be calling clay on monday to ask if he is having a manufacturing problem with some of his jaws. My jaws don’t have the upper holes lined up at all. I had to file the hole bigger to use it at all. It is still not smoothe and my guess is clay will send me new jaws.

I also plan to shim the u-joint connection at the bottom of the rods to reduce the angular movement allowed and keep the rods at a fixed angle.

I haven’t had much chance to play with clamping yet but I think I’ll be able to do lots of creative clamping and sharpen about anything.

–Jerry

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for posting. On the 600 grit stone – yours likely need a bunch more time to finish breaking in before they’ll give you the results you’ll come to enjoy from them. We do have the 800/1000 stones in stock. I’ll get some new jaws headed your way tomorrow, can you please email us at info@wickededgeusa.com with your shipping address?

-Clay

-Clay

[Jerry Stephenson]

Clay,
Yes, lots of diamonds coming off of it at first and it is smoothing down. I guess it may need more time. I got a bit bettter edge on a practice kitchen knife this evening. I am impressed with the diamond stones, very good quality with lots of diamonds. One reason my old DMT set gets knives so sharp is the stones are worn out. But it takes forever. I am really looking forward to the time savings with Wicked Edge.

I just sent an email with my shipping address and I’ll take a pair of the 800/1000 stones. I’ll call tomorrow with payment info so you can ship them all together or you can call me, I’ll be up early.

thanks,
Jerry

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