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Old 03-26-2017, 07:05 PM
jimmontg jimmontg is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Now live in Las Cruces NM.
Posts: 1,345
Removing the burr by hand or with an edge pro, is to always move the stone into the edge and not away from it. Look at the difference when using a belt, if you sharpen edge down (safest way) it leaves a big burr compared to if you do it edge up. I know it's easier to see what you are doing with the edge up going against the motion of the belt, but be careful as the knife can get caught by the belt, then watch out. Use a light touch whichever way you do it as you do not want to heat the edge up. As for stropping I use a piece of leather with 5,000 grit diamond on it and then just leather if I need to cut wood,leather or shave. Mostly I just take my knives to about a 800-1000 grit finish with an old EZE Lap diamond and then a few swipes on a hard Arkansas stone. I only use a grinder if the edge is all messed up or establishing one.

I mostly leave knives with a working edge or butcher's edge, but some customers want a polished edge so OK, I hit it with the diamond paste and leather and buff off most of the micro sawteeth that a fine stone leaves. As I have said before, here on KNF, there is such a thing as too sharp for its intended purpose. A filet knife with a buffed edge is lousy to use and is so sharp when you go to remove the skin it just cuts through it and not slice it off the meat. For kitchen use and filleting/skinning I just use my EZE Lap and just a few swipes on the Arkansa. Scalpels are only 400-600 grit finished, medium. BTW, my EZE Lap will pop the hair off your arm, any properly honed 800 grit edge will, but it slices tomatoes too.
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