OT - Anyone sharpen their own knives? Looking for advice.

[opie]

Just your arm, Jim?

No "Manscaping"?

Trim the hedges and the tree stands taller

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[oneheadlite]

…
One thing I would avoid is the drag through sharpeners that have carbide cutters and a pair of ceramic crossed sticks

They will work but the carbide can take off a lot of metal at a time and can also "chatter" and leave tiny ripples in an edge

The secret is never let your knives get so dull that you NEED the carbide cutters

Sorry, I tend to go off on this subject as I have been a knife nut for over 6 decades

No need to apologize! I really appreciate all the input. It’s something I’ve been interested in but have never known where to start looking, and I value the forum peeps here as we tend to care about most things at a different level than most.

Unfortunately the drag through carbide cutter you describe is what has made a mess of one of our knives, and that’s exactly the condition I’ll be trying to work it back from.

I’ll just need to be careful and make sure I don’t end up going the route I go sometimes in regards to practicing detailing where I focus so much on perfecting my technique on anything but my car instead of actually working on getting my car how I want it!
(IE: Don’t go buy a knife to practice on, just take that knife that I don’t think can get much worse and work on turning it around!)

John

[craigdt]

I bought a TSPROF K03.

It is the tier 1 guided sharpener system.
Better than Wicked Edge, Hapstone, Edge Pro, Lansky, Worksharp etc.

It uses a sort of universal stone size, so you can find almost any stone you can think of. Even Naniwa Chosera, Shapton Glass, and other of the best Japanese stones you'd want.

I'll try to come back and post pics of my setup, but after you figure out how the thing works, you can get wonderful results after about 15 minutes per knife.

Edit:
Here's the one I got:
TSProf K03 Standard Expert Knife Sharpener - Gritomatic

Started with just the basic boride stones, then caught the bug and assembled a kit of 9 fancy stones.

Knife sharpening is much like paint correction when you get down to it.

[Jim w]

Trim the hedges and the tree stands taller

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

When you have a redwood there’s no need to
trim the the hedges "and that’s all I have to say
about that."

[opie]

When you have a redwood there’s no need to
trim the the hedges "and that’s all I have to say
about that."

Haha, i was using a sales pitch qoute from the creators of manscaped

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[craigdt]

Here's a follow up to my above post.

I still use the sharpie method to dial in the angle and mounting.

Having a capable sharpening system has made me much more willing to use my nice knives to their potential.
Don't have to worry about keeping that factory edge, because the edge you can end up with is superior.

I know you can freehand, but I don't have the time, patience, or natural ability to learn the skill yet.
So, a small investment in a bullet-proof system has been well worth it.

The TSProf K03 is built like a tank. No plastic or fiddly parts.
Totally over engineered and over built. Idiot proof, thank goodness.
I've tried the Worksharp Ken Onion, Lansky, free-hand, pull through, etc and just never got good results until this machine.

The TSProf uses the "Edge-Pro" style stone. Its just a stone glued to an aluminum blank. The Edge Pro, Hapstone, TSProf and maybe other systems can use this stone, so its not proprietary like the Wicket Edge, and other systems. Its like the "Glock" or "ONR" of stones.
Lots of places cut down the good stones and mount them, so you can get just about any stone you want.
Get them these places:

All 6" Stones - Gritomatic
Shapton Stones For the Edge Pro
1x6 Hapstone


TSProf K03:


You can dial in the exact angle you want, then just go to town:


My favorite part: the Stones.
Its like buying a bunch of different polishes.
Shapton Glass 220
Shapton Glass 500
Shapton Glass 6,000
Suehiro Cerax 320
Edge Pro Diamond Matrix 650
Edge Pro Diamond Matrix 2,300
Naniwa Chosera 800
Naniwa Chosera 3000
Leather strop

My favorite combo for a every day carry pocket knife is
500 grit then 6,000 grit. Leaves a toothy edge, but polished for the best of both worlds


Here's a "before" on one of my pocket knives. You can see the sort of unintentional microbevel from not getting dialed in and using an inferior system:


And an "after". Think this was post 800-grit:

[MisterSnoop]

Here's a "before" on one of my pocket knives. You can see the sort of unintentional microbevel from not getting dialed in and using an inferior system:


And an "after". Think this was post 800-grit:

What did you use to take these photos?

[craigdt]

What did you use to take these photos?

Just one of the generic ~$40 bluetooth magnifiers from Amazon.

It was actually very helpful, early on, to see what exactly is going on during the sharpening process.
In addition to the sharpie method, helps you dial in your angle, incase you are just grinding on the shoulder, and not actually sharpening the edge.

[hotrodn]

this is where I learned by watching Mark's videos from Chef Knives To Go .com
also great inventory there...
Knife Sharpening Tutorials

[oneheadlite]

Craigdt - What a system! Hard not to be envious.

And boy, after seeing your close ups I'm having one of those "Well, If I had a Porsche, why would I not bring it to SizzleChest?" kinda moments - feeling like I just wanna box up my knife block and pay to have you do it!

Thanks for sharing. That's definitely more than I'm looking to invest at this time, but good to know about for sure.

That did also cover one of the things I was wondering - What the best way to inspect your edge is so you know what's going on. My eyesight's not terrible, but it's a pretty small scale you're working on...