My Sharpening and knife related videos

[grepper]

Maintenance post to get the previous post to show up.

[chino]

Too funny! I don’t like tying shoes at all. I do like eating and cutting meat with a fine tuned tool is a treat.

[blgentry]

My first machete.  It's been with me for more than 30 years.  I put a more acute angle on it than the factory and gave it a real sharpening for the first time in it's long life.  I'm actually quite surprised at just how sharp machetes can be.  I have a new expectation now.  Here's how it cuts:





Brian.

[grepper]

Nice job. Sure looks sharp! Did you test the sharpness?

[chino]

Brian, well done!

[blgentry]

Nice job.  Sure looks sharp!  Did you test the sharpness?

Not until just now.  I had a feeling it wouldn't be very impressive.  I was right. 

Near the front it measures 395 to 510.  Closer to the middle I got 180.  That's way more inconsistent than I expected.  It's also after having chopped some limbs in the back yard.  I could do another quick couple of passes on the 120 belt, deburr it again, and then do a fresh measurement.  But at the moment I'm too lazy.

Brian.

[blgentry]

After dinner tonight I went to the shop and spent 15 minutes re-doing the edge on this machete.  Got a big burr with 120 grit and tried to reduce.  Switched to A30 (600 grit) to reduce some more and do a tiny bit of polishing.  Then VF Scotchbrite for *ever*.  I must have done 20 or more passes with a few really light ones at about 45 degrees trying to fracture the burr off.  Some combination of this worked and I ended up with almost no burr.  Switched to smooth leather with a little bit of left over compound.  Half a dozen strokes later it was ready to be tested.

BESS tester says it's 200 to 245 in the curve at the front.  I'm much more satisfied with that.

Hedges outside were cleanly cleaved off, including leaves cut in half as I severed some small hedge limbs.  Shaves pretty cleanly too.

This is a pretty scary machete now.  Imagine a high end kitchen knife that's 18 inches long and weighs a pound and half being swung at high speed.     

Brian.

[grepper]

That's good and sharp for a machete!  Considering how it's used, anything sharper than that and the edge would be so thin it would just cave in and roll when it hit a branch. Nice job.

I've found that especially with big heavy blades like a machete, it's okay to apply considerable pressure (at sharpening angle) on the SB and leather when deburring.  Of course it's going to vary from blade to blade, and WMMV, but it might be worth playing with to cut down on deburring time.

Machetes, axes, cleavers and the ilk are the exception to my preference for a toothy edge.  For whacking, hacking and chopping it doesn't seem to me that "toothy" buys you anything.  Since a more polished edge works fine for those edges, finer grit belts and really getting into it on leather can really cut down on deburring time.

I'm guessing that the machete is not really hard and brittle steel so that 120 grit belt probably created a good size burr.  Maybe spending more time with a finer grit belt might help to just grind away the burr.  (Just guessing).

Anyway, great job on that Brian!

"Shaves pretty cleanly too."  Umm..., I'm left with a strange mental image of you standing in the shower shaving with a machete.  No wimpy razors for Mr. Brian! 

Replace "knife" with "razor": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWl8EbNN8NM

[blgentry]

A friend of mine gave me this Cold Steel Sword/Machete.  It's pretty neat.  Here's how it performs after I sharpened it on the Kally.

Interestingly, I was able to use the KallyRest for this during deburring.  I was having a hard time knocking the burr off with VF ScotchBrite.  It kept holding on and holding on.  So I mounted the KallyRest and was going to set it to a stupidly high angle like 45 degrees.  But as I was dialing it up, I decided to try about 25 degrees instead.  

Because the KallyRest is a rest, I was able to let the edge make very light contact with the VFSB.  ...and in just one pass per side, the burr was almost completely eliminated.  I was quite surprised and impressed.   A little bit of manual work (without the KR) and then smooth leather with compound finished it up.





Brian.

[blgentry]

Maintenance post to make the last one show up.