Freehand Sharpening - which technique?

[essexalan]

Right.
I've inherited a family carving set (3rd generation could be 100 years old) which is ordinary Sheffield steel (not stainless) with ordinary bone handles. It's been sharpened with a steel all this time, with nobody having the faintest idea about "edge geometry" but it has always cut really well!
Hope that helps![/quote]

Then you probably have some quality steel there most knives of that era are totally worn out. When I worked as a lad in a butchers then there was much clanking of steel in a display of showmanship by the butcher but once a week a van would visit and all the knives and cleavers were reground on a manual wheel, I think the bloke pedalled it. Steeling will straighten and burnish the edge but you will still not get as good an edge as with a proper resharpen. Think of it as a large burr on your plane blade you keep flipping the blade until you have abraded it away, with a steel you just move it back in line and do it enough times and it will break off. No you don't have to know anything about edge geometry nor do you have to appreciate a really sharp piece of steel, if your knives will cut ripe tomatoes in thin slices under their own weight then obviously you have nothing to learn.

 

[bugbear]

Then you probably have some quality steel there most knives of that era are totally worn out. When I worked as a lad in a butchers then there was much clanking of steel in a display of showmanship by the butcher but once a week a van would visit and all the knives and cleavers were reground on a manual wheel, I think the bloke pedalled it. Steeling will straighten and burnish the edge but you will still not get as good an edge as with a proper resharpen. Think of it as a large burr on your plane blade you keep flipping the blade until you have abraded it away, with a steel you just move it back in line and do it enough times and it will break off. No you don't have to know anything about edge geometry nor do you have to appreciate a really sharp piece of steel, if your knives will cut ripe tomatoes in thin slices under their own weight then obviously you have nothing to learn.

Good to hear from someone with actual knowledge on Butchers' knife sharpening, which many(*) people mythologise as the high point of knife sharpening.

EDIT;

post1000854.html?hilit=%20double%20shear#p1000854

It's certainly true that a local butcher's knives are probably sharper than 90% or more of his customers' knives.

BugBear

(*) try talking to a fishmonger about butcher's "sharp" knives

 

[Corneel]

I have once or twice wandered over to knife forums or youtubes. If you think sharpening is a hotly debated topic overhere, well, you've got something to learn!

I am woefully ignorant about knife sharpening. Something I really need to target.

 

[essexalan]

Very true BugBear I have watched the market fish guys filleting and they keep their knives very sharp and not the sort of knife you see sold now as a filleting knife. Long and wide two swipes and that's a large cod filleted with minimal wastage, quick touch up and on to the next. Cast steel makes good tools and I like it a lot thanks for the link.

 

[D_W]

There used to be a huge fish market here, and aside from looking at the knives, one notices the extreme stink of being in an enclosed building....anyway, the knives. The fish guys here use cheap knives - different than you'd see someone using for a tuna worth several thousand dollars. There is a separate market that has two of those guys who use japanese knives.

At any rate, to address a couple of the points:
* knives that are intended to be steeled do very well when steeled by a smooth steel, dozens of times between sharpening. I don't have an opinion on serrated steels, because I don't use them
* sharpening a knife that is soft and intended to be steeled with a diamond hone instead every time doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I did that for a while, too, until I could get a decent smooth steel

Knives that are designed soft so that they can be steeled should be steeled, knives that are too hard to be steeled should be sharpened. A knife that can't be sharpened fairly quickly is a waste of time, or a specimen for staring at rather than using. That's my opinion, at least. It's the job of the makers to convince you that you can't get by with a plain rikizai knife made of VG 10 or blue #2, you know, the ones that are $75, and convince you that there is something to gain by getting a knife that stays sharp twice as long but is several clicks harder and fails with little chips and takes longer to sharpen.

Marketing of japanese knives is different. They are not peddled in the home store catalogs (maybe some rikizai knives are), but instead sold on sites extolling the virtues of a knife 65 hardness instead of 63, and with magic wondersteel qualities that make it worth 10 times as much (perceived to be, at least). Those things are made more for people who want to role play in their own houses and pretend that they are like the professional fish guy down the street. On knife forums and in youtube comments, you often see "i need..." "i need..." this or that something that didn't exist 20 years ago.

If there were no japanese knives, people would be able to do anything they do with western knives. If there was no powder metal this or that, people would be able to do (competently) everything they do with knives similar to the current rikizai knives.

Reminds me a lot of beginning woodworking, there's always someone who "knows better" than the traditionalists, and there's always a crowd telling us why technical advances have made the previous best unacceptable. Not much of it is rooted in reality, and still with all of it, the best skill to learn is to be able to sharpen quickly with minimal equipment and no gadgets. AT least if the idea is actually doing work with the knives (or tools).

