How do I sharpen a native FRN combo edge? (sharpmaker)

[baserock love]

Giving away my beloved delica as a gift since i got a paramilitary 2 for christmas. I also got a sharpmaker which i've had a lot of experience with due to borrowing my buddy's but now i got one of my own and i figured i should use it.

The non serrated part of the native frn combo edge didn't come very sharp from the factory and i never could get it that sharp. I decided today to put a wicked edge on it along with my paramilitary and was baffled that i just couldn't seem to make any progress at all on the non serrated portion and i kept getting horrendous burrs on the edge with the bevel as in, the entire cutting edge would fold over for the non serrated part of the blade. I had heard some say to sharpen both the flat side and the beveled side, others say not to, i always did both and it got at least the spyder edge portion crazy sharp.

Apparently the beveled edge of the non serrated part is too steep for the spyderco sharpmaker to reach it? I finally realized what it had been hitting when i ran that side against the sharpmaker is it had been basically re profiling the bevel, yet on the spyderedge part, it's definitely got a microbevel. On the non serrated portion, there is no microbevel whatsoever and there apparently never was. It's definitely not an issue of me just not good with the sharpmaker, i always maintained a nasty edge on my delica.

How on earth am i supposed to sharpen this thing? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Surfingringo]

Giving away my beloved delica as a gift since i got a paramilitary 2 for christmas. I also got a sharpmaker which i've had a lot of experience with due to borrowing my buddy's but now i got one of my own and i figured i should use it.

The non serrated part of the native frn combo edge didn't come very sharp from the factory and i never could get it that sharp. I decided today to put a wicked edge on it along with my paramilitary and was baffled that i just couldn't seem to make any progress at all on the non serrated portion and i kept getting horrendous burrs on the edge with the bevel as in, the entire cutting edge would fold over for the non serrated part of the blade. I had heard some say to sharpen both the flat side and the beveled side, others say not to, i always did both and it got at least the spyder edge portion crazy sharp.

Apparently the beveled edge of the non serrated part is too steep for the spyderco sharpmaker to reach it? I finally realized what it had been hitting when i ran that side against the sharpmaker is it had been basically re profiling the bevel, yet on the spyderedge part, it's definitely got a microbevel. On the non serrated portion, there is no microbevel whatsoever and there apparently never was. It's definitely not an issue of me just not good with the sharpmaker, i always maintained a nasty edge on my delica.

How on earth am i supposed to sharpen this thing? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My advice would be to reprofile the beveled side of the pe section to 15 degrees. Cut any burr off the backside with a few near flat strokes. Once you have it reprofiled with a clean apex, simply do touchups and make a mb with the sharpmaker at the 40 degree setting. When doing chisels grinds I do three light strokes on the beveled side then I tilt the blade to almost flat and do one (or two) strokes on he flat side. You will get plenty of other answers and there's lots of ways to skin this cat but that's what works for me.

[baserock love]

My advice would be to reprofile the beveled side of the pe section to 15 degrees. Cut any burr off the backside with a few near flat strokes. Once you have it reprofiled with a clean apex, simply do touchups and make a mb with the sharpmaker at the 40 degree setting. When doing chisels grinds I do three light strokes on the beveled side then I tilt the blade to almost flat and do one (or two) strokes on he flat side. You will get plenty of other answers and there's lots of ways to skin this cat but that's what works for me.

So given the fact that the only tools i own to sharpen with (or really need for my purposes, defense/utility) is the sharpmaker, how on earth would i go about reprofiling that bevel? There surprisingly, is a knife sharpener with his own store one town over, is that something i would ask him to do? Would i be better of sending something like that into spyderco as i seem to recall that being a service they offer.

I guess i'm baffled and frustrated as to why they would release a combo edge knife with one of the edges not even sharpenable with their own sharpener lol. It never came up because this was my defense edc, whereas my delica was my utility knife, i barely used the native whereas the delica got abused to **** and back (and still looks good enough to gift). Now that i got the paramilitary i'd like to make the native do double duty as a utility knife, but i gotta be able to sharpen it.

Also out of curiosity, why 15 degrees? That seems like a pretty big reduction for a hollow grind blade. Wouldn't 30 degrees so i can hit it with the 40 degree on the sharpmaker be a better choice?

Thanks for the reply man.

[Evil D]

Couple ways you can go about this depending on what you like and what sharpening tools you have. If you like chisel grinds and you can sharpen them, you can just make passes on the Sharpmaker at the same time you do the serrations. They basically get sharpened the same way.

Personally I like to cut a bevel in the back side and make the PE section a standard V bevel and sharpen that as you would any PE knife, then I sharpen my serrations with my diamond rod and Dremel. The last serration before PE starts will blend into the PE.

[Surfingringo]

My advice would be to reprofile the beveled side of the pe section to 15 degrees. Cut any burr off the backside with a few near flat strokes. Once you have it reprofiled with a clean apex, simply do touchups and make a mb with the sharpmaker at the 40 degree setting. When doing chisels grinds I do three light strokes on the beveled side then I tilt the blade to almost flat and do one (or two) strokes on he flat side. You will get plenty of other answers and there's lots of ways to skin this cat but that's what works for me.

So given the fact that the only tools i own to sharpen with (or really need for my purposes, defense/utility) is the sharpmaker, how on earth would i go about reprofiling that bevel? There surprisingly, is a knife sharpener with his own store one town over, is that something i would ask him to do? Would i be better of sending something like that into spyderco as i seem to recall that being a service they offer.

I guess i'm baffled and frustrated as to why they would release a combo edge knife with one of the edges not even sharpenable with their own sharpener lol. It never came up because this was my defense edc, whereas my delica was my utility knife, i barely used the native whereas the delica got abused to **** and back (and still looks good enough to gift). Now that i got the paramilitary i'd like to make the native do double duty as a utility knife, but i gotta be able to sharpen it.

Also out of curiosity, why 15 degrees? That seems like a pretty big reduction for a hollow grind blade. Wouldn't 30 degrees so i can hit it with the 40 degree on the sharpmaker be a better choice?

Thanks for the reply man.

I highly recommend picking up the diamond rods for the sharpmaker. They are a complete game changer for that device and make basic repairs and reprofiling possible.

I recommend resetting the beveled side at 15 degrees because we are only talking about one side...15 as in half of 30. You could achieve that by working just that side with the diamond rods in the 30 degree slots. :)

[baserock love]

Derp, yeah that makes perfect sense. Didn't take the chisel grind into account. I'm an amateur at sharpening, i am pretty fond of this knife. I might see about finding somebody that can do it for me or send it to spyderco if that's something they can do.