Just picked up this used Spyderco Para Millitary 2 that came with a small chip near tip. It’s CPM S110V steel and my office mate tried sharpening his on his WE. Ruined his blade and sent it back to Spyderco for a new blade.
Seems factory angle is 15 degrees per side. I’ve read others have had a tough time with CPM S110V steel from other forums.
Since I have to first re-profile it anyway to 15 per side do you think that chip would come out just in the normal reprofiling? I was going to start with the 80 grit as I find the 100 grit takes a long time to raise that first burr and i already know this is a hard steel.
I see there is no sharpening choil so I know this might make it even more difficult for the heel strokes.
IMO you are going to have to redo the tip. The chip goes ~1/3 into the bevel. I would reprofile the tip until the chip is “gone”, plus a little. Bad chips can have damaged subsurface steel. I have used the diamond paddles for this using the surface area not normally used in sharpening (near the top/bottom). It is going to take quite a while though (hours) and may wear out a paddle & make a set inconsistent.
You should prob reprofile with a power 1×30 variable speed. Some of our super users do that.
If you do decide to go standard WEPS and keep grinding the bevel until it’s gone, I think it will take a very long time to get your perfect burr. You should also not rush the removal of metal as it can cause metal fatigue.
Thats great info Readheads. Marc had emailed me some tips also. One point he made due to the hardness of this steel is to take my time as you said above as a micro chip can get worse too. I actually have a set of WE knock off 200/800 stones that came with my Gen III Pro unit that Clay’s former machinist was selling on Ebay awhile back. I bought all my stones through WE and upgraded the vice to the 3001 from WE too.
Good point on wearing down my stones. I was worried that if I started with the WE 50/80 stones I might cause further chipping since they are so coarse and this steel is so hard.
These 200/800 stones are probably a good place to start using the 200’s and just take my time or as Marc noted re-profile it over a few sharpening sessions so as not to rush the edge into a burr to quickly just to make that chip disappear. I bought it as a user for cheap, so if I mess it up I can send it back to Spyderco for a new blade to be put on. Or maybe they will just sell me a blade and I won’t have to send it in.
I’ll check back into this thread and note my progress. Marc also suggested I add a sharpening choil which I had already figured I’d need one since the edge runs right up to the heel or whatever that area is called near the handle. So I’ll have to youtube to see how the best way to do this is.
My suggestion is to stone the tip as if you were sharpening it. When you get to the point (!) where the chip is gone, you’ll have lost the least amount of blade length.
I love this system. Clay is a sharpening “genius”! So I first took Marc’s suggestion to put in a sharpening choil. I found a round diamond blade that is held in a hacksaw. Did the job in no time. Then I used TC’s suggestion to just sharpen it as normal until the chip is gone. I used the Tormek adapter as 15 degrees is such a low angle with a small blade.
I had it to the point where the chip was almost gone and I figured next I was re-profiling anyway . . . so I took the 100 stone off the rod and freehanded the chip area by holding the stone perpendicular to the blade and lightly rubbing until it was gone. Then I re-checked the angles for 15 degrees again and started raising a burr with the 100’s. Took about 45 min to an hour to get that first burr as I went slowly so as not to fatigue this hard steel.
Now I know why people like Spyderco so much. This CPM S110V is damn hard to work with but the diamond stones worked very well. This steel started mirroring when I was working the 800’s. I don’t see that with the Chris Reeve’s CPM S35VN softer steel until I’m on the 1,500’s.
I say Clay’s a genius because the systems desigh locks everything tightly into place where I don’t think I could make the mistake of rolling a bevel unless I switched the angle. It just makes such flat and repeatable bevels its amazing. I was worried I was going to mess up this blade, but the system worked so smooth. This edge is one of my best yet and I’ve probably done 75 edges so far.
As an aside, and along the line of visionary “beer talk” might we start a discussion of the ultimate tip. This is prob most appropriate for kitchen knife honsuki types which I use to skin out full beef tenderloins into filet mignoins. To me, the ability of a perfect (impossible) needle point to surgically slice is in the same family as our hands putting mirrors on a knife edge. Craftsmanship at it’s best.
I propose that the method you used (although very prudent) did not enable you to define the tip dimensions as much as you could have. Defining your ultimate tip (with perpendicular soft grinding) and then raising the burr (keeping in mind the WEPS geometry drivers) is an interesting endeavor to me. I think there are techniques which may allow the human hand to do things a CNC macine cannot do.
As reference, you tip IMO is slightly rounded and could be “tighter”. I would have prob done the same. Since we spend so much typing about mirrors could we spend some on tips. They are fragile but the sharpest of all the knife parts. I attached a pic of my newest knife, Roland Lanier’s Gentlemans Steak Knife meant to take to a restaurant. The tip is one of my favorites and my future challenge is to maintain it.
Just food (drink) for thought to generate conversation on ultimate tip techniques while we wait for linear indexes to handle serrated knives from clay.
Happy new year to all, I will be in New Orleans for a wedding.
I also have a PM2 with S110V as my EDC. I’ve profiled it once at 17DPS to a mirror polish and have been touching it up at 18 DPS. I have found that it doesn’t take as keen an edge as my Kershaw 1812 in M390. Both knives have excellent edge retention and are close to the same in difficulty to sharpen.
