Sharpening Paul's knife
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The knife Paul suggests is versatile, so it gets a lot of wear. Sometimes, the tip of the knife can wear faster than the rest of the edge causing it to round upwards. This can make it harder to sharpen and, for me, makes it less effective as a marking knife. You could work the entire length of the edge back to straight, but another option is to reduce the length. See the attached sketch. I find this to be faster. In fact, once I achieve this rounded shape, I include a few passes on the rounded shape each time I sharpen to help ensure sharpness all the way to the tip. By the way, this is the same way you might fix a chip carving knife if you break of the tip. This is all pretty obvious, but thought I’d share it. Someone will ask so I’ll just confess now: A good way to wear the tip of the knife is to cut a bunch of cardboard on the basement cement floor or to cut sandpaper at the bench. Another way to do it is to put too much pressure on the tip of the knife when sharpening.
Warning! If you decide to do this on an electric grinding wheel, be aware that the Stanley blade is prone to breaking. I’m glad I had a full face shield on. In any case, you can achieve this on a coarse stone.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.18 July 2017 at 7:34 pm #313826Depends on the File, youd have to try and see if its soft enough to file down. I dont think it would be much faster then a (really) coarse stone anyways.
If you really wanna do it on a grinder id use something like Visegrips and only let the very tip show out to prevent too much flex and breaking, or clamp it between 2 pieces of wood or something else to make it more rigid.
Thats my main gripe with the Stanley Blades they flex a bit much for my taste and i use the edge of a table to “cut” down Sandpaper, Cardboard is a great way to test the durability of an edge and you can even strop on it.
Yeah, I usually tear sandpaper by laying a ruler on the non-grit side. The edge of my bench works but not as well. Sometimes, though, I glue paper to a special purpose block and need to trim it precisely to the edge of the block. If a razor blade isn’t handy, sometimes I grab my knife and feel a little guilty, but it is a replaceable blade, so I get over it. Actually, I’ve never replaced the blade yet.
19 July 2017 at 2:11 am #313847Or you can just buy a spay blade if you like that style. My hardware store Carries Both types
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