Knife Sharpening with Tony Marfione + Giveaway!

hello and welcome back to microtech knives we have a really exciting episode for you today i am joined by anthony martion owner of microtech knives world renowned knife builder and uh tell us some of the things we're going to do today tony i think it's going to be a really cool episode what we're looking at is since 19 about 1992 we've been sharpening our knives by hand even though there's a million different ways that you've probably seen techniques you know the techniques that we're going to go over today is how i learned very back in the day and that we've refined over the course of some time so we've been doing it for a long time and this is how we continue to train our associates to do it so you've never used an automated machine to sharpen any microtech knife unfortunately if the technology ever gets to that point we'd maybe take a look at it but the you know the the human element involved in these knives they've always been done by hand nice so what we're going to do is we're going to take you down to the sharpening room tony is actually going to walk you through the steps on what we're doing how we do it and why we are well known for the sharpest knives in the world all right so we're down in the sharpening room and there are three sharpening stations here not including the serrations and everything in the back one of the things we're going to have to do for the video is to turn off the air scrubbing basically the dust collection system otherwise you guys won't be able to hear anything we'll also have safety glasses on because this is uh there's a lot of metal in this environment absolutely anytime our associates are in here we're typically using the best of the best of the ppe gear and if you're doing this type of work you know if you're not used to doing it but in any event always wear your personal protection gear eyes ears and some type of level of respiration it's always extremely important regardless if you're doing any kind of automated sharpening along these lines sitting on a bench with a stone or sitting there with a landscape sharpener is a little bit different just don't cut yourself but at the end of the day just always remember to use your personal protection gear okay so we're going to take brand new knives off the assembly line that have not been sharpened in any way shape or form and tell us a little bit about these machines and what we're going to be doing with them you know what we have is we've used a series of machines uh hardcore uh uh manufactured grinders or burkeens or our go-to's you know we use a 10-inch serrated wheel on just about everything that we use and we use a cardboard hone on the end you know so how i've learned over the past i've always learned how to do the the sharpening edge down you know at the very very early stages of microtech there was again no youtube there was no source on the internet to be able to go get any of this information so you had to talk to people you had to ask questions you know when i very very first started out i had a very small wilton grinder that i bought from home depot and then honed them on a stone in my living room okay to get the edges but you know as as the quantities became more apparent i had to i had to start figuring some things out so one particular knife uh you know manufacturer knife maker at the time was chris reeve knives yes and chris was just a wealth of information he put it to you straight you know there was no candy coating anything and at the end of the day you know it was just like you know this is how i do it you know if you could refine it that's great if you can't well then you know good luck you know what we've learned over the course of time is basically roughing these in on let's say it could be a 220 or a 120 grit ceramic belt um and then doing a semi finish with a 600 grit four to six hundred grit to finish the foundation and then from there using a um a cardboard or a leather type wheel which we would use a green compound and you know i've used all different types of compounds over the years i've tried them all but at the end of the day we won't disclose the one i'm particularly using but uh it's been the best and it's been very very consistent with our edges over the years so this is where this will wrap all right so this isn't something that you're gonna find in most of your kitchens or anything else but we're showing you how microtech does it each and every knife that comes off of the assembly line comes through this process every knife also gets wrapped so there's extra care and detail taken into making sure that the chassis don't get any type of metal or anything like that absolutely i mean our thing is is that you know at the end of the day uh we've been wrapping these knives the same way i wish there was a better way of doing it we'll figure it out one of these days but we don't want to get any level of contaminants inside the knives you know when you get typical dust or even a little bit of dirt or stuff like that that's natural contaminants but when you're talking about ceramic and metal dust yeah or compounds that actually have um you know aluminum oxide or ceramic oxides or some something along those lines inside the knives they don't they don't react nearly as well so we take some level of precautions to protect the chassis and the parts and pieces so this is the last thing the knife sees before it goes into qc and packaging this is the last process at this point i consider it the birth of the knife because uh you know at the end of the day what is the essence of a blade is going to be the uh the edge you know anywhere you go whether it's at a knife