What's your trick to remove a wire edge?

[TkoK83Spy]

I don't know what's going on this past week, but I've now got a wire edge on both my Centofante 3 (vg10) and my Delica Pakkawood (hap40).They feel sharp, but don't shave hair off my arm and I can see light reflecting just the tiniest bit along the edge of both. It doesn't feel like a bur and have dragged a dryer sheet across both sides of the blade and it doesn't catch on each side in particular.

I don't have a leather strop or any very fancy sharpening system. I've got the Sharpmaker, with the addition of the Ultra Fine stones and also a medium grit Smith's wetstone.

Last night I cleaned up all the stones and allowed them to dry. That seemed to help a bit this morning, but still not where I'd like to be. It's like I've lost the touch and I'm a bit frustrated. Especially with the HAP40 which I'm typically great with.

I've used a sharpie and am quite certain I'm hitting the apex. I've tried light strokes on all 3 types of sharpmaker stones. I've tried edge leading strokes, I've tried edge leading and trailing on each side using light strokes. I've slightly increased the angle of the blade on each stone as well...to no avail.

Is there a particular stone I should focus on for doing the trick? What do you guys do in this situation, with the tools I have at hand, or even random things I may have around the house? Any suggestions are welcome.

[amar]

I rarely use ultra-fine, its typically medium and fine for me that does the job. If you haven't, I would highly suggest watching the Sharpmaker video in its entirety: https://youtu.be/5LBDnJv5B58

[Zatx]

According to this thorough scientific testing, the only thing that will completely remove a wire edge is diamond honing.

http://knifegrinders.com.au/Manuals/Kni ... g_book.pdf

Given that you said you don’t have this, I would do a single light pass across your brown stone and start over.

[PStone]

I would focus on the med sharpmaker stone. Just be patient and don’t give up. But it sounds like you may not be hitting the apex. I would think a wire edge would catch on the dryer sheet. If you can see reflecting light, even a little, keep going on the med stone. You don’t have to raise a burr, just keep alternating strokes until there is no reflecting light. Then progress onto the finer grits.

Another option is a coarser grit sandpaper on top of a flat unforgiving surface, such as your smiths benchstone(couple drops of oil on the back side will help keep it flat and in place). You probably have some laying around. 320 is what I typically start with.

[Evil D]

You need to start over.

Take the knife and cut straight into the flat side of your ultra fine rods as if you were trying to cut it in half. Do it very gently and just let the weight of the blade run across the stone. Do this a couple times and hold the edge up facing you under a bright desk lamp and see if the entire edge reflects light. Once it does then start sharpening.

Start with the browns, alternate sides, and avoid making a burr at all. As you're making passes do a few and then check the edge under a light again and you'll see that reflection slowly going away. Once the edge doesn't reflect light anymore, you've apexed the edge. Once you get close to this point, start making shorter/softer passes into the stones until you're barely running the blade along the edge. Doing this should yield a very sharp edge off the browns. Then continue doing the same light alternating passes on the fine and then ultra fine and continue working up to the same short/soft passes at the end of each grit stone.

Make you're you're not ham fisting the knife into the stones. You want to let the stones do the work. If you're really pushing the edge into the stone it's going to burr and fracture the heck out of the edge. You can't speed up the process by pushing harder, it simply takes as long as it takes and some steels are going to take much longer than others.

[TkoK83Spy]

Thank you guys. I appreciate these in depth responses. Sounds like I'll be starting over when I get back home. I think I may be moving from the brown stones a bit too quickly. Typically wait until the blade bites well into my fingernail or just from the grab on my thumb. Really need to focus better on that apex before moving on. I do pretty light passes on the Sharpmaker, guess I need a bit more patience and keep working at it.

Funny how sometimes it only takes me 10 minutes or so on the Delica, this time it was a good 25 minutes without achieving the desired results. Right when I think I've got it figured out I get a mini headache like this!

[jpm2]

I agree with starting over.
I only use bench stones and after so many low angle touch ups, which includes a little thinning behind the edge, I suspect the edge eventually gets too thin for adequate support. At this point start over making very high angle passes, maybe 45 degrees each side with coarse 100-120 grit SiC and go from there, always finishing with diamond.

