Tips for wide-bevel sharpening

So, I've thinned two of my knives now and have been playing around with finishes. It's a ton of fun, and the feeling of having improved a knife is fantastic.

However, I do not feel I'm getting optimal sharpness out of them. To my understanding, this should have been the easy part - at least theoretically. Since I'm just zero grinding them (with the intention of a micro-bevel), it was my understanding that a great (albeit a bit unstable) edge would be pretty straight-forward, since you remove the holding-a-steady-angle part of the equation. That's just not the result I feel I end up with, and I was wondering whether anyone could give me any tips for trouble-shooting. I just finish with edge-trailing "stropping" strokes, still making contact with the full bevel. Have tried finishing on anything from a JNS 6k to a HS53 uchi to a very hard razor finisher and have also tried leather stropping afterwards. It just never gets as impressively sharp as I would expect, and I still get better results with normal sharpening of just the cutting bevel on my other knives, which is very counterintuitive. So, am I missing some little trick for doing wide-bevel sharpening? There are much fewer resources out there to tap than regarding normal sharpening, and I hope I've just overlooked something obvious.

Can you give us more info on your leather stropping?
Did you test the edge before stropping?
If you get the angle wrong, the stropping can round-off the edge.

Yes, tried before and after. It was just to indicate that it was one of the things I had tried. Micro-bevel *seems* to also improve it slightly, which is also contrary to what I would intuitively believe.

Sharpening the cutting edge and putting a micro bevel on is a seperate thing from refinishing or polishing the blade road. Are you Polishing the wide bevel for contrast between mild and hard steels and expecting that to give you your final edge?

Sorry if I don't quite understand the original post

StonedEdge said:

Sharpening the cutting edge and putting a micro bevel on is a seperate thing from refinishing or polishing the blade road. Are you Polishing the wide bevel for contrast between mild and hard steels and expecting that to give you your final edge?

Sorry if I don't quite understand the original post

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He is referring to a zero grind. The bevel (or blade road as you put it) is ground flat on the stone on each side which terminates at the cutting edge. In effect the blade road and edge sharpening/polishing are accomplished at the same time as there is only one bevel. Some people add a koba on zero grinds but it depends on the application.

Ah true! Sounds easy, no? I know my yanagiba is my easiest knife to sharpen and that's like 1 sided version of the OP's knife technically

StonedEdge said:

Ah true! Sounds easy, no? I know my yanagiba is my easiest knife to sharpen and that's like 1 sided version of the OP's knife technically

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Yup! That's about it. They're usually pretty straightforward. I tend to zero scandi grinds (some are ground a little convex) but... I'm pretty lazy . Back to the OP - I've encountered knives with geometries that just don't support zero grinds very well. With those knives I've had success with sharpening at zero but creating a slight convex at the edge by lifting the spine just a couple of degrees on my last few strokes (sometimes this works better holding the knife parallel to the stone). That might work out for you. Sorry if I missed it in the OP but how is performance without the microbevel?

Good suggestion. My sample size is pretty limited, and I've done the most extensive testing on the same Moritaka #2 petty. If it's just the knife playing me for a fool, that would explain some of it. I'll try some more on the other. I've mostly tried performance sans the microbevel since it seemed to be a needless confounder on the actual problem at hand. It does seem to improve sharpness a bit, which isn't very intuitive, but might indicate that the slight convex at the edge might be a good suggestion.

I have never owned a Moritaka but I know they do make a lot of knives in AS. Some of the AS knives I own are very difficult when it comes to wire edge removal so that might be something to look at as well. In theory your micro bevel should get rid of it but if you're not sure if the micro bevel is the problem I would suggest just doing your regular sharpening but pay very close attention to burr/wire edge removal. You could try a wood cut or two between stones. Take a look at the edge in different light. Sometimes you can see stuff hanging of the edge pretty clearly.