show or somebody comes in the first thing i always do is i pick up a knife and i touch the edge and uh to test its sharpness so um at this point this is when it becomes alive this is when it's boring all right so i think we're going to use two different models today we're going to use the new the new hera which is a really exciting new otf we're just really excited about this particular piece has a little bit of a different dynamic on the mechanism on the inside fire's glassy smooth and machine clip machine chassis hard coat anodized m390 blades it's as good as it gets for an everyday carry so what we're going to do today guys is we're going to actually sharpen two different blade styles we're going to do a tonto which can be very very difficult for someone that doesn't know what they're doing with regards to knife sharpening because of the transition and sometimes they'll roll that so tony's going to show you how we do that and he's also going to do the hair which is a double edge which now you're having to sharpen four different edges so let's go ahead and get into it and see how this is done all right everyone i'm going to start out with the ultratech tano as we call it you know the biggest biggest thing that we run into when we sharpen our knives is all the knives have a geometry so everybody knows when you're on a wheel or on a stone or anything else that you're abrading away material as you sharpen so the biggest thing that we try to understand is how much to take off for each you know each belt or each level you know this of course being the rough final finish and finish you can't make any foundation not a whole lot of foundation changes on the honing wheel itself but you can adjust your bevel or grind slightly from this point you know the biggest thing is too is the reason why we rough and finish is the mac you know mitigate any kind of heat transfer to the blade you know we use serrated wheels which are a little bit cooler to use but again you know it's just a matter of touch and feel and it takes some time to learn how to do this technique it's not rocket science it's just been doing it a long time and the associates that we have now here at microtech have been doing it for years and we all often compare ideas even still to date even though we've been doing it for over 27 years i'm always looking to my team to come up with better techniques or better ways of doing this so i'm going to start out on the 120 grit so at this point like i say 120 i'm barely barely touching this blade it's i i mean it's it's such a finite light touch it's almost hard to describe you know our our blades are you know typically on the microtechs are flat bevel grinds to begin with anyway which we land right around you know eight to ten thousands thick you know so they're easy to put a foundation work on but they're also easy to mess up if you're not careful but um so the 120 will just about leave a burr in some areas it might be slightly faint but the foundation work at that point is is is finished so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to jump onto the 600 grit and we'll finalize the grind [Music] so all right so the uh what i consider to be the edge bevel is refined at this point you have a complete what we call a wire bur when you look it underneath the light you should see like a hairline burr running extreme across every edge if the bur is not there and it's not touching at that point you have to go back because you're not going to be able to hone an edge at that point you know the burk could be knocked off a bunch of different ways i mean people have used strops they've used compound straps back in the early days chris taught me to take the burr off with a stone and then hone from that point that's why the earlier microtechs were like death sharp i mean they were what was considered to be the polished edges so to get a polished edge at that point i would use a coarse belt stone and then go to my home which you can't do that effectively on a production basis but now i'm going to go ahead and hone the burr off for its final operation so so at this point you know the edge is refined the bird has been relieved and it's considered to be what i consider to be hair popping sharp so i mean that's as good as it gets right there so you see i mean we assemble all our uh otfs or folders or fixed blades are done with of course a uh what we consider to be a dull edge unless they're serrated prior the serration would be a ground on uh honed and then it would be uh sharpened after the fact but you know like i said before we uh you know we're very very careful on how we put the geometries on our bevels to get an optimum grind for this particular blade but it starts out as a you know virgin edge here and we put them on for the first time these blades just come alive all right so that was an awesome demonstration of how those tes are done but now we get a little more difficult uh or difficulty level increases when you do a double edge that is correct you know when you're looking at having to uh run symmetry on four different edge bevels including a tip and a grind it could be a little bit more challenging because if you're a little heavy handed on one side what happens is you'll typically start to force on either side and then before you know it you'll start to disfigure the blade so you definitely got to pay attention but then again same thing with our you know our teammates prior to us if they don't give us a good edge bevel to begin with then we have some issues but sometimes you'll get small anomalies in the edge in manufacturing you have to pay note to that that's why i had mentioned earlier you know there are some