Ok...finally done with stuff and ready to continue.
First step was to have him demonstrate sharpening a little knife he had. It’s visible in one of the pics above and blurry in the background of one that’ll be posted later. Brown wooden handle and a blade maybe 2.5”-3” long. He sharpened it, then bounced the edge off the workbench and a couple nails and I took my turn. My initial impressions:
1. It’s a lot more effort than it looks to draw a blade across the belt at a constant speed than the pros make it look, especially keeping it in the same position vertically (meaning not going higher or lower on the belt)
2. It’s going to take a lot of repetition trying to get my left hand and right hand to do the same thing. One of the main issues was trying to hold the same angle. IIRC he said I actually held a more proper angle with my left (weak) hand than my right.
3. I had a problem focusing on one thing, and forgetting others. For example, I’d try to make sure I was holding the right angle and not realize I was two inches lower (or higher) on the belt than the last time. And that means the amount of slack was different, and I’d end up with a different bevel on each side of the blade even if I managed to hold it at the same angle.
4. I can see the light, but it’s gonna take practice. Knowing where to start, when to move to the next grit, and when to know I’m done...or when to know I need to either start over or go back a step.
5. There’s a massive difference in working on a cheap knife vs quality steel.
6. Not screwing up the point of the blade is going to be a major point of focus going forward.
We started with the three cheapo knives from Walmart. Mainstays brand (or whatever the house brand is). Very thin and cheap steel, but I wanted to have something I didn’t care about messing up at all. All of them ended up with a pretty decent edge. I imagine they won’t stay that way after much use, but that’s ok.
I think we went ahead and let him sharpen the santoku at this point so we didn’t run out of time and not get to it. After that we started on the two S&W knives. One was a fixed blade, and it was really heavy and thick. Brand new, never been out of the box. Didn’t take a lot of work to clean it up ready to go. Same goes for the other one which almost looked like a razor knife. Can’t remember what he said that profile was called. Pretty sure they were the same steel, just not the same thickness. Didn’t spend much time on either of them, but they’re sharper than they were. You can see them in this pic:
I think he said his best guess was those two were made from whatever their equivalent of D2 steel was? The last one was the Ganzo that’s folded closed in the pic above. It’s a 440C blade. Sharpened up real nice.
Definitely a positive and productive first lesson. Can’t wait to try again. I didn’t touch the two Cuisinart blades, so those will get their turn when pinkbunny comes to visit, along with some of the other Wusthofs.
Premise showed me this item which I’ll pick up my next trip to HF...a sanding belt cleaned. $8.49 before any coupons.
I want to say thanks to
@premise for his time today. I also left his house with a parting gift...a brand new two-side stropping paddle he made.
