The Heel Plunge line blues….

[uilleann]

Some of my knives have mini choils with the back heal of the blade near the plunge line.  Its on the Shirogorov and some of my ZT’s knives.  Add a thicker part of the blade and I am finding it a challenge to sharpen this area.  Add some bolsters nearby…..

So I have been pulling the blades from the handles.  But its hard to sharpen that back area with a plunge nearby.  I have had to dremel off the plastic borders of the paddles so that the stone can at least touch the last part of the blade.   But then it rubs up against the plunge.  So I cover that with tape but invariably I wear though that.

The thickest portion of the blade by that back heal plays havoc with sharpening angles and therefore bevel width.

And finally for stropping you make these nice sliding stropping actions but if you start at the heel its somewhat abrupt start with some bumping off the tape protected plung that usually makes some unwanted scratches about a tone width away.  That area mostly gets a vertical grind as you slowly move to a more angled grind down the blade..

So… I try to go slow and carefull back there.  And after stropping with the stone I got back and lightly dress up the wacky grinding that i had just done.   The area of the blade rarely looks as mirror-like as the rest of the blade.

Anybody else experience this and have any suggestions?

[Marc H]

Sorry not to be disrespectful Bob, wasn’t the reply on you’re earlier poster “Bolster” Interference” (on the second page of the recent posts) the answers to your issue, you’re looking for? Is this a different issue and I’m not following you?

Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)

[uilleann]

I guess its the same…. I am going to have to bite the bullet and come up with a way to enlarge the choil. Seems like such a destructive thing to do.  I was seeing if there were other ideas than that.

[Organic]

This is a common issue. If you’ve ever watched The Apostle P knife reviews on youtube you’ll hear Rob (who uses the Edge Pro Professional model and is a very skilled knife sharpener) complain about this trend in modern knife design. He will often add a small sharpening choil or even a full forward finger choil to knives in order to “fix” the issue. I think you’d probably have to free-hand sharpen a knife with the plunge grind issue in order to get something that looks similar to the factory grind in terms of consistent bevel width.

My solution is to simply not purchase knives with these issues, but that doesn’t work if you already own them or are sharpening for a friend / customer.

Others have reported that using the Chosera WE stones does allow for better access to the heel as the stones are much thicker and the stone holder doesn’t interfere.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Marc H

[Snecx]

It’s simply an issue with knife blade designs in general, especially with those without considerations for sharpening and blade wear. It’s frustrating, but not much can be done about it except to avoid these knives or accept the design “limitations”.

[Author]

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