Got my EP Pro

It's really cool.
Again I'm the guy with a 20-year old set of Henckels Four Stars that were always "sharpened" on one of those 3-wheel electric Chef's Choice (the glorified can opener). :eek2:

Please do not stone me; I have repented and seen the light.
Last week I went to see Jon at JKI in Venice, California.
I spent a couple hours with him and Sara and left with my first two real knives, but that's another thread I'll start soon.
They are wonderful people.

Now, I'm training on my new EP Pro with my old Henckels, which I will keep for the family to use.
Ben sent me 220, 320 and 1000 (instead of 600) stock stones.

The edges of my old Henckels are are all really trashed.
I started today on the 260mm chef.
I am first putting a 13 degree bevel on it, then (I think) a 20 degree bevel will finish it off.

Right now I think I'm finished with the 3 stones at 13 degrees.
I didn't even bother trying to approach a mirror finish since I think you guys told me it's a waste of time on these knives and it would be too slippery anyway.

I didn't have a sharpie handy so I used a good jeweler's 10x loupe to guide the progress as I worked it towards the edge.
The loupe worked very well since it is easy to see where you just exposed fresh metal.

I intentionally did NOT take it far enough to make a burr; I stopped just short of that. (See pic below)
It took forever with the 220 stock EP stone because I used very little pressure partly because I hear that slower and light pressure is best, and partly because I'm getting used to the new tool.

Below is a pic of the 13 degree bevel and a couple of the leftover gouges which I belive the 20 degree edge will eliminate.



What do you guys think?
Should I move on to 20 degrees now or should I keep working at 13 degrees to removed these gouges?

This is fun.
I'm hooked! :tongue:

Something else I noticed . . .
The old edge was very much NOT uniform.
I was careful to work both sides equally, both in pressure and number of passes.
One side sharpened up to the edge MUCH faster than the other side.

That's what I get for using a glorified can opener for 20 years. :scared2:

I`m telling you, hand sharpening is so much easier

Either way, i'm glad youre starting with the sharpening

I'm looking forward to learning.


You're up late Jon.
You should be :sleeping:

Edgy Guy said:

...One side sharpened up to the edge MUCH faster than the other side...

Click to expand...

This is actually normal. What you're not considering is as you are grinding one side, the other bevel is getting smaller as the edge comes down. This should happen every time your sharpen.

That is a terrific photograph of the knife edge. I would like to be able to take photos of my knife edges like that. Can you tell me how?

Thanks

Keith

The gouges are there because you didn't raise a burr.

When the bevels meet each other through sharpening, they will form a burr. This is the nature of steel. Raise the burr, not huge, then flip it to the other side a few times, and remove it.

When you come off your 220 grit stock EP stone, the deepest gouge on the edge should be the size of the largest particle in the 220 grit stone(so, scratch-deep).

tk59 said:

This is actually normal. What you're not considering is as you are grinding one side, the other bevel is getting smaller as the edge comes down. This should happen every time your sharpen.

Click to expand...

Again I intentionally did not raise a burr, so in this case I believe this is not true.
If I was sharpening to the point I was raising a burr that would be true.

Am I thinking correctly?


Again, I read here somewhere when you are doing aggressive grinding to restore an old trashed knife and intend to end up with two bevels, you use your coarsest stone and stop just short of raising a burr.
I'm at I I believe I am done with step one, the 13 degree work.

Next, in step 2, the 20 degree work, which has not been started yet will get those gouges and of course I will be raising a burr at 20 degrees.
I think the idea of not getting the burr at 13 degrees was to be conservative and save metal that didn't need removing.

This was not my idea, I read it here, or it was on one of the Youtube videos someone here made.
I'll look around and try to find where I read it.
I was just asking you guys if gouges above [again this edge is only 13 degrees so far] are shallow enough to be addressed by finishing up at 20 degrees.

Keith Neal said:

That is a terrific photograph of the knife edge. I would like to be able to take photos of my knife edges like that. Can you tell me how?

Thanks

Keith

Click to expand...

Thanks.
I'm kind of a macro-photography nut.
I'll post a pic of my set up soon after I get my coffee and walk the dogs.

So you are going for a 13 degree edge with a 20 degree microbevel? The bit about not raising a burr, I have seen it before but if you are only starting I wouldn't do that. Start by actually raising a burr, then when you can feel it very clearly you will know better when there is a tiny burr forming, so in future you will be able to stop sooner if you follow. I'd just get rid of the gouge at 13 degrees, before you put the microbevel on, any time I use microbevels I only use my finishing stone so this takes away very little metal.

what may end up happening, is that when you go to remove the gouges with a secondary bevel you will actually end up thinning your original 13* bevel and lose edge performance.