companies that could successfully do these either with robotic arms or doing it in machines the unfortunate thing is is that the human element that they don't get as if there's small anomalies in a double edge i can correct it with line of sight so if there's a slight you know bevel that's slightly off i can correct it on the wheel so our associates take great pride in doing the double edges of course the smaller the blade the more difficult it is let's start out with the 120 grit okay so the 120 grit roughing uh is uh complete and i'm going to move on to the 600 grit i was going to mention also that a lot of times you know on the roughing wheel it's very very light pressure on these bevels even if i don't produce a bur in certain spots if i know i'm going to hit it on the secondary grit i'll finish it from there but the whole idea is to maintain that shape the more that you cut the more you're going to erode the shape away and disfigure the blade so my objective is to always get the best possible edge but to also maintain the original geometry of the blade that's important to us what i find with the double-edged knives is you're going to find yourself looking at the blade longer than actually being on the wheel itself so making those little course corrections as you go is vitally important they do take time but they're absolutely worth it i'm gonna go ahead and hone this one up all right that was an awesome demonstration tony thank you for showing that to us but i do want to ask you a question there's this big elephant in the room and that is um and all of the warranty information from microtech knives as long as i can remember it says if you sharpen your knife you'll void your warranty what is the meaning behind that and what does that mean basically at the end of the day i mean we have to find some type of level of limit to understand what's acceptable to us you know we've had you know in our 27 years we've had it all we've had people that have you know been able to hone their knives effectively we've had some that haven't you know if you get somebody on a an old bench grinder and they're just wailing away at that blade of course you know when you expect a brand new blade if you've ground away your entire edge bevel send me back a toothpick and expect that to be covered by warranty that would be unlikely unfair even though the microtech will make a way to either replace the knife get you in a brand new knife or come up with a way a reasonable way to get you back at it because you have to remember i mean it's a tool at the end of the day when you're sharpening you're eroding away your cutting edge and it's going to continuously go away when properly sharpened you remove the minimal amount of material you know it could give you a lifetime of service depending on how you're using the knife too if you're a hard user every day depending on the type of materials you'll require more you know more intervals of sharpening and that's another thing you know a lot of people say hey i want steel or i want a knife that's easy to sharpen but it lasts an edge longer it's kind of an oxymoron because if you want wear resistance which is the cutting matrix of the edge then of course it's going to be more difficult to sharpen like i said if you sharpen your knives and you want to get it you know the the factory edge put back on it you know using a stone using a landscape using different types of sharpeners you know outside of getting on like a grinding wheel or getting on a belt here and and making some mistakes um you could burn the temper out of it very easy on a grinding wheel you know this this process here as you can see there's no sparks flying the blade is not getting hot and uh you know we can control the geometry we're not going to penalize our our our customers for attempting to sharpen their knife it could be very tricky but there's a lot a lot of great tutorials on how to do this with simple sharpeners that you could buy yourself you know these blades they we could replace them um but at the end of the day let's let's take a look at yours so i've been carrying this knife for 21 years you guys know that and tony i know you personally sharpened this knife at least 30 times or so so after 21 years you can see that i am starting to lose some of that blade but it's been professionally sharpened each and every time if we were to put this on a grinding wheel after 21 years it'd probably half the blade left that's correct that's correct and it all depends on how much you need to take that's why i say before you know if you're if you are using it if you are crafty on a set of belts just look you know don't get heavy-handed it's a very very finite touch let the let the abrasives do the work and if you could just see just by visual by seeing that burr come together you know you could you could understand that you're only taking a minimal amount when you're doing this i know a lot of people are going to ask angles can you explain a little bit about we don't want to get crazy with it but for example like on this tonto and on this hera approximately what angle were you using and why and i know a lot of that has to do with blade thickness blade thickness is a big factor to me you know of course you know to to to understand you know what kind of angle i'm using i know that they did one trick for me one year it's but you have to remember i've been doing this for 27 years and a lot of the good guys that do it you know what's going to create the sharpest part of the edge is being consistent on your angle so no matter what your angle is it could vary but it can't vary between the belts can't vary in between your honing so let's say if you're