Supersteels and ease of sharpening

[addyb]

Here's a question:

In terms of freehand sharpening, exactly how difficult are steels such as VG-10 to work with? I'm thinking more along the lines of say, a complete edge reprofile such as one would need when their knife has become completely and utterly blunt. I understand that in a perfect world, we'd never let our knives reach such a state but still....

Are supersteels as difficult to sharpen as I've heard? Probably the most difficult time I've ever had sharpening was with the british army jackknife that Bamboodoggy was kind enough to send me. (Fantastic knife, btw Bam!)

Curious,

Adam

 

[Longstrider]

I've heard and read horror story after horror story of how folks have struggled with so called "Super steels", and to be quite honest I don't know what all the fuss is about.
I have sharpened blades made from everything from the softest carbon steels, (some of them far TOO soft for a good knife in my opinion) to quality blades made of steels such as VG10 (Fallknivens), ATS34 (Buck/Strider and Strider knives), and S30V (A few "customs", my special edition Buck 110 and my Lone Wolf T2 )
The better quality blades made from these "super steels" are definitely harder to cut with the hone than many others, but not more difficult to get a good edge on. The hone tends to cut less steel with each stroke, and make the job slower going, but this can lead to more control with what you're doing (for "slow" read "controlled" ) This unwillingness of the steel to be worn away definitely becomes an advantage when it comes to edge retention in my experience though.

I always use my DMT hones so have the advantage of being able to attack the steel with diamonds. How easy/difficult I would find the job with "normal" hones and stones I have no idea. I think that a fair proportion of the horror stories come from folks who either don't realise how slowly their hone will cut the steel, or they do realise it and switch to a stone that is far too coarse in the hope of speeding the job up.

Just my 2 penn'orth on a subject that would probably raise a thread of a dozen pages on BB

 

[addyb]

But I'm not a member of British Blades and have no intention of joining anytime soon! My soul resides with the rest of the nutjobs here at BCUK.

 

[Shinken]

Ive never had a problem with them. Just use diamond hones.

For example my new cpm3v knife seems to hold an edge far longer than my 01 scandi that i use, but it only seems marginally harder to sharpen.

An RWL 34 knife i had was really hard to sharpen, but if i had to reprofile it it might have taken two hours where as something in D2 may have taken about an hour. No biggie

 

[Dave Budd]

I use waterstones (manmade ones) and ceramic stones by Shapton (not hard and glassy like the spyderco stones, but a bit softer and work like waterstones ) and I've sharpened all sorts of blades. If any of you have seen me at a show demonstrating then you will have seen my stones and I sharpen whatever people have, so that covers the gawd awful to the super hightech steels.

I've found that the type of steel is not the issue, rathr the hardness of the blade. The harder the blade (this often goes with some of the high alloy supersteels too) the more wear resistant it is, so the longer it takes to get the edge. So if you are reprofiling the angle of a badly sharpened or chipped blade,it could take a while But I've not come across a blade that couldn't be sharpened even wqith just the £10 double sided waterstones from Axminster.

I don't use diamond stones as i have never found one that lasts. I killed a bradn new top end DMT bench stone in less than 6 months. The excuse they gave was that I was trying to sharpen the wrong type of steel I think not

 

[C_Claycomb]

I sharpen my S30V knives on my Japanese water stones and they work just fine. Same goes for my BG42 Sebeza and D2 Swamp Rat. The D2 is harder to sharpen than the S30V. Doing an edge reprofile is going to be harder than on soft carbon steel, but that just stands to reason...harder+more carbides = more time to grind.

I bought some really cheap diamond hones, a set of 3 for £12 not long ago, very coarse, up to 180grit, horible for sharpening, but great for grinding off hard steel.

you could even make a Super Hoodoo Hone by using one of the ceramic grinder belts instead of wet and dry

 

[leon-1]

Addy, if you are trying to reprofile an edge on a Fallkniven then use diamond stones, there is a considerable difference between using them and say a waterstone (with a waterstone you will be there for ever). The diamond stones are a lot more aggressive and will cut through quicker.

If you are just sharpening a knife then it should make little difference, but the super steels are harder and generally are a lot more abrasion resistant.

If the job is bigger than maintaining an edge or routine maintanence it could take longer, so super steels are great if you have the tools, not so great if you haven't, but they will take a good edge and hold it with most any stone.

 

[addyb]

Thanks for the input, guys.

Adam

 

[demographic]

I have an A2 block plane blade thats no problem for my DMT hone but as its not the simplest thing to put a micro bevel on with any degree of accuracy I use a honing guide.

 

[Dave Budd]

Addy, if you are trying to reprofile an edge on a Fallkniven then use diamond stones, there is a considerable difference between using them and say a waterstone (with a waterstone you will be there for ever). The diamond stones are a lot more aggressive and will cut through quicker.
.

yeah until the blooming diamonds fall off

I bought one of the ceramic truing stones from Axminster a while back to use it for truing stones (funnily enough), but as it's smaller than the stones it doesn't work very well, I use concrete wall instead. Anyway, they truing stone is very hard and is 150grit, so I use that for reprofiling blades when I don't have a grinder around.