The link below from Blade HQ gave me the impetus to find an M390 knife to sharpen.
Your shop picture shows a BESS tester. I also have one, and the PM2 gets down to 110-130gf. The 1812 out of the box was 123gf but the WE treatment got it to 71gf. Both the PM2 and 1812 edges are razor sharp but the S110V just doesn’t seem to want to get the apex as thin.
Just FYI, when I got my PM2 I emailed Spyderco tech support asking what edge angle they used on the PM2 S110V and the Manix 2 in Maxamet steel. Their response was that all knives leaving the factory outlet in Golden CO. are sharpened to 20DPS.
Thanks for all that info Notsharpenuf. Those are some smoking sharp numbers on your edges. I thought I was hitting a few numbers like that when I initally got the unit, but even though I was using the fulcrum to support the tip I found I was ever so slightly “slicing” into the testing medium instead of “pressing” straight down! Below 100 is double edge razor blade sharp. For me, I know that edge won’t last me very long. I was pondering picking up your digital edge finder but it turned out to be pretty pricey for an average hobbiest. I Googled for the factory angle and thought I landed on a Spyderco.com link but now I think I landed on a thread which was probably on a Bladeforums chat room suggesting 15 degrees. When I start my 2nd sharpening session to apex the PM 2’s edge and sharpen out the tip . . . I’ll probably re-profile to 18 which is where I angle most of my folders. I like the trade off of maybe a little less sturdy edge, but a wider showier mirrored Wicked Edge! My user habits might be as severe as opening an envelope. I do like getting the edge as sharp as I can and that’s why I picked up the Bess (great tool). I love the way a razor sharp knife edge “melts” through an envelope. I even hate using my knives to cut open say an Amazon box because I hate getting the glue from the tape all over the mirrored edge. So I usually use a single edge razor blade to open cardboard boxes. But I did read a good tip on one of the forums. Flip the box on it’s long side and cut a 3 sided flap with your knife, take your goods out and . . . Wallah, no tape glue residual on your blade. And if you have to return the item the box is still intact all you need to do is close the flap and put some packing tape over your 3 cuts. Those round laser digital angle finders I think were made in England were running like $230 plus shipping from England. Do you know of another cheaper source?
I’m in the same boat on boxes. I’ve been using a utility knife for opening most packages because that tape residue is a real pain to get off of a blade. It makes it more difficult when the blade is extra sharp too because there’s more risk of getting cut as well.
Use your knives and enjoy them. This Goo Gone does a great job removing adhesive residue. For the worse cases I apply it with a Q-tip or applicator stick, sometimes two or three applications. I let it sit and soak into the glue residue in-between applications. The sticky residue usually wipes right off.
I’ve applied it to paper sticker labels applied and adhered to thin paper boxes similar to a tooth paste or medicine box. Something really thin that will rip the paper box up when trying to peel the label off. I apply it to totally soak in and saturate the labels. After letting it sit for 3 to 5 minutes the labels pull right off. After you let the Goo Gone dry it wipes clean. You can’t tell that a label was once applied to the package. It’s a really good product to keep in the house. It works great to remove those price stickers retail stores apply that break into pieces and tear up when you try to peel them off.
I keep a spritz bottle of lacquer thinner handy for just those sort of problems.
Incidentally, lacquer thinner is the best thing I’ve found for removing magic marker (Sharpie) ink. It literally floats away as the thinner rolls across it. You gotta watch out though, it doesn’t like most plastics, including WE handles. There, I use alcohol. For which I also have a spritz bottle, but of a different color.
Yep, same here. I have to start using my utility knife too as I’ve cut myself using a single edge by the blade slipping a little bit when slicing cardboard.
My town dropped off the big blue trash containers on wheels. Now we are required to fold or cut the cardboard to fit inside. Used to be we could just the stack empty boxes at the curb. So I’m doing a lot more cutting as my neighbor downstairs shares the same recycle container.
I agree that any “slicing” component will skew the test. Most times I freehand rather than use the fulcrum because it limits the area that I can test and can add “slicing” based on the blade shape and length.
In my experience using the PT50A tester freehand, I found that you have to be really careful not to move the blade horizontally or contact the media with the knife at an angle. Instead of true push cutting I add a slicing component to the test.
I have to be super slow contacting the media, with the edge even on the horizontal plane, or my readings are misleadingly lower.
Like EOU, I would have liked to see the fulcrum used.
Ed K.
I bought my LASER goniometer from CATRA in the United Kingdom. The cheapest one they sold at the time was the Hobbigoni and it was around $200.
Yes, Ed I got away from using the fulcrum as it was allowing me to slice and the weight of my hands anywhere on the base kept causing me to reset the window back to 0.
Now I hold the knife with two hands and press straight down. Nice part is I can rest both hands on the table to each side of the Bess for steadiness and repeat ability and I don’t keep setting off the numbers from the weight of my hand on the fulcrum. Best edge number I’ve gotten was 115 with CRK CPM S35VM. When I drop below 100 I know I’m slicing ever so slightly. Do you sharpen as a business?
You are correct on the $200 for CATRA laser thats what I was finding a few months ago. I’d like to find one used. If you come across one please PM me!
