Cheap Sharpening Angle Guide

I learned this method from an old-timer American by the name of Tex-Shooter in Slingshot Forum. He used 2 pieces of wooden dowels clamped together with rubber bands for the guide. I can't use rubber band on huge kitchen knives, so I use office clips instead.






I can consistently put a primary and secondary bevel on the knives. Split the bamboo chopstick half for a steeper secondary bevel, use whole chopstick for primary angle.





With this angle guide, all you need to do is apply pressure only on the edge area, not on the guide! I made this mistake when I was still experimenting. You can now forget about keeping the blade angle consistent, which is very tiring and there's always rooms for mistakes. During the finishing part on fine stone, you only need to focus on applying pressure on the backward movement, as taught in Korin videos. Sharpening becomes a breeze and you can casually hone the blade without paying attention to the angle anymore.

If the chopstick wobbles around, place your thumb on the spine to stop it in place.

You don't need fancy equipment to sharpen like a pro.

The factory edge of this cheap-@ss knife sucks, now it can shave some hair, slice paper and slice through bread like butter.

Except that with method you will not get a consistent angle. The dowel has the same diameter over its whole length but the knifeblade gets narrower towards the tip. That means the angle will become higher towards the tip.

Btw weird concidence, I'm a member of the slinghshot forum too. I have designed some templates, the Bad Company and the Bad Hammer, they're in the templates download section.

Freehand or bust.

mhpr262 said:

Except that with method you will not get a consistent angle. The dowel has the same diameter over its whole length but the knifeblade gets narrower towards the tip. That means the angle will become higher towards the tip.

Btw weird concidence, I'm a member of the slinghshot forum too. I have designed some templates, the Bad Company and the Bad Hammer, they're in the templates download section.

Click to expand...

Nope, you can always adjust the chopstick angle when sharpening the curved tip. Use a larger clip to clamp it down diagonally. Can't you see how uniform the bevel is along the whole blade? This setup is more flexible than you think.

I don't like that slingshot forum actually, a lot of the new members there have no basic knowledge on slingshots, full of n00bs. I only support Melchiormenzel.de as that is the first slingshot website/forum, and it covers all the basics which most people won't even bother to read. Some 'experienced' shooters don't even know how to properly load a Starship. And then there are some bad Solid Boardcut designs which is potentially dangerous, they don't understand how wood grain works? Sigh... :running: I have my gallery there btw.

Pardon if i'm mistaken, but what mhpr262 means is that regardless of if there is a tip that is curved, a knife spine width changes as it approaches the tip. Take a look at this yanagiba http://www.japaneseknifeimports.com/kitchen-knives-12/kitchen-knives/gesshin-kagekiyo/gesshin-kagekiyo-300mm-white-1-yanagiba.html The spine width above heel according to the site is 3.78 (mm, i guess?), and the spine width at 1cm from the tip is 1.85. If you want to have a consistent bevel angle, your dowel should be thinner at the handle and thicker at the tip, otherwise the angle will be steeper at the tip. But correct me if i'm wrong by all means!

I understand what you mean, but this is only for conventional mass-produced knives. It might not work on traditional Japanese knives.

Can you try to make a video of that?

Lizzardborn said:

Can you try to make a video of that?

Click to expand...

[video=youtube_share;gDFxG3G7xfg]http://youtu.be/gDFxG3G7xfg[/video]

This is the knife after being sharpened. I shave my leg because my arm was out of hair due to previous tests with other knives. It has some micro-chips along the length, so it can't slice paper smoothly.