I was looking for something to try with my new belt grinder and this has been laying around in bad shape for a long time:
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17.5" Brazilian Tramontina in unknown Carbon Steel bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. Stock was .089" pretty much straight down from the spine to the primary (and only) bevel which was at a pretty decent 16-18 degrees. It was brought to an edge except for about the last inch of the tip where it was almost the full thickness of the stock.
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I decided to start out with an 80 grit AO belt to get the feel for how quickly stock would be removed. In hindsight I should have used a lower grit as the cleaning work took a significant amount of time.
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When I was finished I had removed almost all of the rust and put a .2" wide primary bevel on it at 10dps.
I then added by hand on the SPSII 240x stone a 15dps secondary which was .05" wide which I then refined on the SPSII 1000x.
The thickness behind the secondary was ~.035" for most of the length of the blade.
To finish I added a 20dps mico on the Spyderco medium stones.
With this edge it was easily slicing newsprint and coming close to a push cut.
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This was not a small amount of work but it seemed like good practice and I'm reasonably happy with the results.
Now as to whether or not this blade is of much use only some work will tell. The feel of the handle seems functional at best and the whole blade feels unbalanced.
17.5" Brazilian Tramontina in unknown Carbon Steel bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. Stock was .089" pretty much straight down from the spine to the primary (and only) bevel which was at a pretty decent 16-18 degrees. It was brought to an edge except for about the last inch of the tip where it was almost the full thickness of the stock.
I decided to start out with an 80 grit AO belt to get the feel for how quickly stock would be removed. In hindsight I should have used a lower grit as the cleaning work took a significant amount of time.
When I was finished I had removed almost all of the rust and put a .2" wide primary bevel on it at 10dps.
I then added by hand on the SPSII 240x stone a 15dps secondary which was .05" wide which I then refined on the SPSII 1000x.
The thickness behind the secondary was ~.035" for most of the length of the blade.
To finish I added a 20dps mico on the Spyderco medium stones.
With this edge it was easily slicing newsprint and coming close to a push cut.
This was not a small amount of work but it seemed like good practice and I'm reasonably happy with the results.
Now as to whether or not this blade is of much use only some work will tell. The feel of the handle seems functional at best and the whole blade feels unbalanced.