Have I killed my F1?

[eskimo]

Yesterday my Nephews Fallkniven F1 arrived and I was amazed how much sharper it was than mine.

I decided to try sharpening mine with a DC4 stone. I have never done this before so watched a few tutorials on youtube. However after 30 minutes of fumbling around, dropping the stone, not been able to get the angles right etc. I have a knife that is blunter than before.

A few days ago I bought my nephew a Sabre 35 pack and a turboflame lighter from Lakeland Bushcraft and their service was excellent so have been back on their site to look at sharpening kits.

They have a Spydeco Sharpmaker at around £57 and I wonder if this can help save my knife??

Has anyone used them? Are they worth the money?

Alternativly are there any places I can send my knife to be professionally resharpened?

Thanks

 

[Calculon]

IMHO It's very difficult to sharpen a scandi grind without getting a secondary bevel if you don't know what you're doing.

I know

There are a lot of excellent knowledgeable members on here, but if no joy go to British Blades.


Calc

 

[forestwalker]

IIRC the F1 has a two part grind (use a magnifyer to look at the "good" one)? And the DC4 is a small stone, best seen as a field epedient tool, not your main one. Get some suitable wet-dry sandpaper and glue to a piece of plywood. The plywood is not flat enought to e.g. a plane blade -- many woodworkers use float glass or a chunk of granite countertop --- but fine for a knife. Dirt cheap and plenty big.

Flat grind (no secondary) Place the knife on the stone, with the beveled bit flat on the stone. Use a "slicing" motion as if you where trying to carve a thin slice off the stone, with moderate pressure, trying to allow the whole edge to the sharpened in one go. Repeat until you can feel a slight burr on the other side along the entire lenght of the edge (this is a slight "resistance" when pulling your fingertip over the edge in the safe direction: along the blade over the edge and off). Turn and repeat until a burr is formed. Turn to the fine side, and use an alternating pattern for perhaps 20-50 strokes. If using a fine side coarser than the one of thr DC4 do as with the coarse side instead.

Two part grind This is much harder without a tool like the spyderco. The trick is getting a consistent angle, with is either something you work into muscle memory (i.e. well worked into your cerebellum by scores of repetitions) or done by a tool. In the beginning be carefull for every stroke; setting it up the angle befoere every stroke. Soon it will just feel "right" to do it that way. Other than that it is no different.

Regardless of method you can test on your fingernail; hold the edge lightly on the nail and try to pull it at right angle to the blade. Does the edge "catch" or slide? If the former you have a sharp edge, actually quite ok for most of the use you'll put your knife to.

Stropping For the "utlimate" edge glue a piece of leather (flesh side up) to a chunk of plywood, and rub in some Autosol chrome polish (from an auto parts store, one tube will last you a decade) into the exposed side. Place the knife flat (i.e. as in flat grind) and use a dragging direction, not a cutting one, Alternate sides for 30-50 strokes. Test on your forearm; does it shave?

 

[Mr Adoby]

I use three sandpapers, with different grits, 200, 600 and 1200. I've glued them on strips on rather stiff foam, and then on a piece of board. So there is a *little* give on the sandpaper. This is ideal when sharpening convex grinds. I draw the knife "backwards" with the spine first and rise the spine as I go. There is a LOT of surface to grind in order to touch up the egde just a little. So be careful to not press so hard, or rise the spine so high, that the edge becomes rounded. It should only touch the sandpaper now and then, almost by mistake.

On an F1 it can take an hour or more to achive a noticable result on the edge. But this is something you only do perhaps once a year after very heavy use/abuse of the knife. Or if you intend to "show off" your knifes.

Finally i use only the stiff foam, but with some metal polish, AutoSol, to get the final finish.

For quick touchups in the field I bought a EdgePal Basic, it's great, because it's designed to handle convex blades, as well as most other grinds, as long as the spine is rectangular. There is no risk of making the blade duller:

I use the edgepal to also make shure the angles are correct and that I've not started to round the edge too much. Use a black felt pen to find the right adjustment of the edgepal. If the edge only has to be touched up, the stone should only just touch the edge when fully retracted. The black ink on the edge should be untouched if you don't retract the stone. If you have blunted the edge by rounding the edge while sharpening free hand, you can adjust the EdgePal to remove material to restore the correct angle and the edge. But it could be slow going... Steel is tough.

It doesn't take much work to round an edge and make it dull. Just a little material has to be removed. If the knife is scandi or convex, to restore the edge again you may have to remove more than 100 times as much steel. Never ever let anyone touch your scandi/convex knifes with a grinding stone, unless you've seen them sharpening their own scandi/convex knives first.

The EdgePal Basic includes a DC3. (Small combination diamond/ceramic stone.)

http://www.edgepal.com

The EdgePal Basic, as on the pic, is £45. The English parts of the website seems to have been a little neglected... Try google translate on the Swedish. Or ask here.

Fällkniven will recondition your knife. SEK 660:-, around £52.

http://fallkniven.se/index.php?page..._id=15&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&lang=en

But perhaps just a simple regrind will suffice? £6. Add postaged and markup by our local dealer.

http://fallkniven.se/index.php?page..._id=15&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&lang=en

A.

