Restoring a tanto

[Douglas]

I have a coworker (EMS) who has a Smith and Wesson rescue knife whose point has become rounded off through use and bad sharpening. I’ve been trying to restore the point, but I’m having difficulty getting it crisp. I treat it as two separate edges, and have tried remounting and not remounting. I’ve been very careful of not overrunning the point and rounding it out. The blade isn’t marked with a steel type, but it sharpens and looks like AUS-8 or some other inexpensive stainless.

Sorry, I don’t have pics.

I’d appreciate if anybody has any suggestions for repairing the point, as I’m at a loss now.

[wickededge]

Can you post a picture of the knife?

-Clay

[Douglas]

If I see him tomorrow I’ll grab the knife from him. As it is right now, I’d call the point 80% restored.

I’m currently using a 1st Gen WEPS with no upgrades. Yet…

[Douglas]

Best I could get with my iPhone. He’s not worried about the tip. The best I’ve been able to get is some definition of the geometry, but I can’t get the geometry out to the point. It just stays rounded.

[Daniel maloon]

Hey dc, keep at it

[Daniel maloon]

Ok sorry good luck

[Douglas]

I’m not sure I understand your question. Are you asking about what technique I use to get a well defined point?

I sharpen the two edges as if they are separate. I sharpen the belly to the point, without going past, and then sharpen the tip without going over the point. Sometimes I don’t reposition for the tip, sometimes I do. I’ve tried both ways with this knife. I’m starting to think that the heat treating is bad (or nonexistent), and the point is chipping off as I go. It is a cheap knife after all…

Edit: I posted this, then saw your second reply. What you describe is exactly my technique. This isn’t the first tanto I’ve sharpened, and I’ve never had this problem before.

[wickededge]

It’s looking pretty decent. I don’t think the steel is super. Here is one technique you can use to get that vertex really crisp:

Take a coarse stone perpendicular to the edge and file the edge edge flat both on the long portion of the blade (only the width of the stone away from the vertex, not the whole length) and also on the tanto portion. Keep filing until the two lines form a crisp intersection, then sharpen the knife as you normally would. That should get you the geometry you’re looking for.

-Clay

[Josh]

It’s looking pretty decent. I don’t think the steel is super. Here is one technique you can use to get that vertex really crisp:

Take a coarse stone perpendicular to the edge and file the edge edge flat both on the long portion of the blade (only the width of the stone away from the vertex, not the whole length) and also on the tanto portion. Keep filing until the two lines form a crisp intersection, then sharpen the knife as you normally would. That should get you the geometry you’re looking for.

I was so about to suggest this… This is really the only practical way to fix the lines and point. Other way to do the tip part if that’s the only thing messed up is to remove metal from the spine side and make it more of a drop point.

[Steven N. Bolin]

I’m struggling here. I have no clue what I’m doing wrong. My geometry is nice and crisp, but the edge is wide at the tip.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! :cheer:

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[Zamfir]

2 things come to mind.

1) position of the knife in the vise when doing the tip. If you are keeping the blade in the vise at the same location for both the flat and the tip, the tip is farther down and the angle will be different.

2) If the tip actually is thicker material wise, this will happen because you have to remove more material to get the same angle.

I was thinking about sharpening a tanto blade just today. If it were me, I would sharpen the flat, remount the knife so the tip is up and nice and flat..readjust the rods so the angle is the same as it was for the flat using the angle cube…do the sharpie trick so I could see where my angle is going to end up..

this happened a bit to my knife because the tip is wider material than at the flat part of the blade. And it was not even a tanto.

[Josh]

I’m struggling here. I have no clue what I’m doing wrong. My geometry is nice and crisp, but the edge is wide at the tip.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! :cheer:

that’s because your blade geometry is thickening up at the tip. You technically need to re-grind it… like this 😀

even if a tip is all buggered up then you can flatten the tip (i.e. grind the edge directly into a diamond plate to make it nice and pointy and not rounded) and then sharpen/regrind.

[Daniel maloon]

That’s clean Josh!

[Steven N. Bolin]

Hey guys. Thanks for all the awesome feedback.

After looking at some photos online, I actually see many tanto blades with bevels that gradually get wider at the tip. And it totally makes sense now that I realize the tip does in fact get thicker.

I’ll post some pics after I regroup and give it another shot! :woohoo:

[Author]

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