I would remove the gouges on the 13* then proceed to microbevel at 20*

In essence this gives you a performace of a 13* and the stability of the 20*. A hybrid of sorts.

The way I think most people would do this with your stones:

Sharpen all the way to 1000 with the 13*. Raising a burr each time with each stone till you can fold it over easily.

Then with your last stone (finishing stone - the 1000 grit) put the 20* microbevel on.

When I set an edge with multiple bevels, I don't care about thoroughly removing the burr after each stone when I do the first bevel, but you have to raise a burr to make sure both planes meet at the very edge and form a 'V'.

Keith Neal said:

That is a terrific photograph of the knife edge. I would like to be able to take photos of my knife edges like that. Can you tell me how?

Thanks

Keith

Click to expand...

Here's the set up for that pic.
The cloth light box softens and evens out the light from the external cheapo CFL light in a 10" reflector (the black thing seen on the right).
When I actually take the pic I position the light outside the box with one hand while looking through the camera.

I position the light to do a few things...
1. Get the edge to be brighter than the side of the blade for pleasing contrast.
2. Try to side-light the edge by putting the light around 90 degrees from the camera and nearly in line with the knife edge.
Side-lighting emphasizes the toothy texture of the scratches left in the metal by the stone.
If the light was too even or behind the camera the texture would vanish.
Also without the light box the side lighting may be to harsh and directional and make it harder to understand the texture being emphasized.

The Nikon DSLR camera is on a heavy tripod.
The lens is a 30-yr old true macro lens (Nikkor calls them micro:scratchhead 105mm f2.8.
There is also one extension ring between the lens and the camera body.
These have no glass in them so they do not degrade the image and are cheap.
They just move the lens further from the camera body which gives even more enlargement than 1:1. (1:1 is the definition of true macro and means the size of a penny's image on the film or sensor is the size of the penny itself.

I also have a bellows (those old-fashioned accordion-looking things) that moves the lens up to 10" from the camera when I want super duper close ups.

Another tip for sharper pics is get as close as your camera/lens allows.
Fill up the frame with what you want before you take the pic.
Cropping later is not the same.
Cropping later wastes the pixels (and therefore the resolution) you paid for when you bought your camera.
Fancy gear helps a lot but you can get excellent results from a point and shoot using good macro techniques and paying close attention to lighting.

on the raising a burr issue, i've read that some people try not to raise them. This is what i have found (and consequently what has been confirmed with me by the sharpeners i train with)... forming a burr serves 2 purposes... the first (and less important of the two) is to let you know you've reached the edge)... the second (and more important of the two) is to make sure you've removed fatigued metal at the edge of the knife. I say form a burr when you sharpen. It doesnt have to be a huge floppy piece of metal that you can see from far away, but you should be able to feel for it. Then, spend the rest of your time sharpening refining the edge and removing the burr.

+1 on burr raising, nice setup btw, is that a D7000? I have a D90 and one of the just as old 60mm "micro" lenses that I'm trying to learn to use. The DOF seems more of a challenge up close!

I find it extremely important to raise a burr at some point in the sharpening process. The older and more beat up the edge is the more burr formation is needed. I think that in this particular case you may find your edge will fail quickly or may never get as sharp as you hope it will.

To illustrate this point, I've found many many many times over the years that I've had to re-sharpen (that's 2x) old knives just to get an edge that'll cut paper cleanly.

JBroida said:

on the raising a burr issue, i've read that some people try not to raise them. This is what i have found (and consequently what has been confirmed with me by the sharpeners i train with)... forming a burr serves 2 purposes... the first (and less important of the two) is to let you know you've reached the edge)... the second (and more important of the two) is to make sure you've removed fatigued metal at the edge of the knife. I say form a burr when you sharpen. It doesnt have to be a huge floppy piece of metal that you can see from far away, but you should be able to feel for it. Then, spend the rest of your time sharpening refining the edge and removing the burr.

Click to expand...

Ahhh! BINGO!
Thanks Jon.
That's it.

I realize I'm a noob and SOP is raising a burr but it is nice to hear that there are two reasons for doing so.
1. Being certain your new bevel has reached the edge.
2. Removing fatigued old metal.

I was certain of #1 via appearance not feel.

I'm an old hand at microscopes and loupes and tooling metal under a microscope.
I stopped and louped the edge around 100 times over a two hour period and watched as the new bevel grew gradually towards the edge on both sides.
My logic was to stop where I did to just save a few molecules of metal so the knife lasts 428.7 years instead of only 412.3 (My dentist taught me about being conservative with precious original material.)

I realize the SOP is going by feel and burr, not by sight using optics.
I will learn to do it via the burr.