 

[essexalan]

As with everything there is the law of diminishing returns and none of my knives are hand forged AFAIK, paying £800 and upwards for one that is seems a bit daft but I do appreciate the work that goes into such a blade. So if you can find no difference between a £2 bottle of wine and a £10 one then you are wasting your money or driving and old banger versus the latest off the German production lines. I do enjoy using the Japanese knives I have and consider them worthwhile, sharpening them was another skill to learn so I enjoy doing that as well. As for steeling what I said I stand by my steel was ground smooth, polished a long time ago and is used for cabinet scrapers. Same with planes are any Holtey planes actually in use or are they all in collectors cabinets? So you can buy a clunker Stanley/Record at auction and turn it into a good efficient plane which will do the job as well as anything else out there so why buy anything else? Personally I have done just that and a couple of LN planes I own are now gathering dust but I still like to use one of my two infills to finish the job. Why? Because I enjoy using them, they fit me.
So if I could sell you a plane iron which was guaranteed never to need sharpening for the lifetime of the owner would you buy one?

 

[Jacob]

.......So if you can find no difference between a £2 bottle of wine and a £10 one then you are wasting your money ....

Serious wine buffs are known to avoid blind tasting as they often can't tell the difference either! Well documented.
Not sure how this relates to woodwork but I'm sure it could be made to. :lol:

 

[MIGNAL]

There's obviously a lower limit. A £2 (if it exists) bottle of wine isn't going to taste that great or the chances are it's going to be fairly poor. That's what my taste buds tell me whenever I've bought a very cheap wine, which is hardly ever these days. Telling the difference between a £10 bottle and a £20 or £30+ bottle could turn out to be much harder than many would care to admit. I very much doubt that I could do it without looking at the label or the price tag - generally speaking.

 

[Corneel]

Point is, the old Stanleys are seriously good planes. The castings are very good quality, lighter weight then the newer offerings but very stable. I have a set of turn of the century Stanleys and only the #3 needed a bit of sole flattening. The frogs fit precisely without any wobbling, the blades are thin and laminated, quite a feat! Rosewood handles. I would easilly put them into the 30 quid wine category.

Contrast that with cherry wood handles, thicker, heavier and softer castings, chipbreakers that are not designed to break chips, thick blades made from A2 (yek!).

 

[essexalan]

I don't have old Stanleys but probably 70's era Records plus a late Stanley and they did need a bit of work plus the blades are not good IMO. The blades were replaced with Smoothcut Japanese laminated blades which proved to be far better and quite cheap at the time. What really transformed mine was the information supplied about cap iron placement I must have been the only person who did not know about it. It made sense, it was free and it works :0) Thanks to all concerned.
As to the performance of the various cap irons I have the only ones that work with the minimum of fettling are the Stanley type or some of the old British cap irons.
Still have not made up my mind about A2 but it does have it uses primarily for planeing timber to size quickly where the chipping does not matter much, don't think I would buy another one though.

 

[D_W]

As with everything there is the law of diminishing returns and none of my knives are hand forged AFAIK, paying £800 and upwards for one that is seems a bit daft but I do appreciate the work that goes into such a blade. So if you can find no difference between a £2 bottle of wine and a £10 one then you are wasting your money or driving and old banger versus the latest off the German production lines. I do enjoy using the Japanese knives I have and consider them worthwhile, sharpening them was another skill to learn so I enjoy doing that as well. As for steeling what I said I stand by my steel was ground smooth, polished a long time ago and is used for cabinet scrapers. Same with planes are any Holtey planes actually in use or are they all in collectors cabinets? So you can buy a clunker Stanley/Record at auction and turn it into a good efficient plane which will do the job as well as anything else out there so why buy anything else? Personally I have done just that and a couple of LN planes I own are now gathering dust but I still like to use one of my two infills to finish the job. Why? Because I enjoy using them, they fit me.
So if I could sell you a plane iron which was guaranteed never to need sharpening for the lifetime of the owner would you buy one?

The last question, no. I would assume you'd have it set up in a way that would be what I want. I will agree that the 70s irons seemed to have gone into the toilet all at once. What's strange is that the coarser looking later irons (I just got one in a new english made 12-904, though I'm prepared now to throw the rest of the plane away other than the screws and the iron)...anyway, those coarser later irons are OK.

The original vintage stanley irons are really nice, especially the laminated types. I also at one point had a tsunesaburo rikizai iron comparable to the smoothcut, and it was a nice iron, but it ultimately got sold in a plane.

I missed the A2 quote, maybe it was in a later post. I can tell you how much I think of it - I've got a bedrock 605 that I need to dump and I thought it would probably have a vintage iron in it, but it does not - it has a modern A2 iron in it. You don't get anything extra for that when you go to sell a plane like a bedrock, so I could switch that out for another vintage iron that I have on hand and get the same amount of money for the plane (maybe more with a nice vintage iron). I won't be switching it out. I wouldn't trade a good vintage iron for a new A2 iron.

re: the knives - the $400 knives that are rikizai are the ones that don't make sense to me, or that are just very dull looking powder steel blades - and when you go look more closely at the reviews, the objective ones suggest that there hasn't been much gain (and the defective rate seems to be higher). One that comes to mind are Richmond knives sold over here by a retailer who brands his knife by his last name. Some of the powder metal reviews aren't so good. I get the $800 (what they cost here) hand forged and hand finished thing, that is a craft that you're paying someone to do and thus the price. Not something I'd buy, but I understand the proposition - it goes beyond capabilities of the knives (I'm sure those $800 knives will chip, too - just as you can push a kiyotada chisel too hard and chip them).

