All About Pocket Knives

Aside from remedying the obvious issue of lack of sharpness, sometimes a knife needs a little extra work to fix a specific problem.

This particular knife's owner asked me to put a stronger edge on the blade for him, an edge pehaps more resistant to rolling when cutting rubber underhood hoses in the auto repair shop where the knife is used.

This knife also showed the very common issue present on factory blades; an uneven, inconsistent grind along the edge from heel to tip, and the right-hand bevel ground at a different angle from the left-hand bevel.
The sharpening session on this Gerber Flatiron therefore was a three-step process; first re-cut the original bevels (18°) to correct the angle discrepancies, second, polish those bevels to minimize cutting friction, third, cut and polish a new cutting bevel at 24° to make a new, stronger cutting edge.
Total project time was 26 minutes on the Edge Pro, using the original kit stones of 220, 400, 600, 1000 grits followed by the 2000 and 3000 polishing tapes.
First photo below shows the original factory bevel; sorry about the so-so photography.
Second photo (sort-of) shows the re-sharpened edge, with its new, hopefully stronger secondary 24° bevel.
Mark

Looks good. You know what you are doing too!

Bob

rea1eye wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 6:08 pm Looks good. You know what you are doing too!

Bob

Thanks, Bob....!

The sharpening session on this Gerber Flatiron therefore was a three-step process; first re-cut the original bevels (18°) to correct the angle discrepancies, second, polish those bevels to minimize cutting friction, third, cut and polish a new cutting bevel at 24° to make a new, stronger cutting edge.



Why not just do the 24 deg bevel / edge first ?

Since it needed to have the edge angle changed , why steps one and two ?

Im sure I must be missing something , but one and two seem rather redundant .

Everyone has different methods and reasons for doing things. I Don't know what the specific requirements of Mark's customer were, but i am sure Mark knows what he is doing. We all like to see everyone's different sharpening methods, that is how i have learnt over a lifetime.

Did some Remedial Sharpening this cold Easter Sunday afternoon. Was cold wet and windy here today and had my Case Stockman out, decided i wanted to reprofile the spey blade to make a slicer blade. Was 20 degrees from the factory but reprofiled it down to 15 degrees. Now a really handy slicing blade.

Good work! I re-profiled my Seahorse blades for whittling, the factory bevel just doesn’t get thin enough to slice. I sharpen freehand so I really don’t know the angle but I’m guessing about 12°.