Sharpening knives with a guard

[Boxer]

Good afternoon forum participants. I am interested in sharpening knives with a guard. After all, the place next to the guard runs a shorter distance along the wheel than the rest of the blade. If you stay longer in this area or apply more pressure, then a recurve is formed. If you spend less time, then this part of the blade will not flow through.  What are the methods to avoid recursion?

[tgbto]

Hello Boxer,

This guard (bolster ?) is real pain and IMO is one of those subjects where there is no easy, foolproof way of doing things. They come in many forms which may require different strategies...

The simplest form is the guard found on hunting knives, and for these the strategy is indeed to sharpen with more pressure and/or spending more grinding time in the area next to the guard. The pressure/time ratio between the heel area and the rest of the edge is one you'll have to find by experimenting, keeping a straight edge at hand and checking against a background light often. It is important to sharpen from heel to tip and not back and forth before you're confident you found that ratio. Regarding the way you phrased it, then the right time is precisely between when you form a recurve at the heel and when you form a recurve a bit further up the edge...

Many western kitchen knives come with a thick bolster that acts as a guard. If you want to avoid a visible dent next to the bolster, you'll have to grind the bolster off so it blends with the blade. I recommend a belt sander or bench grinder for this. What I do afterwards is start by grinding only the bolster on the very edge of the wheel, then pull as I'd do for a bolsterless knife such as the japanese ones.

Those can also develop a recurve if you lay the knife down in such a way that it contacts the full width of the wheel at once, then pull at a constant speed without lingering a bit in that area. If you take a look at how Wolfgang sharpens in his demo videos, he tends to slow down around the heel and tip areas, although I don't remember him mentioning that explicitly.

Hope this helps.

[Boxer]

Thanks to tgbto. I watched videos where recognized craftsmen, including Vadim (RIP), sharpen such knives. Unfortunately, I'm not doing so well. Probably not enough experience. Therefore, I do not want to spoil good knives and I switch to Apex. I was hoping there was some trick to sharpening knives with a bolster that I don't know about yet.