Newbie Sharpening Question

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Epos7

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Hi all, I've been working on improving my knife sharpening this weekend. In the past I have used a pair of DMT diamond stones with decent results, but I am attempting to use my whetstones for a better result. Most of my sharpening experience is with hand plane blades. They're significantly easier because the bevel angle is stupidly obvious, and the bevel is so large it's easy to maintain that angle. The biggest challenge with hand plane blades is just keeping your stones flat.

I'm working with 1000, 4000, and 8000 grit Norton whetstones which I've lapped on an Atoma 400 diamond plate. I'm practicing with my Fibrox chef knife before I attempt my Takamura R2.

I've watched some YouTube videos and everyone seems to have their own sharpening motion, so I've been trying to find one that works for me. I'm able to get a nice consistent bevel and sharp (albeit rough) edge on the 1000 grit stone. My issue is when I move to the 4000 grit, my edge becomes dull. I must not be keeping a consistent angle on that stone, but I can't figure out why it's different than my 1000. Inspecting the edge, it isn't shiny or more polished on the top or bottom indicating different angle than the 1000 grit stone.

I'm sure I just need more practice, but I thought I'd check in here to see if there's something I might be missing.
 
The Fibrox is a Victorinox / Forschner I guess? You won't win a lot by polishing its soft stainless. I only deburr at 800 after sharpening at 400. Anyway, you may verify whether you're reaching the very edge by using the Marker Trick. And have you stropped and deburred on the 1k before going to the next stone? If it only flips without getting any smaller anymore it's time to go to the finer stone, not before. But this is the general rule. With the soft stainless there shouldn't be a finer stone at all IMHO.
 
I agree with Benuser...as to technique try the sharpening playlist from JKI...he makes it easy and offers good explanations for what he does.
 
Benuser said:
The Fibrox is a Victorinox / Forschner I guess? You won't win a lot by polishing its soft stainless. I only deburr at 800 after sharpening at 400. Anyway, you may verify whether you're reaching the very edge by using the Marker Trick. And have you stropped and deburred on the 1k before going to the next stone? If it only flips without getting any smaller anymore it's time to go to the finer stone, not before. But this is the general rule. With the soft stainless there shouldn't be a finer stone at all IMHO.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a Victorinox. Maybe it's the soft steel that's making me see these results? I don't have a strop yet but I have been making one final pass on each side of the blade. That's my attempt at deburring, but if there's a better way to do it I'm all ears.
 
By stropping I meant making edge trailing strokes on a stone, prior to deburring, which occurs by longitudinal strokes, so, along the edge, all very light. Mr Broida's videos are most helpful about this.

Go on with stropping until the burr only flips and doesn't get any smaller. Than deburr.
 
It's all in the technique, the way you hold and where you apply pressure to the knife. You have to learn how to inspect your edge. Detect the burr with your hands. Then finally remove the burr by stropping.
 
Epos7 said:
Yeah, it's a Victorinox. Maybe it's the soft steel that's making me see these results? I don't have a strop yet but I have been making one final pass on each side of the blade. That's my attempt at deburring, but if there's a better way to do it I'm all ears.
Click to expand...
Not maybe, IT IS the soft steel that is not able to get the most out of any grit >2000. If you are getting good results at 1000 grit them that is your stopping point until you sharpen harder steel.
 
How are you judging the sharpness of the knife? My gut tells me that the sharp edge that you feel at 1K is a wire edge. A wire edge will initially feel very sharp but it will dull quickly when it folds over or breaks off.

As others have indicated, I think that Fibrox performance peaks in the 1K-2K range. Given what you have, this is what I would do:

1) Form a burr with the 1K
2) Continue on the 1K but with light and few strokes and flipping often to weaken and reduce the burr.
3) Strop on the 4K or 8K with light edge trailing strokes only, flipping after each pass. Only 2 or 3 passes per side at most since you want to de-burr, not polish the edge.
4) Pull the knife over the edge of my cutting board once or twice for a final de-burring.

It would be helpful to use a 10x Loupe or pocket microscope to look at the edge after or during each step.
 
I'm able to get a nice consistent bevel and sharp (albeit rough) edge on the 1000 grit stone.
Click to expand...
This is good, you can stop here as others have mentioned.

My issue is when I move to the 4000 grit, my edge becomes dull.
Click to expand...

You may be creating wire edge via burnishing which means it just 'smears'
softer SS won't deburr always so cleanly like simple carbon steels.

Try easing up the pressure and using am
ever-so-much steeper angle.

If you really cannot get that burr off, a learning step is to micro-bevel
the burr off or even ultra-light bread-knife and touchup again
to correct the edge.

(don't try this latter option if it doesn't make sense when you read it, tho)

cheers and good luck. You'll probably do fine
when you start working on better stones and blade steels.
 
Also with Victorinox steel, if you use too much pressure on the higher stones (800+) you run the risk of ruining the edge you spent so much time creating on that soft steel. It's almost as if it just collapses on itself with too much pressure.
 
Some things that come to mind:

-While I do agree that going to high grits makes no sense on softish stainless steels (because it simply won't hold them for very long), that doesn't mean it shouldn't be possible to get them at least shaving sharp and see some progression in sharpness from the 1000 grit. V'nox is soft, but not that soft. Even on my cheap Chinese crap knives I notice the difference and I can get them razor sharp if I so desire. The reason to stay on the low / aggressive side is simply because those edges will hold reasonably well, while the shaving edge will start to dull after 10 minutes of dancing through meat...

-Have you tested the higher grit edge on (news)paper? Does it actually cut better or worse? Because often the low grit aggressive edge can 'feel' more 'sharp' than the well-polished edge, even tho the latter is sharper.

-Are you maybe cutting into the stone?

-Are you maybe using too much pressure - and thereby crushing the edge?

-Have you tried a different sharpening technique, like for example edge leading strokes? On the softer crap these tend to work better for me. It will usually result in not having a burr - unless you turn the knife over for some spine leading strokes - but for some reason they do seem to abrade better for me on the softer stuff. Try googling up the little promo video Bob Kramer made for Zwilling on sharpening; what I do on soft knives looks a lot like what he's doing.
 
Thanks all, this has been really helpful. I haven't been making trailing edge strokes to remove the burr, and that may be part of the problem. I've also on occasion been cutting into the stone so I need to work on that. I'm going to practice more today, I'll report back.
 
Epos7 said:
Thanks all, this has been really helpful. I haven't been making trailing edge strokes to remove the burr, and that may be part of the problem. I've also on occasion been cutting into the stone so I need to work on that. I'm going to practice more today, I'll report back.
Click to expand...

It just takes one wrong edge leading stroke that was too steep to remove all the bite and sharp edge.

Preserving that bite is so important to the edge's performance.
 
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