I notice this happens more with some blades [certain steels] than others.

[u.w.]

According to this thorough scientific testing, the only thing that will completely remove a wire edge is diamond honing.

http://knifegrinders.com.au/Manuals/Kni ... g_book.pdf

Given that you said you don’t have this, I would do a single light pass across your brown stone and start over.

Thank you for posting the link. What a great read.

u.w.

[vivi]

No tricks, just good technique.

Light pressure, alternating sides of the blade every stroke, edge leading strokes, LIGHT pressure, ensuring you're hitting the apex on both side.

It helps if you avoid raising a large burr in the first place.

I also remove the burr with the stone that created it. If I raised a burr reprofiling a knife, I remove it with my reprofiling stone. If I raise a burr with my medium bench stone, I remove it with that stone. Regardless of how polished I plan to go with the edge, I never progress grits until I can't detect a burr by hand.

[Brock O Lee]

According to this thorough scientific testing, the only thing that will completely remove a wire edge is diamond honing.

http://knifegrinders.com.au/Manuals/Kni ... g_book.pdf

Given that you said you don’t have this, I would do a single light pass across your brown stone and start over.

Thank you for posting the link. What a great read.

u.w.

Agree, I’ve learnt something new, thanks!

[DBCOOPER]

I'd go back to the medium grit stones and wait until a hair shaving sharp edge is achevied there

[Jazz]

I notice that no matter how soft I go when sharpening serrations, there's a wire edge. It does NOT come off with 3 or 4 strokes on the serration side and 1 on the flat. Even lifting the edges up higher, as in deburring a PE, and there's still a burr in a lot of spots. Strop - still there in spots. Drives me in-freakin'-sane.

[knivesandbooks]

I notice that no matter how soft I go when sharpening serrations, there's a wire edge. It does NOT come off with 3 or 4 strokes on the serration side and 1 on the flat. Even lifting the edges up higher, as in deburring a PE, and there's still a burr in a lot of spots. Strop - still there in spots. Drives me in-freakin'-sane.

I feel you!!!
And this is with serrations on any model and any brand.
But I've never had the wire edge break and it doesn't seem to impact anything. I'm kinda wondering it is just some weird microbevel.

[zhyla]

Good advice above. You don’t have to “bread knife” the sharpener to start over, that just makes it more obvious when you’re back to a good apex.

The deal with the sharpie trick is while it shows you where you’re removing material it can’t tell you you’ve removed enough material. You have to do enough passes to actually grind off that edge.

I’m not sure the sharpmaker stones are the best choice for heavy material removal. I use sandpaper on glass and go down to 220 grit or even 100 grit for serious edge repair.

[Pelagic]

As a beginner, I almost recommend embracing burr formation and learning how to deal with it (eliminate it). A burr along the entire edge lets you know you've fully apex'd that side of the bevel. As stated above, very light passes. On a larger burr, you can do something like 3 on each side, then 2, then alternating. For a slight burr, just to alternating passes. Do a seemingly unnecessary amount. Inspect the edge, feel it, see if it slices paper clean, and it should pushcut newspaper against the grain an inch or 2 from where you're holding it. You can focus on never forming a burr later once you get consistent results in sharpening.

[TkoK83Spy]

At least I've got a variety of options to try once I get to it. Something has to work!

[Deadboxhero]

It's just light touch, same angle alternating passes.

That's it.

Don't make the burr too big to begin with.

[Deadboxhero]

Here is a visual of a burr coming off with what I described.

I made a bigger burr and its 1095 at high hardness. (This is why carbon steel sharpens better, the burr comes off easier)

[Gif]https://i.imgur.com/8ePJX6F.gifv[/gif]

[TkoK83Spy]

^^ That's awesome! THAT'S what I want to see.

[Evil D]

Good advice above. You don’t have to “bread knife” the sharpener to start over, that just makes it more obvious when you’re back to a good apex.

I wouldn't say it's mandatory but I do it even when there isn't a burr. It's a good idea to get rid of any weakened steel especially if you're the type who strops between sharpening.