07-10-2017, 03:54 PM
I'm sorry Mr. Grepper, I had two failures to launch replying to you. Agonizing. Hopefully this will make a difference for you. This was the most important topic I had to talk about, and I hate that it took so long to formulate the response. I'm Absolutely in knife production mode right now, so sitting down for 15 minutes feels like I'm slacking off.
You're never really very "alone" when it comes to sharpening, Mr. Grepper. Just hang out on good sharpening forums for a while. Hopefully this forum will continue to grow, and become a well established forum. We have the BESS advantage of measuring sharpness.
I look forward to being here more than daily again by the end of August.
I offhandedly use "hone" more than one way, but in that context, to me it just meant "finishing with edge trailing strokes". It kinda seems to me like "sharpening" (edge leading or scrubbing steel off- creating the bevel) is basically creating the burr, and honing is removing the burr- usually edge trailing with refinement. Slight convexity helps, and you can cut a burr off with a couple edge leading passes easier with the ultra slow speed of stones.
On stones or hones, when you're sharpening a curved blade, it's best to keep the edge 90* to your line of travel across the surface. It makes a difference, especially to guys with straight razors and stones. Or people testing tooth.
Deburring with the Blade vertical to a horizontal stone (like how I think you understood me) isn't that uncommon. Most often I've heard of guys doing this with the 3 micron DMT. In theory it could give you a perfect 4000 grit tooth. I think it works better just bending the burr past 90* to the blade, then cutting it off Some try angling the scratch pattern or opposingly angled scratch patterns on each side of the blade.
For toothy edges, it's hard to beat diamond plates. I'm using an Atoma 140 like THIS to finish the edge. That's what allows me to cut the burr off precisely and quickly.
I'm not sure I would put a 60 grit edge on anything else I own, but I thought a decent machete would be interesting. I even had a good independent observer, which I always try to take advantage of when I'm testing something.
The machete was already sharp, so it only took one pass per side to get a good scratch pattern and flip the burr. The only thing left is getting it off- without Any polishing. Cutting the burr off very accurately, by hand, with a coarse, sharp stone is super effective. I had a nice thin blade with dynamic tooth.
It seemed to work pretty well. Many old rose bushes were trimmed, with many dead rose branches too. A bunch of sucker branches went down with strategic blows. I tested regular slicing on lots of stuff, but I was rather disappointed TBH.
I took it back to the grinder and went to a 120 grit belt, then cut the burr off exactly the same way. Wow! That made a huge difference! All the rest of the pruning went like magic comparatively. I was zipping cleanly through everything, with much less energy and speed of motion.
Slicing was different too. With the coarse edge it didn't matter if I was trying to slice straight through or trying to make a tapered cut. It took some sawing, and it wasn't easy to hold the branch. The coarse edge bit into the material aggressively, but it didn't result in easy separation of the branch. It took significant motion, and energy. The coarse edge resulted in much more drag and friction. It was a lot like cutting with a hacksaw, while the finer edge just did everything more cleanly and easily.
I did more test sharpening with the machete, and learned more about the burr. The most significant thing I learned is that Kallys run fast enough to create way Way more burr than I was getting at super low speed. In fact, edge leading or edge trailing didn't make nearly as much difference as belt speed. At about the speed of smell there basically was no burr.
You're never really very "alone" when it comes to sharpening, Mr. Grepper. Just hang out on good sharpening forums for a while. Hopefully this forum will continue to grow, and become a well established forum. We have the BESS advantage of measuring sharpness.
I look forward to being here more than daily again by the end of August.I offhandedly use "hone" more than one way, but in that context, to me it just meant "finishing with edge trailing strokes". It kinda seems to me like "sharpening" (edge leading or scrubbing steel off- creating the bevel) is basically creating the burr, and honing is removing the burr- usually edge trailing with refinement. Slight convexity helps, and you can cut a burr off with a couple edge leading passes easier with the ultra slow speed of stones.
On stones or hones, when you're sharpening a curved blade, it's best to keep the edge 90* to your line of travel across the surface. It makes a difference, especially to guys with straight razors and stones. Or people testing tooth.
Deburring with the Blade vertical to a horizontal stone (like how I think you understood me) isn't that uncommon. Most often I've heard of guys doing this with the 3 micron DMT. In theory it could give you a perfect 4000 grit tooth. I think it works better just bending the burr past 90* to the blade, then cutting it off Some try angling the scratch pattern or opposingly angled scratch patterns on each side of the blade.
For toothy edges, it's hard to beat diamond plates. I'm using an Atoma 140 like THIS to finish the edge. That's what allows me to cut the burr off precisely and quickly.
I'm not sure I would put a 60 grit edge on anything else I own, but I thought a decent machete would be interesting. I even had a good independent observer, which I always try to take advantage of when I'm testing something.
The machete was already sharp, so it only took one pass per side to get a good scratch pattern and flip the burr. The only thing left is getting it off- without Any polishing. Cutting the burr off very accurately, by hand, with a coarse, sharp stone is super effective. I had a nice thin blade with dynamic tooth.
It seemed to work pretty well. Many old rose bushes were trimmed, with many dead rose branches too. A bunch of sucker branches went down with strategic blows. I tested regular slicing on lots of stuff, but I was rather disappointed TBH.
I took it back to the grinder and went to a 120 grit belt, then cut the burr off exactly the same way. Wow! That made a huge difference! All the rest of the pruning went like magic comparatively. I was zipping cleanly through everything, with much less energy and speed of motion.
Slicing was different too. With the coarse edge it didn't matter if I was trying to slice straight through or trying to make a tapered cut. It took some sawing, and it wasn't easy to hold the branch. The coarse edge bit into the material aggressively, but it didn't result in easy separation of the branch. It took significant motion, and energy. The coarse edge resulted in much more drag and friction. It was a lot like cutting with a hacksaw, while the finer edge just did everything more cleanly and easily.
I did more test sharpening with the machete, and learned more about the burr. The most significant thing I learned is that Kallys run fast enough to create way Way more burr than I was getting at super low speed. In fact, edge leading or edge trailing didn't make nearly as much difference as belt speed. At about the speed of smell there basically was no burr.