Sharpening with Bob Kramer

[grepper]

Bob sez: "This is really very easy to do.  Very accessible". 

I'll bet he can hold any bevel angle precisely without really trying.  He reminds me of the guy who spends three days on calculations, but when presenting his conclusions starts by saying, "...and the obvious result is...". 

Like anything that requires skill, including Tormeking, practice makes perfect.

Four to six pounds of pressure on a 400 grit stone.  I suspect this would  vary somewhat with steel hardness.

"Razor sharp.  Hair popping sharp."

Good stuff, Bob!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kFhMGJYhYpU

[Rob]

Pah......give me a Tormek every day of the week. Faster, easier, about the same price. Oh and it does every other tool you own :-)

No.....for me I'm afraid Bob is NOT my uncle 

[Herman Trivilino]

Like anything that requires skill, including Tormeking, practice makes perfect.

I have never been able to develop the skill to hold a knife at a consistent, reproducible angle.

Bob may not be your uncle, but he's obviously a practiced master at the craft.

[grepper]

I'd love to be able to freehand well, but for me at least, it would require a lot more practice!

Here's the Master Smith Test.  Not easy to be among the "best in the world":
http://www.americanbladesmith.com/index.php?section=pages&id=178

[Rob]

Like anything that requires skill, including Tormeking, practice makes perfect.

I have never been able to develop the skill to hold a knife at a consistent, reproducible angle.

Bob may not be your uncle, but he's obviously a practiced master at the craft.

It's like you said before Herman.....the 10,000 hour test!

[Rob]

I will say one thing about free handing.....having watched Mr Kramer, my technique of holding the knife (while applying to the tormek) is exactly the same as his ie fingers splayed to even out the control and a strong awareness of pressure

My free handing yields a sharp knife but you can always see some degree of multi faceting on the bevel. I think that's where the many hours of practice really make the difference.  As I've said before though, on a purely practical level....they work just fine, they're just not as good looking as a factory grind

So in a way, my free handing is the Quasimodo of the knife world

[Rob]

The bells master.....the bells

[Elden]

As you all have, I have free handed my knives previously. I let my son use my Buck 118 and it came home needing to be sharpened after being used on a couple of deer. I might mention when he took it was sharp. It had been sharpened by hand. When analyzing the edge it was amazing how much the bevels changed over the length of the blade. For me jig sharpening definitely has its place.

[Herman Trivilino]

My free handing yields a sharp knife but you can always see some degree of multi faceting on the bevel.

I don't believe you'd see these multiple facets if free handing on a bench stone.  With the Tormek it's very easy to hold your hand in the same position as the grindstone rotates beneath.  But when you have to more your hand, that's when it becomes difficult to keep the bevel angle the same.  When using a bench stone and sharpening by hand you are always moving your hand so unless you're a practiced master you'll always be changing the bevel angle, even if only slightly, so you'll not produce those facets.

Of course, if you achieve perfection the entire edge is one facet.

[Herman Trivilino]

All of this reminds me of those TV commercials for those tools designed to take the place of large paint brushes.

They show a complete and utter dunce fiddling with a paint brush, unable to cut in a straight line, and dripping paint all over himself, the floor, the wall, and maybe even the ceiling.

Then they show how quick and effortless it is to paint using their handy-dandy available-for-only-a-limited-time wonder tool.  Of course the person demonstrating it's use is a practiced master.

What they don't show is a master painter with 10 000 hours of experience who could use a conventional high quality paint brush to paint circles around anyone using that newfangled tool.

[grepper]

They also didn't bother to show that the hand-dandy cheap piece of crap they sold on TV, turned to junk after the first use.

[Rob]

Haha. And I thought I was a cynic 

[Herman Trivilino]

They also didn't bother to show that the hand-dandy cheap piece of crap they sold on TV, turned to junk after the first use.

Well, Mark, yes that's true.  The analogy breaks down there.

I didn't mean to imply that those bench stones were crap.  I'm sure they're a fine product.  It's just that the demonstrator's claims about their performance are very much contingent upon the operator's skill.

[grepper]

Abolutely Herman.  I hadn't even considered you were implying anything.

But I really liked this part!
 

They show a complete and utter dunce fiddling with a paint brush, unable to cut in a straight line, and dripping paint all over himself, the floor, the wall, and maybe even the ceiling.

Hehehe.  The last one I saw, the dude looked he still needed extensive training on garden hose operations. 

[Rob]

This is precisely why I'm a bit of a cynic......the message must first be filtered through an understanding of the motives of the messenger!

Scratch the surface of a cynic and you'll find an idealist underneath.