Report on CPM440V sharpening

[J Smith]

I tried sharpening my native last night.I got very angry,could not get an edge on it.So tonight I tried again 40 strokes on med each side of blade 40 on fine 30 degrees.Now it is almost scary sharp,must not have been holding my mouth right last night.Does this kind of thing ever happen to any of you?



Jeff

[aero_student]

Yup, sadly it does. CPM 440v is tricky to sharpen. It's because of the vanadium carbides in it.

[yog]

At first I almost felt superstisious using a 204. The first shapening would get a reasonable edge, but it would take a second shapening to get a scarey edge, when in reality all that is happening is that the first shapening is just setting the edge, which obviously takes more time than touching up an already set edge.

Now when I want to sharpen a new knife I will use the medium ceramic on just one side until I get a burr, then repeat on the other side, then do a normal 204 sharpening. That way I know I have set the edge before I start sharpening.

I did also hear that because CPM-440V has such good edge retension abilities (i.e. hard to sharpen), that twice the normal number of strokes is a good starting point, that would bring you up to the 40 you mentioned.

"Walk softly, but carry a big stick."