Difficulty Sharpening the heel end of forged paring knives

[Mikecable]

I work for a kitchen supply store and have been sharpening knives for a couple of years.  We recently got a T-7, and it's been working great.  The one oddity I'm trying to figure out is that it seems to have trouble sharpening the last half inch or so at the heel end of forged paring knives.  I've seen this trouble on Tru-Hones, because of the configuration of the wheels (the bolster gets in the way of making good contact through the whole length), but it seemed like this wouldn't be an issue with the open wheel of the Tormek.  I'm not getting interference from the knife jig.  From the water pattern it seems like I'm making contact all along the length.  The obvious thought was that somehow I'm still getting interference from the bolster, but I thought I was getting around that.  From the tip, *almost* to the heel, I can get the things as sharp as a razor, but that last little bit...

Also, no problem with larger knives.  Do I just need to trim down the bolster, or am I missing something else?

[Jeff Farris]

Mike,

Theoretically, you need to reduce the bolster with every sharpening.  As the blade is ground away, a ridge is created between the edge and bolster.  If you work into the corner very carefully, that ridge can be abrupt -- almost a square corner.  What is more common is that each pass going into the corner doesn't exactly match the others, and a radius is created. 

You can pay attention and work carefully into the bolster first, and then reduce the bolster (my preferred method) or reduce the bolster first, and then blend the edge into the bolster end.