Desert Rat
Senior Member
Bur sharpening isn't the only way to do it.
What happens when them oil stone users take light alternating edge leading strokes, are they flipping a wire edge from one side to the other?
Stropping on medium grit stones
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HRC_64
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The interesting idea is for deburr removal if you can use ulutra-low pressure to avoid problems...
either by avoiding burr formation or (potentially) avoiding slurry contamination/creation, etc...
Edge leading strokes don't creat burrs, plastic deformation is going the wront way...
but you have to give up waterstones and use oilstones...which is a non-starter.
On waterstones, the problem is abrasive slurry and edge leading strokes
don't really go together...pretty sure this is why Japanese method
doesn't do edge leading...
somdbody can probalby correct this if its wrong,
but it just seems like common sense :dunno:
I don’t know. Edge leading works fine for me on waterstones. You can certainly keep washing off your stone, for one, although I’m not sure how much even a thick slurry would damage an edge. It seems reasonable that it might. However, there are tons of conjectures you can make about sharpening by trying to visualize what’s happening at a microscopic level, and some of them turn out to be bogus since what you’re imagining isn’t actually significant to the end result. Anyway, I’ve found edge leading to be vastly better than edge trailing for burr removal on waterstones, especially on crappy stainless. (I do generally wash away the slurry during burr removal.)
For me the best way to get rid of burrs ist to do light short strokes edge leading, like sharpening about 45° to the edge. Gives a fine mikroserration and lots of bite.
In comparison stropped edge trailing along the edge you get an wire edge with almost no bite and min. 50% less time on the board for the next touchup...
With finer stones the difference ist not so huge, but if you are looking for a toothy edge i would go with an steep angle edge leading.
Regards
Uwe
Uwe,
Thanks for the micrographs. Those are at 230 magnification? It would be neat to see the edge at 2k! Would love to have the habit of routinely checking each bevel at the time of sharpening. I imagine it would be very instructive. Thank you for your observations. Cheers!
Chef Doom
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The only time I ever used oil stones was when I did not know how to sharpen. It was like the old guys that know nothing about car repair standing around the engine drinking beer talking about women and sports with a turn of the socket wrench from time to time. Eventually someone pours water where the brake fluid was supposed to go.
Edge leading strokes on a waterstone works fine for burr refinement for me. FWIW, I always rinse the stone first.
The slurry can definitely be an issue - and increasingly so if you go ti finner grits (and wanting ever finer edge). If you look at straight razor honing - it is basically all done with edge leading (save for stropping). But even there - on a finishing natural stone - one uses VERY little slurry and adds water during this last honing stage to thin the slurry to control the dulling of the cutting edge (depending on the hardness of the stone sometimes the final touches are made with just water and no slurry). Final edge is achieved with stropping on cloth & leader - that is something we do not often do with knives. It is also the stage that makes is super easy to kill the edge (most likely my current problem with straight razor honing, btw.) - with knives it would be even easier to kill the super fine edge here.
So yes - I agree - edge leading strokes should not only be super light, but also done without slurry (unless one goes all the way up to super fine and hard natural stones) - at least on synthetic stones. I would also assume that the finishing stone should not be super soft as it would probably tend to abrade the edge more. I am guessing that the angle will have a large impact too.
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Kozuka
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As someone who loves all systems, let it be Freehand or Guided or Edge Pro Apex style, I really think this is super interesting.
Matter of fact I visited Uwe couple weeks ago and watched his deburr technique closely. I also started to deburr this way now and can say from (only a few) sharpening and cooking sessions so far that my sharpness now feels cleaner and lasts longer before it degrades.
Before this method I experimented with edge trailing / cork / leather combinations. Sometimes all, sometimes mixed, sometimes only one each.
Now I only do the Uwe-Deburr and it just works. (I just use the same stone as I finish on, no special Voodoo-Stone - typically Nakayama or Morihei Karasu 9000)
Matter of fact I visited Uwe couple weeks ago and watched his deburr technique closely. I also started to deburr this way now and can say from (only a few) sharpening and cooking sessions so far that my sharpness now feels cleaner and lasts longer before it degrades.
Before this method I experimented with edge trailing / cork / leather combinations. Sometimes all, sometimes mixed, sometimes only one each.
Now I only do the Uwe-Deburr and it just works. (I just use the same stone as I finish on, no special Voodoo-Stone - typically Nakayama or Morihei Karasu 9000)
Desert Rat
Senior Member
I believe this is correct. I do think edge leading can create a bur of sorts. Probably caused by excessive pressure and the apex digging into the stone or a soft stone, however one chooses to look at it.
Slurry dulling is something straight razor guys argue about... But only on Coticules.... (I tested quite a few of them maybe 200 ? and i don`t think this is common even on coticules. ) .. There was only one belgian that really was not able to get a razor shave ready....
