All About Pocket Knives

In 2009 i started sharpening knives with a set of US made Paper Wheels, bought from a German dealer, the only European source at the time.


This was my first set-up, with the Paper Wheels mounted on my old high-speed 3000 rpm Creusen bench grinder.
The sharpening Wheel is on the right in each picture, and the deburring Wheel on the left.
No guards on the machine, which is used turned around so the Wheels spin away from me.


Side view of the slotted Wheel with it's warning label:


The Wheels are made from industrially compressed cardboard, and are used on an ordinary bench grinder.
A standard set consists of 2 Wheels: a sharpening Wheel with a glued-on coating of silicon carbide grit (which does the actual sharpening) plus a coating of wax on top of the grit (which protects your edges from overheating during sharpening)
The second Wheel removes the burr and/or does the polishing of the edge, for which you need to charge the Wheel surface for each knife by holding a small block of fine white aluminium oxide for one or two seconds against the spinning surface.
Instead of cooling wax this Wheel uses several slots cut in it's surface, which work like a strong fan and thus protect your edge from overheating during burr removal and/or polishing.
A few years later i also bought several "naked" Wheels from another dealer in England and charged these with various diamond compounds & powders, first to be able to sharpen ceramic knives and later various high carbide steel knives.
The combination of speed together with built-in overheating protection and overall good results is why i still use my Paper Wheels to this very day.

After a short learning curve practising on several cheap knives i did this second hand Spyderco Military in CPM-D2 steel, and it became one of many quality knives i sharpened on my Wheels over the years.
It had some blade play (fixed it), some discoloration on the blade (left that) and it wasn't quite sharp (fixed that with my Wheels)
The knife was part of my edc for several years.


If forum management has no objections i intend to post more pictures of knives that i've sharpened over the years on my Wheels, and i hope that others who use Paper Wheels do the same.
While i do sharpen knives for others in the Netherlands i have no commercial interest regarding Paper Wheels or any other sharpening method.
I just use them next to various ceramic, silicon carbide and diamond bench stones, a Tormek T7, as well as various grits of waterproof sandpaper.

kwackster wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2026 2:58 pmIf forum management has no objections

no objections whatsoever, your posts and pictures are quite interesting, thank you for sharing!

I’ve seen your posts in the other forum and you do an amazing job with the Paper Wheels.

I have a set myself that I bought in 2009 and while I can get the knives extremely sharp, they don’t look anywhere near as good as your edges.

I stopped using mine because my edge geometry was terrible on the wheels but I would go back to it if I could get your results.

I bought a backup set as well because I felt like I was progressing and wanted to buy a backup just in case I wore the first set out. This set has sat unopened since around 2011.

Nice work!!

I worked with a fellow who sharpened with paper wheels. He did a fabulous job. And welcome.