Sharpening wheel whats wrong

[airwright]

:confused: I have one of those sharpening whees systems the type made of pressed paper, when i sharpen a blade on the rough wheel ill get a good edge on the blade then ill sharpen the other side on the blade and it goes back to very dull it seems like the only way that i can get a sharp edge is to sharpen one side of the blade What am i doing wrong?

[wrathlord]

I'm not familiar with that type of sharpening wheel,but from the way you describe it,it may be the angle of the edge against the wheel,it could be that 1 pass on 1 side creates an egde angle very steep,the 2nd pass removes too much also ,so the result is a blunted edge bevel.I'm just guessing, but can you try to adjust the angle to which the blade contacts the wheel?

[C.M. Arrington]

I've got one and it takes some getting used to. I use white rouge on the finish wheel. After a few knives, the wheel gets a black buildup on it and stops cutting. I use 80 grit sandpaper to knock the buildup off, then reload the wheel with rouge. If your knife feels sharp after the coarse wheel, that might just be the wire edge. After the rough wheel, I slice a piece of hardwood a few times to knock off the wire edge. I give the knife another pass on the rough wheel,then knock the wire edge off again. To finish the edge I use the finish wheel, strop with leather and repeat. It took a few sharpenings before I got the hang of it. Once you do though, you can get a clean, razor sharp edge.

[Jason Cutter]

I'm not sure whats going on but I suspect its whats been mentioned - you're actually knocking off your edge when you do the opposite side. Maybe this system is just too aggressive ?

I had a simialr problem when razor honing my woodworking tools - I had a leather wheel chucked up in a drill press which could be charged with White Diamond compound - it would make the most awesome shaving sharp edge IN AN INSTANT, and the edge always looked super-polished but CONVEX on inspection with a loupe. My woodwork knives were all chisel ground, so only one side was being sharpened. Perhaps if I'd needed to sharpen both sides - I'd have come across the same problem.

What I do now is to slack belt grind a convex edge on my knives with 240 or 320 belts, then strop on a hand held strop, perhaps only 3-5 times each side and at that stage, the knife is ALREADY hair popping. In my mind, there's no need to go any further than that. My leather honing wheel seems to be permanently retired now.

As I'm progressing, I'm finding that faster is not always better because too fast is a lot worse than too slow.

Hope this makes sense. Cheers.

[whv]

some disagree with me, but i prefer to use paper wheels only on kitchen or filet knives - those that have thin blades and very shallow edge angles. also be sure to turn your grinder around backward so the wheels are rotating away from you - work on the top of the wheel. makes it easier to control your angles.
for thicker knives and those with steeper secondary edges, i either use the belt grinder for a convex edge or an edgepro for a flat bevel. finish off with a leather strop.
regardless of the tool, only experience will provide the expertise needed to use it properly. you may want to practice on inexpensive kitchen cutlery to get the process down.