Some years ago i made this vid to demonstrate how dead simple razor honing on a coticule is :
So as you can see, and i hope most of the straight razor guys don`t use edge leading only, because it is a waste of time... , it works in finish stage only edge leading strokes.
Arkansas or other very fine oilstones are the only stones (because they are kryptocristaline) that don`t form extensive burrs... Because they act like a file not like Sandpaper.
The fine ones (lapped extreme fine and broken in) are not usable without a Jiig sadly. But for sure the only natural stones that can improve a 30k edge in terms of sharpness.
Greets Sebastian.
Some years ago i made this vid to demonstrate how dead simple razor honing on a coticule is :
So as you can see, and i hope most of the straight razor guys don`t use edge leading only, because it is a waste of time... , it works in finish stage only edge leading strokes.
Arkansas or other very fine oilstones are the only stones (because they are kryptocristaline) that don`t form extensive burrs... Because they act like a file not like Sandpaper.
The fine ones (lapped extreme fine and broken in) are not usable without a Jiig sadly. But for sure the only natural stones that can improve a 30k edge in terms of sharpness.
Greets Sebastian.
Desert Rat
Senior Member
Ok, I am the guy you are describing struggling with a small newly purchased coticule. Been an Arkansas user my whole life and not usually a bur sharpener so the alternating edge leading strokes is my more natural way. Back to the stones I go and thanks for sharing.
No i don`t even know you
... I talked about threads in Badger and Blade forum years ago... Greets Sebastian.
I'm always trying to improve with my fine arkansas stones. Why do you say they're not usable without a jig?
I just like to say that slow stones (even synthetics in this grid range don`t make sense by hand), especially a transluent Arkansas that is broken in.... Does nearly nothing, and you need at least 50-100 passes per side, without Angle control this could last for a few hours ....
. Greets Sebastian.
That’s what I thought you might say - the fatigue over time is a real factor
This thread is pretty amazing, and there is a great deal of talent here. What intrigues me is how the sharpening of a blade, which should be a science, is instead really an art. It is an art because the craft of freehand sharpening goes way back, many thousands or tens of thousands of years I think, and is handed down to us as a freehand skill that has maintained the great feature of man's pride in manual skillfulness, a feature that too few pursuits in our world still have. Fine sharpening is an art that results in an edge so magnificently sharp we cannot even see it, an edge that might shave the delicate hair of a princess or cut off a man's head in one quick swipe. I, too, undertake freehand whetstone sharpening, and it is an enjoyable exercise, relaxing for the mind, pleasantly repetitive motions and sounds, and I take pride in my razor edge when I achieve it. Even if I decapitate no higher being than a fish.
But it should be a science, or at the least, the art of hand sharpening ought to be better informed by science. I mean, what is the consistently best way to achieve a hard and sharp edge, what is the surest way to gauge knife sharpness, what does that burr look like up close as it's coming off the edge, what does that freshly deburred edge really leave behind? Is deburring always necessary? Does the burr actually come off in long metal hairs? Is it really possible to deburr by simply grinding it into dust by leading strokes? I would love to see slow motion video-microscophotography of a knife edge during sharpening. I'm sure that is somehow possible, though it might require such sophisticated methods as would require the expertise of the MIT Media lab. It ought to be done such that the camera is affixed to the blade and can focus on the edge with great magnification, while the blade is put through its paces by a master sharpener, and then edited to show us what is really going on down there. (Maybe though such a video already exists?)
But it should be a science, or at the least, the art of hand sharpening ought to be better informed by science. I mean, what is the consistently best way to achieve a hard and sharp edge, what is the surest way to gauge knife sharpness, what does that burr look like up close as it's coming off the edge, what does that freshly deburred edge really leave behind? Is deburring always necessary? Does the burr actually come off in long metal hairs? Is it really possible to deburr by simply grinding it into dust by leading strokes? I would love to see slow motion video-microscophotography of a knife edge during sharpening. I'm sure that is somehow possible, though it might require such sophisticated methods as would require the expertise of the MIT Media lab. It ought to be done such that the camera is affixed to the blade and can focus on the edge with great magnification, while the blade is put through its paces by a master sharpener, and then edited to show us what is really going on down there. (Maybe though such a video already exists?)
all this mumbo jumbo over what I have already been doing this whole time. you pull the knife towards you and you get good edge that cuts food really well instead of drawing fairies on printer paper.
Then what do you use to draw your fairies on printer paper?
crayons
I get it when you guys are complaining about all this wordiness, because when sharpening a knife, if you know how to do, it is really pretty quick and simple. But the details brought up in this thread have driven my curiosity about what is happening at the microscopic level.
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Not necessarily better. Just a way to make sure all the burr has been removed. Lateral works also. I just got in the habit of using it, so I can use the same motion to touch up an edge while avoiding a burr. Muscle memory.
