Kippington Deburring Video

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Geller8

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Good morning team!

I am trying to find the thread where Kippington posted a video showing a quick way he deburs that is different than the regular ways people deburr. I found it in google once but I can't seem to find it again.

Also, what do you guys think about the pros and cons of this deburring method. He does it on an knife where the edge looks extremely thin and the steal look easy to sharpen. Would this method not be appropriate for a knife that has a tougher and thicker edge? Also once deburred with this method what type of finishing passes might be ideal. I usually deburr and finish with slightly higher angle edge leading passes on sintered ceramic. I like to do all my sharpening on stones so edge trailing passes are liable to form a new micro-burr. Is there any amount of micro-burr that is advantageous where the loss of edge retention is outweighed by the increased keenness.

Thank you guys for the video and thank you for any insight raised by a discussion of the video.
 
Here’s @kippington’s video - as requested:
Stropping on medium grit stones

The knife is pretty much at a right angle to the stone. Lowest amount of pressure possible.

Alright, made a video for clarity.

- Start: Knife is blunt, showing some tests to prove it
- 17 seconds: Sharpening starts, medium stone
- 24 seconds: Fine stone
- 35 seconds: Deburr, almost right angle knife-to-stone, diagonal run as to not cut into stone. Extremely low pressure. This pushes burr to the left side of knife
- 39 seconds: Pushing burr over again, even further. Low pressure again
- 42 seconds: Combination of cutting burr off completely + microbevel + polish edge.
- End: Repeat of edge tests

Hope it makes sense.
https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/index.php?posts/641973/
 
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Good morning team!

I am trying to find the thread where Kippington posted a video showing a quick way he deburs that is different than the regular ways people deburr. I found it in google once but I can't seem to find it again.

Also, what do you guys think about the pros and cons of this deburring method. He does it on an knife where the edge looks extremely thin and the steal look easy to sharpen. Would this method not be appropriate for a knife that has a tougher and thicker edge? Also once deburred with this method what type of finishing passes might be ideal. I usually deburr and finish with slightly higher angle edge leading passes on sintered ceramic. I like to do all my sharpening on stones so edge trailing passes are liable to form a new micro-burr. Is there any amount of micro-burr that is advantageous where the loss of edge retention is outweighed by the increased keenness.

Thank you guys for the video and thank you for any insight raised by a discussion of the video.

I've used this method on crappy stainless, too, and it works fine. Might take a bit longer to completely remove the burr, but the principle is sound. I finish with only edge leading strokes. I don't think micro-burr is ever a good thing, since it's just going to tear off or flop over when you hit the board or any hard product, leaving a compromised edge.
 
Oh hey, I just saw my name in a thread title!

I found this deburring method somewhere online years ago. At the time I mostly ignored it and chose to use one of the more conventional methods we tend to talk about on this forum.
After gaining a better understanding of how steel behaves through making knives, I came back to using it as it's actually a scaled down version of a useful knife-making technique.
Other deburring methods work too - I happen to like this one for it's speed, consistency, ease of use (using the stone you last used), and predictability (it works the same regardless of how big the burr is).

It's difficult to explain in words, maybe I'll post another video using a scrap piece of steel to better explain what's going on.
There was a surprising amount of interest in it. I might have gone on to explain it further on the other thread, but that one went south real quick.
8k_plus_p25diamond_10laps_01.jpg
 
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It's difficult to explain in words, maybe I'll post another video, using a scrap piece of steel to better explain what's going on
I would be very interested in another video with explanations. It would be great if you could take the time for it.
 
Alright, here it is!
I want to be clear - This is a video to explain a technique only. It was done on a 400 grit diamond plate - no higher grits - plus the knife used was a heat-treated bit of scrap steel.
Let me know if you have any questions.
 
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I must confess that this technique seemed a bit counterintuitive to me.

On a recent visit to Melbourne, Kip was kind enough to walk me through it.

I am astounded at how sharp this technique can make a knife. Even with just a coarse stone and a plain cardboard strop.
 
