Sharpening near the heel

[George]

I received my wicked edge a few months back but have not had a lot of experience using it. The problem I am running into is developing sharpness near the heel (where the blade edge stops). Along the rest of the blade the sharpness seems to be fine but at the heel I seem to be having poor results. Is there any technique that others are using that may help me out?
Thanks,
George

[Leo James Mitchell]

OK! You say the results are fine for the rest! Define fine for me…I ask because you may be having mediocre results and that would mean probably that your burrs were not raised and that the initial scratches did not run right out to the edge. If the rest is fine. i.e. razor sharp, then you may have not raised the burr across the whole edge. Start as if it was the first time again and using the 100 grit paddle raise the burr again using an up and down scrubbing motion rather than a sweeping motion. You can use a little more pressure for this first phase than for the other steps when you use the sweeping motion. N.B. Be sure when raising the burr on each side with the up and down scrubbing, that you move right to the edge all along the whole way. Very important. The initial burrs are the key!
Let us know how you make out.

Cheers
Leo

[Edwin Lurvey]

I will mirror what Leomitch is saying. The most important thing with any method of sharpening in my opinion is raising that burr. If you did not raise a burr along the whole edge on both sides, on the first set of paddles, you will most likely have poor results. Raising a burr doesnt mean raising a burr in the middle and moving on. You need to check for a burr along the whole edge, on both sides, checking as many times along the edge as you can stand to.

You most likely didnt have a satisfactory burr along the whole edge. This ensures you are working to the finite ends of the bevels where your microscopic land is, that we call the edge. Otherwise there is no good and fast way to determine if you are or not. Because you are going along the length of the knife, there are many inconsistencies in the world that cause the knife not to be completely perfect, so we make up for that by checking the burr along the whole edge, and not just hoping it comes out right the whole way down the blade.

See the image here. At the point near the heel, your stone could look like this (not reaching the cutting edge. Take more material off the heel, and you will probably be fine.

[Matthew]

If the paddle rubs on the thumb stud of the knife it will sometimes lift it enough so that it wont make contact with the edge at the heel. If this is the case: You might try sharpening the knife at a greater angle to clear the thumb stud, or use very short up-and-down strokes with just the bottom of the paddle so it’s above the stud. Hope this helps!

[George]

While I was fairly confident about raising a burr the entire length of the blade, I decided to retrace my steps and start from the beginning again. Please see the attached photo that may help describe the issue.

Attachments:

• _MG_9647A.JPG

[Leo James Mitchell]

If the paddle rubs on the thumb stud of the knife it will sometimes lift it enough so that it wont make contact with the edge at the heel. If this is the case: You might try sharpening the knife at a greater angle to clear the thumb stud, or use very short up-and-down strokes with just the bottom of the paddle so it’s above the stud. Hope this helps!

Around the thumb stud in this case, the up and down scrubbing motion is very advantageous…personally when I am raising the burrs with the 100 grit paddle, I use only the up and down motion for the length of the blade.
My eye is not good enough to comment on the picture of your edge but Clay or Tom from Jende Industries would be experts on such things.

Leo

[George]

The other weird thing is that even after stropping there were still quite a bit of visible scratches even after finishing with the 1000 grit stones and then stropping with bark river black and white compounds. I then took it over to my belt sander with leather belts loaded with black and white compound and the photo I posted was the result. If I had come off the belt sander with a 600 grit belt and then hit with both the black and white compounds, the edge would have been a mirror.

[CAWalter]

Due to our increased awareness from using this, we become more critical. That’s good. What I find true is the balance between a tool that cuts to the shoulder and finger safety. Products need to take that into consideration. The stone edge is held back from the paddle edge so we don’t swipe across with a finger pad bulged over the edge onto the blade. Ouch. I ground about 1 1/2″ of the plastic off to the stone edge on a couple of the stones just so I could concentrate on the edge in this area.

CAW

[Author]

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