RLDubbya
@rldubbya
active 6 years, 10 months agoForum Replies Created
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Good stuff, Clay – thanks!
I spent some time thinking about this yesterday as I was going through the same customer’s bag-o-knives. I picked out a couple to work on for him next; and I thought that it would be a good idea to do before/after pics so that I could post them on my website and show people some of what I do. That certainly dovetails with Clay’s observation, above, about taking pics for documentation purposes.
The thing I came up with yesterday was implementing a “not to exceed” charge. The customer in question, for example, has some knives that really are not too bad in terms of dirt, etc, and the cleaning charge will be quite low. At the same time, there is an Old Timer which is pretty bad; for example, the gut hook is completely filled and clogged with guts, making it unuseable until some effort is put into place cleaning it. I don’t have any issue at all with using a garden hose and then a compressed air hose on a sub-$30 fixed blade prior to sharpening. This approach would result in me investing about 3 minutes into the knife.
However, a full custom knife with a gut hook that is filled and clogged with guts is a different story: since the handle is wood, finished to somebody’s spec, and the blade (think tang) will rust, I’m not comfortable blasting with water and potentially ruining the knife. I would want to clean such a knife by hand, which means a lot more time.
Then we can consider the blade material. Suppose that we have a non-stainless tool steel, like a D2; and that we’ve tossed the knife into a bag after the last day in the field when we’re back at base. The knife then gets moved to it’s travel bag, tossed into the plane, and then when we arrive home, it’s tossed into the back of the cabinet in the garage. After sitting there for 5 months, it’s suddenly remembered, and Bob is called to clean and sharpen.
We’re going to have a higher charge for this case.
I also think it’s pretty much impossible to estimate the cost up front; the customer might want the blade to be all shiny and new; if it’s something like S35V, that will happen pretty quickly. A non-stainless blade might take a lot more time, effort, and Simichrome. So rather than worry about quoting up front, I’m thinking that I should just do this on an hourly basis, and set the hourly rate high enough that my cost for supplies is covered to prevent the appearance of “nickel and diming” the customer.
The observation re: taxes is a good one; for now, I’d like to just take the easy way out and just write off the different polishes, etc., as company expenses. That’s a conversation to have with the accountant – oh be still, my beating heart!
Freebies: I thought that a good freebie would be a lanyard, and I tried that for this customer. The reasons I think it’s good: one, it’s useful (at least to some people) and it’s a physical object. As a physical object, users can see it, hold it, and be reminded that I made the lanyard for them as part of sharpening – so it’s a built-in reminder that I sharpened the knife. Ultimately – and this will take some time – I’d like to include a bead or a tag with the company name and contact info.
When I was first starting my technology consulting in ’93, somebody offered me this advice: always charge something for every piece of work you do. If you do not, customers will expect that work to be performed gratis in the future.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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My Manix Lightweight S110V was one of the first knives I sharpened, and I thought it was a piece of cake – incredibly easy to get close to a mirror edge on it, and I could “treetop” arm hair with it. Big difference, I think: no water stones. The blade needed reprofiled on the belly forward to the tip. I accomplished the setup with notes for the angle gauge, the reprofile, the sharpening, and the polishing in about 15 minutes.
Reprofile work was done with 100 grit diamond.
Sharpening sequence was 100-200-400-600-800 stones. I alternated edge leading and edge trailing so that I could debug as needed.
After 800, I knocked off the burr, and started a new sequence: 1000-1500 stones, 50 strokes each, no scrubbing.
Then I moved to DLF, and used the 9 micron, for about 50 strokes, and then switched to some horizontal scrubbing, light pressure – basically dividing the blade up visually, and scrubbing from heel to tip and back again, while slowly moving the stone up.
I then switched to stropping. I’m still working on my stropping progressions, but I have this overall plan: start with a diamond paste in the 6-12 micron range, and a “hard” paddle (think something like cereal box on metal paddles). Then we’re going to manipulate a couple variables: surface firmness and grit size, until we get to our final grit/surface/angle adjust combo, which might be something like .1 micron / cow leather / -1.5 degrees.
Along the way, we might discover that this sequence:
3 micron / hard / no change
1 micron / medium / no change
.5 micron / soft-medium / -.5 degree
.25 micron / soft / -1 degree
.1 micron / soft/ -1.5 degreeWhere we can get the hard-med-soft surface from:
Hard: metal (glass) with cereal box strip
Medium: nanocloth
soft-medium: balsa
soft: cow leather / roo leatherI’m working on these progressions now, in fact, just so that I have standards to follow and avoid random creep.
Hope that helps, or gives you some ideas.
Bob
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
Errrmmm…field dressing “a couple hundred elk” even in 10 years seems a bit crazy. Yeah, just a little! Amazing work.
The guide told me a couple things: he had switched over to the surgical scalpels initially because of not being able to get a good, reliable sharpener. He could use the scalpel and just switch blades when one got dull. He also did / does this with an “Exchange-A-Blade” system. Hopefully we can get him back to using his customs. He has one nice Siggma
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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I’m trying to understand all this as well. I just received a grocery sack full of custom fixed blades from a big game guide who is my next door neighbor (well, he’s the closest neighbor at just a bit over 1/2 mile away). He left for a sheep hunt in North BC Saturday, and wanted 4 knives sharpened by then; 2 were the same.
I put a mirror edge on one of those two, and worked on sharpness technique with the other. We’ll see which one he likes best.