Ditto on the cap iron - it has really thinned out my shelves.

(something doesn't make sense with the steeling comment still, though. Light touch on the last strokes pushes the foil straight up, but a knife that's been steeled a few times shouldn't have an organized foil, anyway. Most of those knives just don't hold their sharpened edge long enough to warrant sharpening every time).

 

[essexalan]

Would not know what I am looking for with Stanley blades and the various secondhand tool sellers seem to call everything vintage. A2 is OK but I only use it for cleaning up sawn timber where the chips don't matter much.
Never paid that much money, $400, for a knife so I would not know, all Japanese knives will chip if you abuse them so they do have their limitations. For all the tough work I use Western knives, like boning or cutting frozen meat up for the dogs. Have not used a steel in over 30 years always a fine diamond plate and I only have stainless steel Western knives, they still get a lot of use. I did find that the knife tended to stay sharper for longer using the plate, those diamond hones are far too coarse IMO and possibly ceramic hones may be better.

 

[bugbear]

One that comes to mind are Richmond knives sold over here by a retailer who brands his knife by his last name.

Who's that?

Richmond knives info here:

http://richmondknives.com/products.php

BugBear

 

[D_W]

One that comes to mind are Richmond knives sold over here by a retailer who brands his knife by his last name.

Who's that?

Richmond knives info here:

http://richmondknives.com/products.php

BugBear

I looked through that after I made that comment. It appears that the line is a lot larger than it was previously, and there is a lot more stuff like I favor in it and less (perhaps no) $400 stuff.

So my comment is about 2 years out of date, as that's the last time I read reviews on $400 powder Richmond knives. It appears the line those knives were in (addict) is being phased out. (presumably, that stuff didn't sell too well). Part of the criticism at the time, also, was that there was (probably still is) a forum attached to that site where moderators allowed discussion of the various knives (but squashed any posts that were negative).

I can't say too much about the knives there now, they're probably fine. The simpler knives are, the easier it seems for people to do them well and consistently (i'd trust a blue #2 knife that's $75 and not much more than something punched out of rikizai to be pretty good. I wouldn't have quite so much faith about things that haven't been out a while).

At any rate, my example is out of date, and I'm a little too lazy to go look (i recall that there used to be some static about knives that are popular in japan outside of enthusiasts - they have sort of the crate and barrel kind of appeal where well heeled customers will pay twice for the same thing they could get under another label. Moritaka might be a name I recall, but not sure. I'd have to ask stanley covington).

All of that said, I'm totally thrilled with the quality of the rikizai $75 knives. Any time I think "I wonder if there's something that would hold an edge a little longer", I'm sure there is something that would hold a little longer, but at 5 times the cost, and something like a knife used for vegetables in blue 2 stays sharp so long it's ridiculous, especially when a touch up on a suita is literally a couple of minutes for then months more of blissful slicing.

 

[Jacob]

Do you have any recipes or is it just about sharpening?

 

[D_W]

Do you have any recipes or is it just about sharpening?

Of course, though anything fresh meat or fresh fruit and vegetables is fair game (I don't play fishmonger cutting apart whole fish, nor sushi chef).

And bread, from scratch (like from wheat berries, not flour).

Even if nobody does anything other than cut fresh fruit and vegetables and never actually makes a recipe, they deserve a knife that does it properly.

 

[Benchwayze]

Depends on what tool I am sharpening. But I don't use a honing guide, or the 'rule trick', if that's what you mean. 8)

 

[swagman]

Slightly off topic; the following shows my recently purchased 6 inch cnc grinding wheels (80 and 180 grit), with the Woodcut Tru Grind sliding track tool rests. The old heavy duty grinder runs at 2850 rpm. I will need to relocate those slide tracks to obtain a higher approach against the grit face of the cbn wheels. No instructions were supplied so it was all guess work setting these things up. There is plenty of existing clearance between the top of the slides and the bottom line of the cbn wheels; so most likely I resolve this issue by fitting a 1 3/4 inch packer under both slide bases. All good; easy fix.

A big thanks to Derek C. for his recommendation on the cnc wheels.

Stewie;

 

[swagman]

I was able to increase the height of the tool rest by moving the slide track bases 2 inches further back. With the vertical adjustment arms set at 70* and the tool rest adjusted to 32* , the hollow grinding bevel equates to 25*. ( + 7 * bias with the tool rest setting) The following photo's illustrate the before and after height difference gained with the tool rest. Job done.

Stewie;

 

[swagman]

An additional comment; the rubber cleaning sticks used for sanding discs do an excellent job on the grit surface of cbn wheels.

Stewie;