What is new in my sharpening world.

Hi there.
  I find it difficult to come up with new material but I still try. Perhaps someone will find this one a little interesting.

    Generally speaking, my sharpening technique has changed very little over the years but there has been a few changes that I feel have enabled me to produce better edges. There is also one change I made that has helped from an aesthetics perspective.

    In the past on occasions I noticed that the bevel on one side, the right side was sometimes a little wider than on the left side. I soon found out that this is a common issue and I even noticed it on some new Fujiwara knives. So using the dominant hand, which we have to do, can can sometimes result in very subtle differences in angles and pressure as we flip the knife and do the other side.  The way I first tackled this was to just slow down and ensure that my angles matched as closely as my skill allows it and also I paid closer attention to pressure and time spent on one side as opposed to the other. Something was off to create a differences in bevel width so it was just a matter of paying attention and duplicating what I did on both sides in terms of angle, time and pressure.

     However,  I since found another solution. I taught myself to sharpen with my left hand. I did this to solve aesthetic issues on knives with wide bevels. I also noticed it completely removed the unequal bevel width issue. 

Awesome Naniwa Strop that I got from Paul's Finest here in Canada (My favourite place to buy stones and strops)

   What I do now is to start each knife using my right and left hand, I start on the right side to raise the burr then put the knife in my left hand and raise the burr on the opposite side. Once I do this, I use my dominant hand for the remainder of the process. This simple little adjustment has completely eliminated any bevel issues. Now I don't mean that it is easy to learn to sharpen with the opposite hand, that took me about 4-5 months but not it feels pretty good and now awkward like it did in the beginning. 

  In terms of aesthetics, on wide bevel knives like a Takeda or folder the switch to both hands influences the direction of scratch patterns and results in a more uniform finish on both sides.


    

Over Steeling results

    The only other change I made, as mentioned before was forming burrs on each stone. However I have since adjusted that. This is what I do now.

1.     Form the Initial Burr on both sides with a coarse stone ranging from 220 to 800 grit. The condition of the edge and the steel determines my choice but it is always a coarse stone to get things started. I use 4 level of reduced pressure to remove the burr.

2.     I check the edge to make sure that there is no light, that I have removed the burr completely.

3.     Now I go to a 1, 000 grit stone in most cases, sometimes a 1,500 grit. I now just use the same 4 levels of pressure with the goal of creating a micro burr for the purpose of ensuring that I have reached the edge of the edge. I don't always feel for it, it is inevitable that it will form, the burr that is, so I just continue to sharpen on the same stone, using different, reduced levels of pressure. The knife will be quite sharp now.  Now instead of switching to a finishing stone I go back to the 1k for some additional refinement. It is just a matter of repeating the tip to heel and heel to tip process using light pressure. This really improves the edge, it's freaking sharp:)

4.   Now I strop the edge 

5. Now I finish the process on a finer stone, anything from 2k to 9k depending on the knife and then do a final stropping. 


All else remains the same. 

Thank you for sticking around.