Now that I know about reason 2, removing fatigued metal, I will certainly proceed further at 13 degrees.

Avishar said:

+1 on burr raising, nice setup btw, is that a D7000? I have a D90 and one of the just as old 60mm "micro" lenses that I'm trying to learn to use. The DOF seems more of a challenge up close!

Click to expand...

Yes it is a D7000.
Depth of field decreases with magnification.
You can stop down the lens to a smaller aperture (higher f-number) but only so far, because at the smallest apertures, f22 f32, another optical phenomenon kicks in, diffraction.

Light bends a tiny bit when it travels next to something.
At large open apertures only a relatively small amount of the light is near the blades of the iris do diffraction is not noticeable.

At smaller closed apertures, like f32, a greater proportion of the light is near the blades.
This bent light softens the focus.
This can surprise people who think no further than: smaller hole = greater depth of field.
This is why I try to never stop down beyond f16.

Here's a closer pic of that gouge remaining on the 13* edge.
For size reference I put a penny behind the blade.
Those are the columns of the Lincoln Memorial.

Dave Martell said:

I find it extremely important to raise a burr at some point...

Click to expand...

Edgy: couple of things I'll add, and credit to Dave, 'cause he's the first person I remember doing this (emphasis on "I remember")....after you raise and remove the burr, go up to the next stone, then back down, then up again. Usually I cheat by removing the burr, and just going back to the same stone again. In my mind, when you remove the burr, you are pulling/ripping away metal. You've improved the edge, but you've also just pulled two pieces of metal away from each other. Going back with the same stone cleans up that edge.

Also - again, just my $0.02, on the well used Henkels, thinning the shoulders at 13* is fine, but I might do my primary at 18* - 20*, and my micro at just a nudge higher on the EP. The Forschners in my house are the beaters, and thats how I set them up.

And WELCOME!

mikemac said:

Edgy: couple of things I'll add, and credit to Dave, 'cause he's the first person I remember doing this (emphasis on "I remember")....after you raise and remove the burr, go up to the next stone, then back down, then up again. Usually I cheat by removing the burr, and just going back to the same stone again. In my mind, when you remove the burr, you are pulling/ripping away metal. You've improved the edge, but you've also just pulled two pieces of metal away from each other. Going back with the same stone cleans up that edge.

Also - again, just my $0.02, on the well used Henkels, thinning the shoulders at 13* is fine, but I might do my primary at 18* - 20*, and my micro at just a nudge higher on the EP. The Forschners in my house are the beaters, and thats how I set them up.
And WELCOME!

Click to expand...

Thanks.
What did you mean by "my micro"?

FWIW, here's the lens extension that was needed to take that close up of the edge gouge with the penny in the background.

You take great edge pictures, much better than almost all of the microscope images that have been posted over the years.

Thanks Dave.

Now . . . if I could just learn how to sharpen a knife that can shave a one-molecule-thick tomato slice without even touching the tomato...

Edgy Guy said:

Thanks.
What did you mean by "my micro"?

Click to expand...

Mirco bevel
Always seems to spark a discussion as to weather it should be called the primary, seconary or whatever....I'd run thru the stones at 18*, deburring after each and then adding a few gentle EP swipes before moving up to the next stone. THEN I'd bump up the angle and add a few swipes on each stone with your highest grit stone.

mikemac said:

Mirco bevel
Always seems to spark a discussion as to weather it should be called the primary, seconary or whatever....I'd run thru the stones at 18*, deburring after each and then adding a few gentle EP swipes before moving up to the next stone. THEN I'd bump up the angle and add a few swipes on each stone with your highest grit stone.

Click to expand...

So in my case I'd have two bezels, 13* and 20* with the 20* nicknamed the microbevel?
Or do you mean a third bevel AFTER the 13* and 20* of, say, 25*?

Is microbevel a nick name for the last (and highest-angle) bevel?

Edgy Guy said:

So in my case I'd have two bezels, 13* and 20* with the 20* nicknamed the microbevel?
Or do you mean a third bevel AFTER the 13* and 20* of, say, 25*?

Is microbevel a nick name for the last (and highest-angle) bevel?

Click to expand...

I have only ever heard of one person that does a 3 bevel grind.

For the henckels stick with two bevels one at 13-15, the other [nicknamed microbevel] at 18-22.

You should get good results with that.

As for bevel names: there is a thread somewhere on here about which was primary which was secondary. there was no clear winner I don't think

Oh Baby! Oh Baby!

The mailgal JUST delivered my iGaging AngleCube.

BWHAHAHA

You're out of control Edgy!

Dave, are you saying only sane people are allowed here? :haha4: