Just picked up my first Mayo. A uncarriedunsharpened lefty with a hawksbill blade. I spoke with Clay and Kyle at SHOT (btw, great seeing you guys and thank you for answering my endless questions)about it. And also picked up the curved ceramic stones thinking they would help and on Kyle’s recomendation.
Has anyone had any experience sharpening one of these type blades? All info much appreciated…
Thanks in advance
Not a hawkbill, but this Emerson Commander was reprofiled using the curved ceramics:
Dang Brian - at first I though you had bled all over that emerson :sick:
like this oneHi Rick - nice seeing you here on the forum!. Not familiar with how tight the radius is on your knife, but on many you might be able to just use the stock diamonds - the newer stones are slightly rounded on the corners which helps - I’ve gotten away with that on several - but not all. Curved ceramics will get you a “pretty good” edge (as you’ve probably seen in Clay’s videos - ) and you can follow with leather strops - they are soft enough that working the edges does a pretty good job
If you have ceramics or whetstones you can also work the corners to get coarser of finer grits than those 400 and 600 curved.
Bob, I tried with the flat stones, and it was a bloody mess… j/k; the flat stones didn’t get in the curved belly, pic below (noticed the area not sharpened). Pretty sure the Mayo Hawkbill is a tighter radius than the Commander, so the flat stones will only do a marginal job at best.
In my experience you don’t need the curved ceramics if you just want a hard use edc edge and finish on the 1k diamond. I have found that the stock diamonds work absolutely fine on even the steepest curves. Hope this helps! 