Luke

[Luke]

tcmeyer, that would put me in the same basic situation as now. The light is too bright, too close, and very concentrated. It works as intended on non-reflective surfaces. What I need is more light from an indirect source. I’ve been thinking about pulling out the soldiering gun and playing around with some leds etc and see if I can come up with something that fit’s the wicked edge setup specifically. Maybe something that would attach to the paperstone and be adjustable in both angle, light, and dimness. Or even something that can merely clamp to it.

Or maybe I’m severely over thinking things. I have a tendency to go a bit overboard when I get started down a direction – guess most of us do or we wouldn’t have WE’s!

[Luke]

Gregg, that looks pretty good I would imagine in the picture that light brightens up ~1/2 that knife? Probably once you get the angles set it should light up a 3.5-4.5 blade pretty easily? Ideally what would be nice is if I could find an led diffused white light that could clamp on something and had a swing arm – sort of like a magnifier arm minus the magnifier. That would be really nice, something like this but with brighter lights: http://www.amazon.com/Alvin-G2540-B-Swing-Lamp-Black/dp/B001DNFLYS/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1421771985&sr=8-16&keywords=magnifier+arm

Found it!
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Architect-Adjustable-Showrooms-Bookstores/dp/B00HYVHRJA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421772050&sr=8-1&keywords=swing+arm+led+lamp&pebp=1421772096030&peasin=B00HYVHRJA

That price is a bit steep though – gotta be a cheaper source for one. I would imagine that would flood enough light for my scope to see without the need of using the leds built into it. Not sure though.

[Luke]

Greg, thanks for the heads up on the dual head lamp. That looks like the ticket and what I had in mind! Gotta play around with my current setup to see what works best for me. I’m still in the ‘figuring it out’ stage of progression. Thanks again!

[Luke]

Clay Allison has a video with him saying he’s sharpened ~1200 knives on the same set of stones. I would imagine quite awhile.

[Luke]

Cliff, I’ve thought about diffusers. I’ve thought about putting some translucent vinyl on it, but having issues trying to source it at a reasonable cost – cause I wouldn’t need that much!

The second idea that popped into my head, the problem is the direct light. If I had most if not all my light coming in from behind the scope, or from around the sides or the scope it would be ok, the leds are in a ring around the clear edge of the scope. Great for looking at non-reflective stuff – not to hot with knife blades that are polished. Crackpot ideas are normally the ones that work the best for me in most cases. 😉

tcmeyer , Yeah I know it’s a fact of life but I figured someone may have found a way to at least minimize it. I’ve tried everything the scope will allow – I did find that if I put them on low and put the blade edge in the upper 1/3rd of the scope and wait the software dims it reasonable enough – about half the glare, or my shot attached above.

I’m thinking probably the easiest solutions are either #1 find a bright desk lamp and turn the leds off – indirect light I think would work better, or #2 start looking at my edges from the top down instead of from the side. I have found it I put my scope on the knife edge then rotate left or right it looks much clearer and the glare is minimized. I can cant it over about 45-50 degrees before any real brightness comes into it.(Would attach an image but I’m at work right now – I may get to it later this afternoon)

Just one of those things – guess talking about it sometimes help me think it through. Thanks for the ideas/tips guys, I really appreciate it!

[Luke]

Not sure what the full break in is – I just received my PP1 this weekend. Like most people when they first get it I went crazy practicing and playing around with some practice knives with everything from “China Stainless” to Kuhn Rikon paring knives. I sharpened about 10-12 knives before I noticed a major difference in how the stones sounded. Went from a sharp crunchy sound to a smoother sand paper sound.

After playing…..err practicing around with it for awhile I found myself going much higher and lower on the stones through the course of sharpening and can really tell where I didn’t hit the full stone on the earlier knives. So like some have suggested I would make sure you grab several different length knives from at least 3.5-6 inches. After going back through the stones on several knives starting to refine my process I finally got to the point where the stones sound mostly good all the way through. Grabbed my Spyderco Stretch VG-10 and gave it a run through – my first ‘good knife”. With the stone broken in the knife turned out MUCH sharper than the first ‘rough’ run throughs on the cheaper knives.

So long story short I would say that 10-12 knives seems to be the break in period if you are hitting the full stone through the motions, however I took about 15-20 sharpenings before it felt right to me and the stones still seem to be maturing and rather it’s the stone breaking in or my technique getting better the knives seem to be getting sharper and sharper – wiping the blade clean after I got done with my Spyderco I came dang close to cutting myself!

Hope that helps. 😉

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