 

[Tony]

There's stickies in the edged tools section (i might move this there) and it's worth doing a search, there's plenty of people that have had the same experience as you

If you could get to a meet up somewhere someone would be more than happy to show you i'm sure.

 

[Mikey P]

A bit of positive encouragement from me!

I have been quite a knife biff for a while and even been scared to have a go at anything more than stropping recently, in case I damaged the blade. I've just sold a Puokko that I managed to put a secondary bevel on about 2 years ago as I didn't really know what I was doing, and I also did the same to a Mora.

I decided the other day that, as I had the time, I would try and 'recover' the Mora.

I've got some large waterstones (bought through Axminster Tools) but I first had to use a coarse oilstone to grind away the secondary bevel and roughly re-flatten the edge. I used the stickies that Tony mentions to sort out the technique. One good idea I saw was to use black marker pen to cover the edge - you can then see which bits of the edge you are grinding by looking at how much black marker you have removed.

After about an hour's work with three waterstones and a strop, I achieved the sharpest edge I have ever done! It's not perfect yet but it is certainly usable. It was really all about patience and taking the time to do it properly.

If you can meet up with Tony, or someone else who has some experience, then do it! If you are taught by someone you will learn much quicker.

So, it will come to you, I promise! Just don't expect results immediately and perhaps use an older knife, like a Mora to do your practice on.

 

[Lurch]

Thank you for your kind words Eskimo!

 

[C_Claycomb]

I like to sharpen my convex blade (the F1 should be convex) using either stones, or a stiff backed bit of wet-and-dry. Convex is easy in that you do not have to maintain a constant angle and a slithly sloppy technique makes less difference than it does on a scandi or flat/secondary edge.

The other advantage to using stones or hard backed paper is that it takes a lot less time than using the soft backed/mouse mat type sharpener, and there is no risk of having the edge rounded because you applied too much pressure.

The Sharpmaker is a nice tool for sharpening blades with a small secondary bevel, but it isn't the best thing for either scandis or convex edges. The triangular stones will work fine, but better results are had by laying them flat, rather than mounted in the V formation, so it is just as good to get a flat stone to start with.

Unless you have a lot of things to sharpen, I would stick with the DC4, they are excellent little stones, and get some wet and dry paper for doing the donkey work of re-grinding. I will often start with 240, or even 120 grit paper to get a jump start on the sharpening process. I have limited patience these days and don't see the point in spending hours working with 600 grit when 220 will do the job in minutes. I reckon that concentration is important and I concentrate better if I am not tied up for too long

Its a shame that you are so far away, I know there will be sharpening demos by a number of people at the Bushmoot, it would have been a good chance for you to have a look at how things can be done using different methods.

 

[Nightwalker]

Im no expert on sharpening, but I made a webpage in the past that might be of some help to you..
www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/bushcraft-articles/skills/sharpening-knives-and-axes
Shame I never got round to finishing the article!.. I'll do that someday

 

[jimford]

Nobody ever mentions Arkansas stones, which were always considered the best for final sharpening (though expensive). Why's that?

Jim

 

[Deleted dude 7861]

I've just sold a Puokko that I managed to put a secondary bevel on about 2 years ago as I didn't really know what I was doing.

All fixed now with just a DC4 and a few hours sharpening whilst watching tv I'll post a pic up soon.........

 

[C_Claycomb]

Nobody ever mentions Arkansas stones, which were always considered the best for final sharpening (though expensive). Why's that?

Jim

I have an Arkansas stone and used to use it for keeping knives sharp. It was a very fine sharpener, I would guess it would be something like a 2000-4000 grit equivalent, at least, it was noticeably more of a polishing action than my 1000 grit waterstone, but a bit less than the 6000. Water stones simply cut faster, that is why I have retired my Arkansas stone, it did little more than polish, and for that I prefer a strop.

 

[badgeringtim]

ahhh!
I start to understand i think ive been patiently trying with an arkinsas stone - at least it claims to be one, although was not expensive....but think it might be the same problem ie its to fine. leastways i hope so 'cos its either that or im not very good at all this
Ive been practicing on a mora but got frustrated so many times. I know theres loads of posts on this topic but think i need to go buy some board and try 'propperly' with more grits and stuff...sigh. Wouldnt it be so much easier if there were more meets and people could just show eachother!
Although some people would obviously be pestered more than others

 

[Mikey P]

All fixed now with just a DC4 and a few hours sharpening whilst watching tv I'll post a pic up soon.........

Don't! I'm too ashamed!

 

[Mike Harlos]

Hi,

Here is a tutorial (pdf) on sharpening convex grind using sandpaper/mousepad:

http://www.barkriverknives.com/docs/convex.pdf

Mike

 

[masongary44]

I have a F1 and have used it round the garden, out and about in the woods and apart from one session with a mousepad and some varied grades of wet and dry paper it never needs anything more than a strop with some cutting paste applied to the leather. A cracking knife and easy to maintain with a bit of practice.