Sharpening Kitchen Knives - Saga

[GIPPER]

I received my new Hand Tool Kit and was anxious to try out the Long Knife Jig, SVM-140.  I've had an 'old' knife laying around for years, quite dull, to where the chef's round steel sharpener wouldn't sharpen it any more.  So I begin.  There's no bevel angel.  The bevel is rounded so I set the jig up on what ever angle the WM200 gave and decided I would just make the bevel 30 degrees.  After painting the edges, both sides, with marker ink, then using the micro adjustment and the WM200, I set the jig at 15 degrees and started grinding away.  After a few minutes, I checked the knife edge.  Not much progress was made but I kept at it but quit after a while.

So today, I started again. This time I was pressing harder and more determined to make progress.  But today, something really bad happened.  As I was grinding along, suddenly the knife edge grabs into the grindstone and wedges itself up against the support bar and the wheel stops.  In a split second, I lifted the jig up and the wheel starts rolling again.  When I checked the knife blade I could only see a slight groove in a couple places on the edge.  So, I continued.  In a minute or so, the same thing happened.  This time, I checked the grindstone and found two "gashes", for the lack of a better word, in the surface, at an angle of about 20 degrees from square across the surface of the stone.  In two different locations about 2 inches apart and a small chunk out of the inside edge of the wheel.  This "ain't good" I told myself.  So after thinking about it a while, I decided to try the 'dressing tool' for the first time.  I was able to dress out the grooves in the stone back to smooth.  Now I'm afraid to try using the Jig again.  So I finished sharpening the knife by hand.  I don't know why the knife jammed into the grindstone.

Maybe some wise, experienced person can tell me what the heck happened.  Gipper

[ionut]

Hi Gipper,

When sharpening knives you have to pay more attention to holding the shoulder of the jig against the universal support, than concentrating to applying pressure on the knife. It happened to me too. I usually keep my palm on the jig pressing it on the support and the fingers on the back of the knife holding the knife flat on the stone. Also if you had to apply so much pressure it means your stone wasn't cutting properly, you may need to use the grading stone more often to make the cut more effective.

Ionut

[Herman Trivilino]

Maybe some wise, experienced person can tell me what the heck happened.  Gipper

This happened to me quite often when I was a beginner.  It turns out I was sharpening the knives at too large of an angle.  I don't know if that's happening to you.  You say you've got it set at 15 degrees, so you shouldn't be having this problem.

Watch the youtube videos of Jeff sharpening knives.  Does he appear to be sharpening at about the same angle as you?

[GIPPER]

Maybe some wise, experienced person can tell me what the heck happened.  Gipper

This happened to me quite often when I was a beginner.  It turns out I was sharpening the knives at too large of an angle.  I don't know if that's happening to you.  You say you've got it set at 15 degrees, so you shouldn't be having this problem.

Watch the youtube videos of Jeff sharpening knives.  Does he appear to be sharpening at about the same angle as you?

Herman,
I wasn't able to view Jeff F.'s video for some reason.  But the cover photo for the video did cause me to note two big differences with what I was doing.

First, Jeff was using a regular knife jig, SVM-45, and I was using the "Long Knife" jig, SVM-140.  My knife blade is about 9 inches long.

Secondly, I was standing in front of the blade; not behind the blade as Jeff is doing.  This position would cause me to put my hands in a different place on the jig and knife.
I'm just guessing that what happened is, that as I was rotating knife towards the point of the knife-to-the-stone, I unconsciously lifted the handle upwards which increased the angle and caused the blade edge to dig into the stone near the inside corner of the stone.  That then caused to blade to rotate and dig into the rest of the stone at about a 20 degree angle.  I'm just going to be more careful the next time I try sharpening a knife blade.  Thanks for the comments.  Gipper