Not for the feint of heart

You too can do a perfect sharpening of your beautiful Damasteel blade even with a deep etch. I put it on my $1,000 fixed angle system (I don’t recommend you use one that is less than $300) because there was a tiny nick in the blade from the factory. I recommend you not do the blades freehand. They are done by Herman with the same fixed angle system. The procedure I have created below is to produce a mirror finish. If you don’t want that you can stop on any stone you want.

REMOVE THE BLADE FROM THE KNIFE BEFORE SHARPENING

  1. Draw on the bevel with a Sharpie completely covering it.
  2. Mount the finest diamond finishing stone in the clamp on your system.
  3. Find the angle of the bevel starting at 20° (my system has a built in angle finder). Lightly form an arc along the edge. I create a 45°angle against the blade while moving from heel to tip. Slowly and lightly move back and forth along the edge a few times.
  4. Inspect the bevel under magnication (I use my iPhone at 2x-3x under bright light) to see where the Sharpie is removed. If the apex is cleaned off all the way along the edge then your angle is too steep. If the shoulder of the bevel is cleaned off all the way along the edge then the angle is too low. Adjust the angle to try and split the difference of the Sharpie mark between the shoulder and apex of the bevel all along the edge. This would be your sharpening angle (I found my full dress Ishtar was sharpened at 22° from the factory).
  5. Change the stone in the clamp to the next lowest grit and work it on the bevel back and forth from heel to tip and back the heel.
  6. Move the stone back and forth 5-10 times lightly. Inspect the bevel again like in step 4. You should see an even, flat bevel along the entire edge. If there are spots that the Sharpie mark is not removed then repeat step 5, moving down a stone until the scratch pattern is even and all the Sharpie is removed.
  7. If you have a clean bevel you now will have a burr raised along the entire bevel on the opposite side of the blade. If the burr is not complete the keep using the stone until it is.
  8. Now complete the other side of the blade with the same stone that is in the fixture using step 6 after applying a Sharpie mark to the factory bevel.
  9. Use a clean cloth to wipe the blade clean as to not contaminate the next smallest diamond stone with the previous diamonds that were left behind. If you don’t do this your scratch pattern will not be hard to remove in the next step.
  10. Change the stone to the next finest grit.
  11. Work on the original side of the blade.
  12. Change the direction of the scratch pattern by moving the stone forward this time from tip to heel. This will allow you to make sure you have completely removed the scratch pattern of the previous courser stone.
  13. Repeat step 11 & 12 on the opposite side of the blade.
  14. Repeat Step 10, 11 & 12 until you have finished using your finest stone.
  15. Reassemble the knife
  16. Use a leather strop with a diamond compound that is just a little finer than the last stone you used on the blade. Lightly strop the blade back and forth about 15x and do the same thing on a separate strop with a finer diamond compound. I finish my blade with a 0.125 micron compound. When switching strops make sure you don’t contaminate your strops by not cleaning the blade.
  17. Clean the blade well this final time.
  18. Test the sharpness of your edge apex first with paper. You should be able to cleanly push down through the paper. Then use a slow slicing motion along the entire apex through the paper. There should be no spots on the edge that hang up on the paper when very lightly slicing through the paper. You should be able to hear only a whisper when quickly slicing through printer paper. You should be able to easily do swirls as you slice the paper with a little technique.
  19. Test the sharpness by barely moving the blade almost flat to your arm. The hairs should just pop and you should feel no resistance or pulling at all.
  20. Test the same as the paper test but with a paper towel. It is next to impossible to do a push cut. I don’t even try. Try and use a slicing motion to cleanly cut through the paper towel. Then try and do a few swirls.

If you have completed all the above steps successfully then you will have the sharpest, cleanest bevel and apex that you have ever had!

I highly recommend you practice this method of sharpening on a less expensive, mid to premium steel before you try and perform this on an expensive Damasteel blade.

Feel free to ask any questions or make comments about this post.