As a learning exercise, I'm going to summarise the technique as I see it. Kip, please correct me where I am wrong:


1) Go through your normal sharpening progression but don't try to reduce the burr until finished on your finest stone.

I would normally have sharpened last on the left side of the knife, so the burr is on the right.


2) Raise the spine until the blade face is almost vertial, with the spine slightly towards the burr (right) side. Fully vertical is apparently ideal but feels too weird, especially on coarse stones. I found about 70-80 degrees felt OK on a coarse stone.

Use an edge trailing stroke at this almost vertical angle to fully push the burr (almost 90 degrees) to the left side of the knife. The firmness of this stroke depends on the size of the burr. Confirm that the burr is fully on the left. Repeat if the burr is not fully flipped along the whole length of the edge (increase pressure if necessary).


3) Tilt the spine around 45 degrees towards the side that the burr is now on (left Side in my example). Use an edge leading stroke to remove the burr. You are essentially removing the burr by creating a microbevel on the same side as the burr. Confirm that the burr is all gone (repeat if necessary).

It helps to have a flat stone for this bit.


4) You can now re-apex your edge by sharpening at just above the original sharpening angle.

I think that this might just be removing the microbevel. Obviously, don't raise a big burr.


5) A few strops on cardboard makes the edge very sharp.
 
So you do full progression(no stropping) then return to coarse stone to remove burr and form microbevel? Then maybe minor strokes on said microbevel?
 
Hmm, that's not how I was interpreting it. I was using the nearly vertical motion just to flip & kill the burr on coarse and medium stones. (Ie, doing that after finishing on a given stone.) On high grits, I'm not really raising a burr.
 
So you do full progression(no stropping) then return to coarse stone to remove burr and form microbevel? Then maybe minor strokes on said microbevel?

No, deburring is done only on the finest stone, as is any re-apexing after deburring.

Kip was showing me on a coarse stone only for demonstration purposes.
 
Hmm, that's not how I was interpreting it. I was using the nearly vertical motion just to flip & kill the burr on coarse and medium stones. (Ie, doing that after finishing on a given stone.) On high grits, I'm not really raising a burr.

I did it on coarse/medium too, as I thought that that was the take home message from Kip’s video. Maybe doesn’t matter since I don’t raise burrs after leaving the coarse/medium grits.
 
The idea behind this technique might be to change the entire sharpening process to make it work 100% as intended.
I've tried this even on SG 16k and it worked well. What it actually does is that, as you are doing the entire progression, you just don't focus at all on deburr until the end. And this takes you very fast or faster there. Seems a bit odd, I know, but I feel like this is where this method really makes a difference.
In some ways, the finish and even a part of the the process, is similar to what some people were doing with razors for ages.
 
The finer the grit you use, the smaller the burr, meaning each stone only needs itself to get rid the burr it left behind.
In other words, you'll generally only need to use the last stone you used. There are caveats to this, but I won't go into detail.

I was only using coarse stones in the video because I wanted the camera to pick up large burrs.
 
Hmm. For some reason I thought it was important to deburr as much as possible with each stone. Maybe in practice it doesn't matter as much as I thought?
 
  • ian - For some reason I thought it was important to deburr as much as possible with each stone. Maybe in practice it doesn't matter as much as I thought?
  • Carl Kotte - Same here.
It's semi-answered here:
Maybe doesn’t matter since I don’t raise burrs after leaving the coarse/medium grits.
The finer grits get to work on the larger burr left over from the previous grits, subsequently decreasing it in size.

---------------------

Here's another way of looking at it:

By definition, a burr along the cutting edge is a loose bit of steel that wont stay rigid under relatively light pressure. The sideways de-burring method uses this property of the burr against itself by pushing the flexible zone of the knife edge to the side. Anything that doesn't get pushed, it isn't really part of the burr. If you have a thicker burr you might need more pressure on the push/drag, but it will still do the job no matter what grit you use. Doing it against a hard abrasive surface is key, as softer materials might yield to the burr.
The first pass (near 90°) works to push/drag the burr to one side, and once that is under control the second pass (around 45°) acts to shear the burr off between the stable part of the knife edge and the cutting action of the stone surface.
 
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