sharpened on a stone the minute you change that angle geometry or float that geometry that's what dulls the edge so consistent in angle is more important than the actual angle itself they've run these on comparators the ones that i do let's say if i were to do 100 socom elites i am exactly within a quarter of a degree by me doing this by hand and that is an absolute fact that's experience that's experience you know so yeah could my angle be off but once i get in my mindset like let's say on these double edges it could vary slightly in the angle but it will be consistent across the board how we train our associates here is you can see that the setups are slightly tweaked differently we show them and teach them because it's a muscle memory and height yes i could walk up to any grinder lean over and do it but most folks can't you know you're sharpening on on a cylindrical wheel so changing your height would change your angle so we allow these guys to situate their their grinders in a way that's comfortable to get them into the muscle memory to be able to maintain their angle properly so that's key if you're doing it by hand you know same thing on a stone maintaining angle a lot of the newer sharpens that you see that have the honors and stuff that where you go like this i can't remember the name or a landscape actually adjust your angle so that you can make very little mistakes in changing that so that's extremely important walking up to a grind wheel you know you're on your own at that point but you know the biggest thing is is just consistency on the angle a lot of people say hey between 15 and 19 degrees 20 degrees is optimum a lot of these pre-positioned sharpeners will have those built in you know getting a little sharpie on your edge if you're using something like that and just touching it with a sharpie and then going ahead and giving it a little hone with a something fine will allow you to find the optimum angle off your microtech or any other brand out there consistently for re-sharpening so it's a good it's a good way to do it just get a sharpie and go along the cutting edge you can't hurt the knife but it'll show you as you're abrading that away if you're hitting high or hitting low or you want to adjust your angle it's a good way to do it yeah now i remember it wasn't that long ago maybe seven eight years ago i mean you'd be on these wheels sharpening yourself until i mean 18 hours at a time so you're talking about years and years and it would probably be hundreds of thousands of hours yeah i mean at the end of the day i mean on you know unfortunately you know when i first got started i was the you know guy who built the knives you know got in there it was just my wife at the time to be i mean we started in our apartment so yes i had to hone all the knives and just up until about maybe seven years ago when my son tony started uh helping me on the line and by the way tony's tony's as good as i am for sure but he learned you know he learned underneath me for the longest longest time and and each of the associates that we have now have either come from a trade where they sharpen and then you know refine these techniques so but yeah i mean sitting on a bench for as long as it was it was starting to get really tricky as the quantities got bigger to help maintain a company and also work from behind a grinding wheel even though i still do it and they can do it uh we are blessed to know that we have some great people working with us yeah now you wanted to mention something uh about this te that you actually sharpened here yes it was actually cool he just opened it up and yeah i haven't actually played with a lot of these models but yeah so we're going to unwrap this one here and it's kind of neat so this is a jade top ultra tech one of the signature series it's a serial number 35 that i sharpened today um i was just going to let you folks know that we'll do some type of uh you know i'd like to offer that back to our subscribers and our our fans and just we're going to give this knife away i don't know how we're going to do it ray and i will put something together but it is number serial number 35. and you're going to sign it i am going to hand sign this box and we're going to do it in a giveaway all right tony thanks for that informative video that was awesome to be able to see that firsthand but this is that jade ultra tech te serial number 35 so what i think you're going to do is you're going to actually sign this sign this piece number 35 21 all right all right and what we're going to do folks is if you comment and you're a subscriber below now let's give you a week or two because what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to pick a comment from below you have to be subscribed to the channel and we'll give it away on our next video release at microtech knives i think it's an awesome gesture thank you for doing that tony thanks for spending the time out of your day and we hope to see you soon guys don't forget to like share and subscribe we'd like to see this channel grow have a great week thank you

Channel: Microtech Knives

Views: 53,191

Keywords: microtech, microtechknives, how to sharpen a knife, best way to sharpen a knife, best knife sharpener, how to sharpen microtech knife, microtech knife sharpening, Microtech, Microtech Knives, How to sharpen Ultratech, How to sharpen OTF, OTF Knife, Knife Giveaway, Anthony Marfione, Tony Marfione, Anthony Marfione Sharpening, Microtech Behind the scenes, Micro tech, micro tech, Top EDC Knives, who makes the best knife, Best OTF, Best OTF Knives, Top OTF Knives, otf knives, otf

Id: pxI_EZT07SM

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021