How to: Knife sharpening on a belt grinder

I've just finished making this veggie cleaver for my wife Charlene out of all the many knives that have gone around the world she's finally getting a few that are being kept at home and I'll show you today how our shopping on a belt grinder so if you are new year my name is tarek I've been a full-time autozone for many years and this channel is all about the tips and tricks that I've learned over these years and they'll have to be beneficial to you so let's get started so there are three different ways that you can shopping with a belt grinder the one way is on top of the platen with the wheel itself or you can find a soft spot I turn this attachment around and that'll give you an apple seed grant all of these different types of grinds do you offer different benefits to the knife that you're doing my preference is either to sharpen on top of the platen when I'm working with chef's knives and these these styles of knives at least and then I also do a lot of a convex or an apple seed grind which I do on the opposite side of this attachment but basically it's just on a slight soft spot of the belt which gives you a nice rounded edge it's very very strong agit lost an incredibly long time let me show you a little bit about that alright so before I get down to the actual sharpening of this knife I want to quickly go over some edge geometry for you guys and I've had a lot of questions around this over the years from friends that are getting into knife making and just people interested in the in the craft I've got three angles that I work at I work at 15 20 and 25 so the 13 degrees 20 degrees 25 degrees at least within that range I do freehand do grants on everything so what is the difference between these different angles and when do you actually want to use them I do realize as well that with these angles it there is also the variable of what of still you using has your heat be he treat been good all these kind of factors but if we take all of that into account and using the correct steel and the heat treat is correct this is the principles that you can follow along with so I like to do all of my hips knobs at a 15 degree angle now the reason why I do my shifts knobs at a 15 degree angle is because a 15 degree angle is a very acute fine angle so what that does is it gives an amazing sharpness on the knife which is what you wanting to achieve when you're working in the kitchen so I like to do my ship's knobs at 15 degrees the 20 degree angle which is and obviously my drawings a Villegas just over exaggerated just to show some sort of a difference but on the 20 degree angle what's happening is that's a slightly stronger edge than a 15 degree angle but it still has a very very fine sharpness on it so I like to do my everyday carry knives at a 20 degree angle there's a last for an acute fun sharpness on the laughs for the everyday tasks but it also has a slightly stronger edge so I'm not having to shop in this knife as consistency I can use it for quite a long time before I even have to consider sharpening it so I like to do my EDC knives at that sort of an angle I also like to do my cleavers or at least my veggie cleavers at that angle because these knives over here you know that designed for working through sometimes harder items like a the skin of a butternut or a pumpkin or things like that so the 20 degrees still gives a very fine acute sharpness but it has got a much stronger edge so in other words they stay sharp and it can take a little bit more abuse than a 15 degree and finally I do a 25 degree angle now the 25 degree is obviously in relative terms the fattest of all the different types of sharpening edges so what that does is now it gives a lot of strength if you look if you look at the difference between if you take a cross section of the of these different ages and look at the at the top of it the 25 degree has got much more weight behind the actual edge which means it is an extremely strong edge but with it having that extra weight behind the edge it will not feel as acutely shop so that will be the difference now the great thing with a 25 degree edge or at least the performance of a 25 degree age is when you've got something that is a hard working item so some of those hard working items that art consider how that working item one of the knobs I'll make this pattern up which is for the leather bodies ends and this knife is designed to cut through leather and it gets really pushed into the into the leather and has to work I mean this knife works it's incredibly hard so I'm wanting an edge that is going to stay sharp for a long time so that it can get the G so you can get the job done without the edge risking any kind of damage for the hard work that is doing I also do it I also do a 25 degree angle on all of my hunting knives an abortion I don't have a one of my hunting knives finished these are stall works in progress inside the workshop but my hunting knives are all sharpened at a twenty five degree angle again because these knives are working knives and wanting them to get big tasks done and that angle does that brilliantly so this is a little bit of an overview at least of the three different angles that I like to use on my nerves obviously these variances in this but this is a nice simple way to get started especially if you new to sharpening knives so just before we finish off over yet I did mention over there that there's three ways that you can put the edge on and that can be either with a wheel with a the platen or with a convex there's a soft spot of the of the belt so what does that actually do to the shape of the edge so when you do it on a wheel you get this and this is obviously beard you know looking on a microscope but you would have this concave shape on the edge when you're doing it on the platen very obviously you would have a straight edge and when you're doing it on a convex or on the soft spot of a belt you will have an edge that has got this slightly rounded looked at the shape of an apple seed I've shop in many knobs in every one of the these different options the two that are stick to they're my two personal preferences is using either the platen or the Apple seed ground 30 years obviously they're on the wheel it's all at you using either on the platen on apple seed ground the reason being is that I personally find that these give a very very keen edge and they stay sharper for a lot longer so these are my preferences obviously I know you other knife makers that use it on the wheel and they get great success with it I have in the past you but experiment find the one that you prefer there is no right or wrong honest find your preference and do that all right so I'm just want to get this knife sharpened up here and be doing it on the platen and the belt that I like to start off with I mean the surface here there's no edge put on this knife now my personal preference is to start with an old 80 grit so this is an old 80 grit I then go to a 220 grit a new 220 grit and then to a a 45 bolt which is round about a 500 grit and then I go into a leather belt which I'll make