In talking with him a bit, he almost never carries a knife on his hunts. He now carries a surgical scalpel with replaceable blades. He just cannot find anybody who can put a good edge on his stuff. I was flattered that he trusted me enough to let me play. I’m pretty certain the WEPS blew him away; hopefully he will continue to use me.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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I do apologize. I thought when the developer – whom I respect greatly – posted the following:
I’ve created this new sub-forum (Suggestion Box | Forum Usability) so we can discuss various items that would improve forum usability. Please also post your suggestions and questions here.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on things that would make the forums easier/better.That rather meant that he would like to hear my thoughts on what would, in fact, make the forums easier/better.
Forgive me, I am new to your planet; I am sure that I will soon enough understand the finer points of your language.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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So I’m about to sharpen an Emerson Chisel and would like some basic instructions on how to do this? Not sure how to begin. (I’m surmising I just sharpen like a typical V grind only just do it on the one side? Start with a sharpie on the one side and then go through the progression of grits etc?)
Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing. Since I only have the one Emerson on which to practice, it’s quickly getting to the point where it sees me coming and I swear I hear a little voice whimper “Oh dear god not tonight I’ve a headache.” Essentially, depending on condition of the beveled side, I’ll start with diamond 100-200-400; obviously the more the damage, the lower the grit. Then I follow a standard progression on the diamond stones, up to either 1000 or 1500.
Here’s where it gets interesting, in my opinion. I have, as the pics I posted somewhere show, made the bevel very wide – my idea was to do a wide bevel, and then try various experiments to get a high polish. That will achieve, according to my brain, a couple things: one, the standard show-off factor of “Mirror mirror on the bevel, who is the master of the universe?” type thing; secondly, given that the width acts something like a magnifying lens, I can see fairly quickly what methods produce the most / least scratches. This has its drawbacks as well, because the bevel is always wide, and any flaws are hugely visible.
With that said: I’ve had some luck taking the diamonds up to 1,000, then switching to the MF ceramic: coarse, then fine. Then balsa wood or nano-cloth, using a .5-.25-.1 micron sequence; I’m finding that I like the nano-cloth quite a bit at this stage. No need to fiddle with angles at this point, I want something fairly hard and unforgiving. I’ll hit anywhere from 50-200 strokes, depending on how the bevel surface looks.<span style=”color: #ff6600;”>*</span>
After that, I hit the WE leather strop – .25-.1 micron sequence – at least 100 strokes, and take the time to watch the surface carefully. You will also have to adjust your angle a bit as per normal stropping protocol.
The other sequence I’ve used with great success after the diamond stones 800-1000-1500 is to skip ceramics altogether, and use balsa wood or nano-cloth strops, in a sequence something like 5-3-2-1-.5-.25-.1<span style=”color: #ff0000;”>**</span> micron. I’ve experimented and discovered that if I do the .25-.1 sequence on a nano-cloth belt using the WorkSharp as a belt grinder/polisher, I quickly draw out a fantastic mirror edge. When you’re done with this stage, strop as per above.
<span style=”color: #ff6600;”>*You probably know this, but: I’ve found it critically important to examine the edge in a variety of lighting conditions. The best one for making the edge look bad is a darkened room, and a bright Red LED flashlight. The scratch pattern really jumps out for evaluation.</span>
<span style=”color: #ff0000;”>**I’m sure you can eliminate one or more of the 5-3-2-1 micron steps</span>
Then: I have tried to knock off the burr on the backside using a couple methods. First, just a manual strop, smooth leather loaded with a bit of 1 micron paste; I use a hanging strop with smooth leather and linen. I hit about 10 strokes on the leather, with the strop pulled quite tight and using ample pressure. I follow this up with 2 or 3 strokes on the plain linen.
That seems to work, for the most part, OK. Sometimes I have trouble getting the entire burr knocked off, so I’m trying a new technique: I use a nano-cloth or balsa wood WE strop, loaded with 1 micron paste (not much paste at all), and adjust the WEPS for the smallest angle it can manage against the backside. I strop about 10 strokes, using what I would call a pressure of “4” on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being just enough pressure to control the paddle, and 10 being enough pressure so as to require placing my other palm down on the WEPS base, and putting all my weight on it (granted, I’m light at 265lbs) to keep it from flipping over.
Hope that helps.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
Identify and control the variables while systematically changing one thing at a time to learn its impact on your sharpening process.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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Wow! Excellent work, gentlemen. That is really great – and it sounds like not only did the YouTube Expert change his mind – no small feat – but that he will also do the right thing, and inform his viewership of all this.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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It is most likely Simple Green. I had no issue with any of my stones, until I wash them with SG. Upon washing my 1500/glass paddles, I had the glass come off. Once it’s dry, I just stick the glass back onto the double sided tape on the paddle and it’s good as new. Using soapy water is a common trick used in the application of stickers. It allows the sticky side to slide freely until you squeeze the soapy water off. Given the application I think it’s behaving properly, but I could be wrong.
I think that has to be it; I noticed in the cleaning thread that Clay was going to try SG, but he did not post any follow-up. I should have asked – there’s no real harm done, except I think that I might have to replace the tape at some point.
I hope anybody who is thinking of using SG for either sharpening or cleaning sees this thread first. Might as well save somebody the surprise.
I’ve found time to sharpen one knife today, which had a couple small chips in the cutting edge. I started with 400, and am just now ready to use the 1500. I have been using a mixture of water, a little bit of Dawn, and a little bit of Windex. The lubrication from this mix is definitely not as good as what I was getting from SG; however, there is some lubrication, the stones have stayed fairly clean so far, and I haven’t had any issues with stone loosening.
If my experiments continue successfully, I’ll have my answer and a workable process.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
