Any tips for sharpening old bullnose butcher knives?

[gic]

I just got through sharpening a forgecraft bullnose and it was a true PITA. It was easy to raise a burr on the body of the knife but took forever to raise it on the bull nose, *and* I was using Jon"s 400 Geshin which raises a burr for a new bevel on, for example, forgies chefs knives really quickly. I basically just resorted to concentrating on the nose by holding the nose to the stone at the right angle and grinding away in a circular pattern for a long long time and then used Kramer's arc approach to blend the two edges. In sum it was like sharpening two knives with completely different feelings to them and on one of them none of my standard techniques seem to work very well so I resorted to the really old fashioned circular grind!

Is this typical of bullnose knives when sharpening them? Anyone have any tips on a more efficient method of sharpening them?

TIA

 

[Mrmnms]

How was your bevel angle on the bull nose compared to the rest of the knife? Maybe it needed more work in the nose because it was previously neglected. It requires more attention. I think you focusing on the nose before you go to the rest of the knife is a good option.

 

[psfred]

Typically one has to lift the handle end of the knife and rotate the blade some to keep the bevel angle the same up around the bullnose, and if this has not been done properly in the past you could be in for some work to get it correct, assuming the knife should be sharp all the way to the tip. If someone has used a steel on the knife, it's likely that the bullnose was very blunt, it's nearly impossible to get a steel to work well on the rounded portion, so the straight part has been sharpened quite a bit more than the nose.

If you don't have a magnifier, you should obtain one so you can figure out how to grind the bevel at the same angle all the way out to the tip. If you leave the knife flat, the bevel angle will tend to decrease at you go "up" the tip.

As noted, you should sharpen the tip first and then the straight portion of the blade while holding a constant bevel angle -- not a constant angle at the handle.

once you get it properly sharpened this should not be an issue in the future.

Peter