So I was lucky enough to get gifted Randall 11-4.5 Alaskan Skinner from my Dad! I used it to break down a deer this weekend and need to touch up the blade. The Randall page talks about a 20 degree angle on the knife but then also talks about a bevel; however, there is no info on the bevel angle.
http://www.randallknives.com/knife-care/
Looking for some direction and recommendations for sharpening this knife.
Mark
It looks like they’re talking about putting 20 degree bevels on the knives which makes sense. The page indicates that they’re zero ground at the shop and recommend the user adding the 20 degree bevels.
So, set up the WE for 20 degrees and sharpen away?
How to Find Your Angle.Finding the Sweet Spot.That’s definitely one way… The other is to try and match whatever bevel is already on the knife which you’d do by using the Sharpie technique: You’ll also want to find the correct front-to-back positioning: There has been a lot of contribution toward the determining the best overall position for your knife here in the forum since the “Finding the Sweet Spot” article was published. A lot of the recommendations are for also tilting your knife in the clamp so that the arc of the stone most closely matches the curve of the belly of the blade. You might start by loosely clamping the knife a few inches back from the tip. Hold a fine stone lightly against the edge of the blade and observe where the edge of the blade contacts the stone. You can make a light mark on the stone with a marker. Now rotate the stone forward and observe the location of the mark on the stone relative to the edge, especially as the edge curves down toward the tip. You will want to adjust the position of the knife, both tilt (probably lowering the tip somewhat) and front-to-back until the mark on the stone hits the edge, or close to it, all they way along the blade. From there, you’d want to color in the bevels and lightly use a fine stone to make a sweeping track down the blade. What you’ll want to verify is that the track that the stone leaves through the marker is equidistant from the edge all the way along the blade. All of this effort in “Finding the Sweet Spot” is to ensure that you don’t end up with a very large or very small bevel along the belly compared with the bevel along the straight portion of the blade. I hope that’s helpful.
Josh - if you see this, will you post a link to your video?
sure, here ya go
Dude, that video answered so many little questions I had. Thanks a ton! Should be required watching when you purchase.
Josh–thanks a ton for that video. Apologies for the late response. We just had our third son and things have been a little busy…
Great info on this forum. And great responses quickly…with the exception of me…
Mark