tcmeyer

I’ve been sharpening my Victorinox to 17 dps @ 1500, then convexing the bevels to 13 dps (4 steps).  I don’t recall if I’d added a microbevel this last time, but if I did, it was at 20 dps and 1000 grit.

In my experience, honing and sharpening have been used to describe the same thing, although I think that maybe honing has evolved to mean the final stages of sharpening.

I think of burnishing to mean a process which treats the surface of steel by using the malleability of the steel to smooth out surface scratches and burrs as a means of polishing…[Read more]

Doesn’t sound anything like my Gen 3 Pro.  My cam follower is a flat plate.  You might try taping off the exposed areas of your vise.  Here’s what I did:

If you are a reloader, you might also try lubricating the cam and follower with resizing lube.  Other lubes will help, but will lose their effectiveness fairly quickly.  Resizing lube is desi…[Read more]

There’s a couple of good reasons to use downward (edge leading) strokes.  The major advantage is it reduces the chance of breaking away fragile bits of the edge.  Imagine a tool machining a groove across span of steel.  When it reaches the far edge of the span, it will tend to break away any particles of steel which might not be held solidly in th…[Read more]

I don’t believe in the loose abrasive theory.  The scratches are too uniform for that.  What are the chances of catching a piece of loose grit and wiping it down the side of the blade so as to cause such a scratch?  And then repeat it almost exactly?  And exactly what was it that wiped the side of the blade in such a manner.  If it wasn’t the ston…[Read more]

I’d like to give a shout-out to the memory of Mark76, the OP of this thread.  Mark de Weger, a citizen of the Netherlands, was a moderator of this forum and a blogger whose website can still be visited at https://moleculepolishing.wordpress.com/.  Mark was also a professional photographer and a gentleman who we lost far too soon when he died on a…[Read more]

Actually, your ‘scope work looks pretty good.  And your method of centering the belly of the blade over the center of the vise is exactly the method I use for my skinners.  Skinners are one of the specialty blades where I deviate from the more common 20 dps bevels.  I’ve gone as high as 24 dps with a highly polished bevel with a 1000-grit mi…[Read more]

It sounds like a good idea and I sure hadn’t thought of it.  I think that maybe it might not work for some percentage of blades which are too hard.  When hardening blades, the one basic test used to tell if you’ve been successful is to touch a file to the edge.  If the file doesn’t “bite,” you’ve got a hard blade.  Now the question is do you dra…[Read more]

Timm: I sent you a PM

If the blade is vertical, it doesn’t matter if it’s not centered over the vise.  Moving the microadjusts to matching angles will re-center them relative to the blade.

The offset is only a problem if it is so large that the stone on the one side hits the vise or if the difference exceeds the micro-adjust range.  The Tormek adapter usually raises t…[Read more]

My personal experience is that the steel type is less important than matching the edge type to the material type.  Polished edges move easily through some materials, but seem to slide right over tough or fibrous materials without “biting.”  Serrated edges are the answer for those types of materials, but even the type of serration can make a d…[Read more]

I’m sure I’ve done three or four of the Marbles just like the one shown in the photo.  No… maybe more than that.  When I was trying to get more experience, I invited friends to bring in their entire collections for sharpening.  Seemed like everybody had an old Marble or two.  They seem to take a keen edge very easily.

From your photos, I infer that the knife is a single-bevel, right-handed Nakiri.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the blade was sharpened at around 10-12 degrees.  I have an Aritsugu that is sharpened at 6 degrees per side, for an included angle of about 12.  The edge is foil-like (you can bend it with your thumbnail) and such low angles ma…[Read more]

Hello Timm, and welcome to the WE forum.  I think you’ll find the people here most helpful.

There are a few of us here who have experience in sharpening tools beyond the scope of working knives.  I’ve done quit a bit in sharpening chisels, plane blades, scissors and such.  I’ve done at least one pruning shears and an Alaskan Ulu knife.  I’m loo…[Read more]

I’ve only dressed out whitetail-sized critters and found that the usual 20 dps job seemed to work fine, until I got to splitting the pelvic bone or the sternum, after which the edge near the heel would be rolled or chipped.  I sharpen skinning knives at 18-20 dps to a good polish, with a very light 20 dps micro-bevel at 1000 grit.

Has anyone…[Read more]

A few years ago, I was testing a Carson USB ‘scope, and found that I couldn’t use it without unintentionally moving the focus ring.  So I made a clunky ring to hold it with.  Might not be the answer here, but it sure helped.

The concavity shown in your third picture would cause a slightly convex bevel.  Can you show a picture of the concavity in the other axis, with  the straight edge cross-wise relative to the center of the platen?

In any case, the longitudinally concave platens need to be replaced.

Unless Kevin’s been sharpening a bunch of concave blades, this suggests that either (A) the platen(s?) aren’t flat or (B) the diamond matrix has been piled really high along the edges.  Even moderate blade designs have some convexity to them and any stone will tend to lay flat along the bevel.  It would take some effort (C) on the part of the u…[Read more]

I don’t think you can save them, except maybe if you did some aggressive scraping to try to dislodge the foreign bit that have embedded themselves into the leather.  The cost of replacement cowhide strops is only a few dollars and the value of the correct embedded media is too low to matter.

I’ve tried several types of strop media beyond what WE…[Read more]

Marc, I think maybe we’re just looking at the definition of reprofiling.  Reprofiling is simply the act of changing the bevel shape to either correct an imperfect shape or to change it to a preferred shape.  In this case, we’re talking about a situation where one side is mismatched to the other.  Likely, the fellow at the belt sander changed th…[Read more]