Sharpening a Curved 10" Knife on the T-4

[johannaguzman]

Helping a neighbour. Tried to sharpen a 10" knife, max 1" depth. Bit of a curve too.
My t4 was scraping the edge of the blade by the time I got to the tip.
Not sure if this was / is possible.
Gave up in the end and used a t-2 which worked well.
Horses for courses?

[Ken S]

Welcome to the forum, Johanna.

I do not presently have access to my sharpening area presently, so I am operating on memory. Several years ago, I could not understand why the handbook stated that honing could only be done freehand with the T4. Upon my T4 and SVM-45, I found the problem and the solution. The plastic locking knobs on the knife jig and the horizontal support bars prevented the knife jig from moving smoothly across the support bar. Switching the plastic locking knobs with grub screws corrects most of the problem. I found that I needed to grind just a little off the knife jig. This is easily done with the T4. Your local hardware store should carry the M6 grub screws.You will need a metric Allen wrench for this. The metric wrench set costs around $10US. Three M6 grub screws cost around $5. A more elegant solution is an MB-102. For a very occasional long knife with your T4, the grub screw solution will work. The MB-102 or a regular frontal vertical base will do the same function more efficiently, but at considerably higher cost.

For longer knives, like your 10" knife, you will also need a US-430 to handle the extra blade length.

If this does not solve your problem, please post again. We will solve this.

Ken