I have several knives made from it, and it’s one of my favorite steels. It’s tough to sharpen well.
Until purchasing the WE a couple of months ago, I’d always sharpened freehand, and it was always a job I dreaded with this steel since it is so tough.
This will probably sound crazy, but I usually found with free-handing especially it seemed to take forever to see or feel any discerable difference in the edge, then all of a sudden things started to happen.
I have speculated on “why?” for more than a few hours…am I alligning things on a molecular level before it starts to “cooperate”? Is the act of draggin the blade across the stone heating the steel enough to make it somehow more amenable to being sharpend? I have absolutely NO idea…to me, it’s always felt like there was almost a harder “crust” that had to be dealt with before you started to make any headway.
Of course I know that’s nonsense…just a perception on my part. On the WE, I do find that I have to both increase the number of strokes per stone to get good results, and pay very close attention to having the stones completely flat on the bevel at all times. It doesn’t tolerate a stone edge being dragged across a sharp bevel; I looks through a Loupe almost like a tear in the edge, not a chip.
When it’s sharp, I love the steel. I don’t recall ever chipping an edge on it, and it retains the feel of a freshly sharpened bevel for a long time. It’s definetly one of those trade-offs; you almost NEED a good system like a WE to sharpen it properly, but once you have it sharp, it lasts and lasts.
(the above is completely subjective in nature, and my personal opinions with no basis whatsoever in scientific fact. your mileage may, and likely will, vary)
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