so I'm gonna take you guys through that whole process so the place to start now is obviously to get the correct angle so the easiest way to do this is to go well find your ninety degrees are then come down to 45 degrees are then half of that again which will give me twenty two point five degrees and as I mentioned there I like to do these knots at around about 20 degrees I'll come down that little bit more so I know where that angle is and where it needs to certain are now recognized as well if you're just starting off for this finding these angles and finding the certainty of audio at the correct angle can be quite tricky so there's a quick solve to this let me trade equity [Music] so I'm back and I'm armed with a an angle measurer I'm armed with an angle measure it now you can make three of these obviously dressed up this one at 20 degrees I wrote on there 20 you can make yourself a 15 degree one if you do shifts not if you actually have a need for doing that kind of a angle and you can make up a 25 and then this will simply give you a specially on the platen will give you where that angle needs to be so I now know that that is my angle so again I'm 90 45 22.5 and that but if we're done will give me my 20 degrees so I know now that I'm gonna be sharpening the whole knife at that angle qasas takes a bit of practice so don't be too harsh on yourself trying to learn these things one last thing quickly before I start there always have the belt moving in the opposite direction of your blade you're shopping in the front meaning you go that way have the belt moving in the opposite direction of your blade otherwise it'll part on there cut into that and you're gonna be snapped or smacked with a belt so I'm gonna be turning my extractor on now because as I pause I'll cool that plate down on the extractor and let's do this [Music] [Music] [Music] yes I'll just finish on the 80-grit the thing that lets me know that I'm done is that there's a bird that's completely brought brought over onto the steel so what that means is as I'm busy sharpening both sides we were removing steel and when I look down the back of the knife and I've see on the front I can check for evenness of where that grind is sitting but as you start doing this process you will start to see a bird's going to form it's obviously it's so so slight and I can just just feel that now but what it looks like you know obviously under the light over here it kind of looks like this little speckle that starts shining back at you like almost like a slight glistening at the bottom of the seal especially in the setup that I've got over here it allows me to see that quite nasty and quite easily plus I can feel it so there was no way that the camera could focus in on that little burr so what I did is I took a piece of mild steel and are over exaggerated what this will look like if you're not sure what I'm talking about so as you busy grinding there's going to be a burr so this is a very exaggerated form of what that bird looks like but it's when the steel actually folds over itself now on each layer of the belt you're going to know that you've done with that belt when the completes section of the blade has a bow going through it so in other words if the frontier blade had or portion of your blade did not have that person in other words it had a portion where knock off there we're at a portion there was a bird there there was no bird there there was a bird that means you've still got work to do on that portion of the edge the edge is only complete and reached this point of like after where it's going to be completely sharpened when the complete bow is even and consistent throughout the edge so I'm gonna hop onto the 220-grit now and that bird that I'm creating on enough it gets finer and finer as the the the fan of the bells go so I'm gonna carry on with that The Geysers remember the fun of the grit belt that you are Magnum on my finest felt the fun of the bird is going to be at this point now it's only through experience with doing so many knobs that I really get to see the fine detail of that little bird coming up so just be mindful as you going maybe take your fingertip and constantly just check their edge or put a light into position that allows you to really see that slightest little burr breaking like I have got over here it shows me that slightest little burr breaking and I can kind of see the sparkle of it happening and my fingertips are accustomed to feeling it so that's not ready for the leather so I'm about to move on to the final of my personal belt progression this is the leather belt that I have made I have made these for quite a few knife makers over the years as well I find that it just gives a supreme sharpness to the edge that you're working on if you don't have one of these leather belts that's okay as well for the first part of my knife making I didn't have one and then you'll just have to break the burl off manually so the easiest way to do that is I have a piece of hard wood and with a piece of hard wood you could just gently let that edge just run through the through that piece of wood I'm laying the way - then after the job over you so what this is doing now is it's just gently removing that macro burr that was built up by the Father by that previous and the previous belt and then you can manually scrub this is the way guys I mean doing it for many many years and I'll just find having this as part of my progression on the ground it goes a lot quicker the sharpest I get my nerves is when I when I do it on this belt over the years guys I must say I've used many different types of compounds always a polishing compound obviously at the moment I'm enjoying this it's the Brownells far-far 5 polisher a to get a polished finish on it I'm enjoying this one at the moment I've I've used many different types of compounds this works great in a strop is on a manual strop you know you just put it into a strop over there I'll just obviously run this done this this belt is heavily loaded with compound so I wouldn't necessarily be doing this now but I will just let that slightly run over there guys when your machine as well if you are using a leather belt run it on slow otherwise you you might find that the belt has a bit of a problem so I'm going to run through this possible face and then show you how this knife works [Music] [Music] all right so to now prove how sharp this knife is I'm gonna shave off this beard no I'm not but well there's a mother off mister [Music] because so if you've got any value out of this video please hit the thumbs up below give it a give it a thumbs up we're going to be adding more and more content to this channel so if you want to get it remember to subscribe hit the load button as well when that pops up thanks for taking all of me

Channel: CHARTERMADE

Views: 47,011

Keywords: how to sharpen a knife on a belt grinder, how to sharpen a knife, knife sharpening, belt grinder knife sharpening, what grit belt for knife sharpening, how to use belt knife sharpener, sharpening on a belt grinder

Id: YPOB8qwvj8g

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2019