Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Can't sharpen my 154 cm

I'm they guy who started the thread. First, thanks for the advice. I know I'm ignorant about the subject of knife sharpening, and I feel I learned a lot.

My blade is sharp now. A couple of you said you could get your blades sharp with the diamond or carbide stones, so last night I just kept at it. (With the Lansky kit.) I watched two episodes of Planet Earth on Discovery Channel, sharpening for about 1.5 hours with the coarse diamond stone and the other half hour with the other stones while I watched, and now the blade is sharp.

Ol Joe, your idea of marking the blade showed me that the sharpening was working, I just had a LONG way to go. You guys who said the factory knives come with a much steeper angle had it right, that was my problem.

Clark M, you mentioning Ski's was neat. I wish he still had his shop. I first went in there back in 1984, when he was still in his garage.

Anyway, thanks again.

You really should try a waterstone! They cut much faster than diamonds or carbide stones. I can sharpen a 154CM blade to a mirror polish in about 5min or so, maybe 10min if you have to reset the angle.
If you have the patience to spend 1.5hrs!, you can also learn to do it much quicker and easier......................DJ

My friend gave me a spec sheet on knife steels yesterday. I had to look. 154CM is in the same category as ATS-34, a step above 440C. There are no notes about it being hard to sharpen. It does say that the steel can be hardened to Rockwell 62 which I bet would be hard to work. I made some D2 knives that I tempered at 500 degrees that were very hard to sharpen. They hold an edge, but the guys had trouble dressing them up in on the go. I made more with 440C, which gets sharp, and you can touch up.

Rob:

If you will look at some steel supply catalogs, you can get a good idea of the sharpening properties of different steels. Check the chart on abrasive resistence. The higher the abrasive resistence, the more difficult the steel with be to sharpen, in most cases.

D2 being a die steel rates pretty high on wear, or abrasive resistance. It should--it was designed for long lasting draw dies.

The high speed steels rate the highest on wear resistance, but S90V ranks way up above the majority of steels. I don't believe you would ever sharpen an S90V or a T15 blade on a whet stone.

I just checked the Crucible site, and there is some information on this, but for different steels, they use a different type of chart to measure abrasive resistance, so you have to look closely and study it to make any sense out of it.

There was not a comparison between 154CM and D2 that I could find, although, from my experience, D2 is much more difficult to sharpen, so it would stand to reason that D2 is more abrasive resistant than 154 CM.

However, there is more to look at than the figures on abrasive resistence. One of these is the carbide composition. Two steels can be the same hardness, but a steel with a large amount of Vanidium Carbides will be much more abrasive resistant than a steel with Chromium Carbides, and also the type of carbides will have an effect on edge holding. A steel with a high content of Vanidium carbides will hold an edge much better than a steel of the same hardness, but with Chromium Carbides instead of Vanidium carbides.

I haven't tried T15 yet, but I do have a couple S-90V knives. They sharpen just fine with waterstones - does take a bit longer though!.............................DJ

The S90V would have a lot of Vanidium carbides in it. 440C, 154CM, ATS34 and D2 have Chromium Carbides instead of Vanidium Carbides.

Supposedly, Vanidiium Carbides are harder and more abrasive resistant, meaning they would be harder to abrade on a whet stone, but it is possible that a whet stone, or water stone in your case, is more effective on Vanidium Carbides. I have never used S30V, but everything I have read about it states that it is easier to sharpen than some of the Chromium Carbide steels listed above.

According to the tables I have available on abrasive resistance of steels, this should not be true, so there might be other factors at work here that I am not aware of.

You know, I read a lot of stuff. I try a lot of stuff, especially with guns and knives because...in the end...I have to know for myself. Main reason being the "other factors at work here". Some things you never know until you try.

For the record, this is not a knock on anything 1234567 said....just my thoughts. I hope to receive my first S30V blade soon. After some use, then I'll know.

JCM

Try these: www.OsoGrandeKnives.com


Scroll down the page to the orange Havalon Edge knife.
Someone on here recommended these quite a while ago, and I looked them up and got one for me which I haven't tried yet. I also got one for my buddy, who absolutely loves it. We got the PIRANTA EDGE model because they have the longest blade.