graphite

On using the microscope with every sharpening, do you guys with significant WE experience feel that if your microscope broke, you’d probably get mediocre (or at least, less consistently excellent) results without it? In other words, do you consider the microscope a truly essential part of your process toward getting excellent not just OK results?

Thanks Marc. When you say “edge leading strokes” does that mean up-strokes (spine to edge direction) or down-strokes (edge to spine direction). That terminology just seems more intuitive to me. “edge leading” seems better suited terminology to sharpening where you move the knife against stationary stones.

When you do initial scrubbing strokes,…[Read more]

Marc, the advice earlier in the thread, ignoring the trizact and angle cube sidebars, was start with my finest and work backward to coarser only if needed. Recall the edge on this knife is very thin, with such a small bevel (a few thousandths) it needs a microscope to see it.  Using a microscope along with the 1000 grit looked to be removing…[Read more]

Variable speed is going to run up the price significantly, I’m afraid. I have a 1×42 Delta SA180 (no longer made) and I consider it too fast for knives (1725 RPM fixed). There are pulley mods to slow it down but I haven’t bothered and I use it mainly for wood sanding. A few other manufacturers you might look into (I’m not sure if they have…[Read more]

Checking back in after an impossibly busy post-holiday catch-up period. Where I left off with this MAC knife is I sharpened it at about 16 degrees (or at least that’s what my angle cube showed) with just the 1000 grit, and using my circle contour jig for blade positioning (left to right, and tilt).

The bevels within each side were reasonably…[Read more]

Very sad news. Even in my very short time here, Mark stood out as always ready and willing to share his extensive experience, and his blog was a wealth of information and obviously a labor of love. He will be missed.

I know what you mean re: crazy busy. It seems like we take “vacation” only to be behind by as many days as we took vacation, when we get back.

Clay, have you had a chance to do further tests?

Hi Marc, not to worry. I’ve thought the very same thing in some of our exchanges, and just as you said, our brains are just wired very differently. I still value your inputs, whether you like it or not ;o) Yes I think it’s just terminology, since I don’t fundamentally disagree with what you described. I think it’s a case where if you were sitting…[Read more]

Marc, on my angle logging comment, what I’ve been doing is logging both the coarse angle setting (i.e. the setting on the angle rod) and the fine angle (using the height gauge on calipers, measure the height of the fine adjuster screw above its holder). That way I can replicate the whole coarse plus fine position for the next time I do the same…[Read more]

Marc, this particular set of photos is single images only (no stacked) since they were mostly straight-on, and 220x is the maximum claimed magnification but tic marks go to 230x and it seems to work there.

Depending on which end cap (it came with 7 different ones), some were in contact, and some were with the endcap spaced above the knife, held…[Read more]

Justin and Marc, thanks for explaining your perspective. Trizact isn’t new to me (I’ve used it more than I’ve used diamonds, but never by hand). I used Trizact for years on powered sharpeners for woodworking tools back when I was doing that a lot. There are 4 different lines of Trizact and this particular line is designed specifically for tool…[Read more]

Justin, I’m not sure what you’re reference to complexity is about. I asked a question about whether 600 grit would be coarse enough to start sharpening a knife with an edge I’ve not encountered before, which is the purpose of this forum. If you’re referring to all the microscope photos as implying I’m adding complexity, I posted those only because…[Read more]

I have never sharpened this blade, but I do run it across a fine ceramic rod now and then. As you will see in the photos, there are a number of tiny chips in the edge (mostly less than a thousandth of an inch deep) visible under magnification, but in spite of that, this blade still swipe-cuts paper easily with no snagging. I’ve had the knife a…[Read more]

Redheads: question about the angle measurements you are doing. If you had a knife with a long straight edge that was also wide enough to clamp it at a steep tilt (let’s say tilting downward, heel to tip), wouldn’t you measure a smaller angle at the heel than at the tip (the rod would hit the edge higher up at the heel). But if you sharpened that…[Read more]

Wow, Redheads, you resharpened that knife clamped at the heel, all in the name of gathering data? Way to take one for the team! I’d be interested to hear what you think of its cutting performance with food, sharpened like that.

What did you use the triangle (60-60-60?) for?

Also, how did you set the tilt of the knife in the clamp so that the tip…[Read more]

Redheads: I don’t consider my angle cube to be much more than a rough angle reference. If I take 10 measurements of the exact same point I’ll get a range of values, maybe .4-.5 degrees of variance among those values. I have a Wixey, but I had another brand with essentially the same problem. On youtube videos, I see people having the same issue…[Read more]

Here’s the right side. Note that the area on the edge between the heel and about midway between tape marks 1 and 2 is where I missed the bevel previously using the Edge Pro.

…and on closer examination you can see the old/missed bevel but the newly ground bevel was pretty consistent with the rest of the knife.

Under magnified view there is…[Read more]

RESULTS OF SHARPENING A WUSTHOF CHEF’S KNIFE USING THE CIRCLE CONTOUR JIG

This is using the jig with the revised minimum circle radius of 6-1/8 inches. This knife is about 30 years old, and I had previously sharpened it on an Edge Pro (where I messed up the bevel near the heel on one side, as the pics will show), and maintained it on a ceramic r…[Read more]