Art

You are the Devil Dougster, the snake. You tempted Woman and she bit your twenty dollar apple. Get thee out Satan. Art

Let's talk a little about included angles. I like 20°, that is 10° per side. I will look at a knife and see if that is possible. On Bill Buchman knives, he used thin steel that I sharpen at 20°. I have a few of these knives and that is how I sharpen them. Note that the thicker the steel, the greater the angle they must be sharpened at. An old Rose or Osborne will need a lot more angle than a Buchman. I can never tell 'till I get the knife in my hand and see what steel, how thick, and very importantly, what the guy who came before me did to it. Remember all those wedges I told you to make? I wouldn't tell you to make a whole bunch of them if you only were going to need the 10° one. While I have and use vernier and digital protractors in the shop, I find this thing gets a lot of use. While a lot of sharpening and edge mechanics may tell you they freehand it or eyeball it, the good ones don't. Art

Hey Roy, Wowzer! I'll try and cover it all, but poke me if I don't. First off, I charge $10 and $6 shipping to sharpen a head knife. I'll only charge $6 to ship any number of them. Send me 100 and they cost $1,006 back to you. Kitchen knives are $5, and Hunting/Field knives are $8. Turnaround is 2 days sometimes more. The easiest system is to buy a large piece of tempered glass, and have the edges finished. If you can get 4 pieces of sandpaper on it more the better. Just remember, tempered and finished edges. You can stick various grits of finishing sandpaper (like wet and dry) to these and use them as stones. Sharpen away from the edge as any bubbles or creases in the paper will stop you in your tracks. Get a tube of 3M Feathering adhesive #08051 for a 5 oz tube (it ain't cheap), make sure it is type II, and get 3M General purpose Adhesive Cleaner #08984 to clean it up. The feathering adhesive will allow you to peel and stick the paper, and if you don't let a bunch of crud get on the adhesive side, sick and peel it multiple times. You're going to spend $40 for both, but you'll thank yourself for that expenditure. You should get out your handy dandy protractor and cut yourself some wedges at 7.5°, 10°, 12.5°, 15°, and 17.5° to cover all the bases. With round knives, I do 10° per side for an included angle of 20° but some knives won't take a 20° included angle so you can go 25° or even 30° without sacrificing much sharpness. There are four quadrants to the head knife edge, sharpen each separately with the same grit, then move up through the grits when you have a consistent burr. Many ask why go up through many grits? Ok, sharpness is important, but polish is paramount in sharpening. Each stone or grit leaves scratches, from naked eye to 30X loupe and even higher. The edge bevel should be a mirror if possible. Some knives, not real possible, but a good hard steel can be polished, and most scratches can disappear. The edge will cut and part the leather and not make a lot of noise. Tradeoffs are time and cost. Stones and belts cost money and time is also money (except for maybe us retreads who don't really care). Then you get to the point of just how sharp can I get this puppy, (and the lightning strikes and the sharpener screams, IT LIVES) . It goes up from here when we get into stones. There are books on sharpening, mostly woodworking tools, but it all kind of applies. If you want advice on a product, let me know, if I've used it, or it is just plain ill conceived or impractical, I'll give a fair assessment. If I were teaching a class, it would be a lot of board work at first, about edges and profiles. Then I would teach the head knife and how to put each type of edge on it. If I can teach you to sharpen a head knife, then you are pretty much going to be able to sharpen most knives, but the second would be the concave edged knives, like some of the clicker knives. I think third would be edgers, although the tools required for that are small and can be quite expensive. A quality 3mm pilar file will cost $35, but a small piece of steel and sandpaper can accomplish as much if you are careful. Really, an edge is an edge and once you learn how to sharpen it, you just have to figure a way to get at it. Experience really really helps. I hope this answers most of it, if you need more, let me know. Art

There used to be something of value in producing something (like a sewing machine) in one place. Control of manufacture of your product allowed to keep a hand on quality even if it cost a little more to do so. Singer did it, and their machines are still running today. But somewhere along the way someone brought cost competition into the mix and quality went down to drive cost. Hell, we don't need no freaking QC. Now, everything (all the parts) comes from suppliers and manufacturers that live to the cost paradigm. GIGO, garbage in garbage out. Let me see a show of hands (bet you haven't seen that one on the net yet) of those who would buy a 441 type machine for $5,000 or $6,000 or more. Maybe an established factory who really looks to long term operations. But the bean counters get in there, with operations research that says to buy the cheap machine and replace it when you can't reasonably maintain it. So on we go keeping the good stuff running if we can and buying crap that we can replace cheaper than repair. Is it any wonder Wal-Mart survives? Art

That too, the Walleye is the state bird isn't it? The Missouri River and those big impoundments (lakes) can yield some really big fish. West of the Mississippi is wonderful, as long as you stop at the Sierra Nevada. Art

Demanding info will not get you a lot of sympathy here. The only reason to go to South Dakota is Sturgis, and that's not until August. Given what I provided, a little internet searching including shoe or shoemaker and the tool type will get you a bunch of info. If you have more questions after that, there are a few of us on here who can help. Art

There is really only one industrial machine that is, shall we say, oilless; and then not really. Pfaff machines use a lot of roller, needle, and ball bearings in their machines. They do however provide either oil pumps or instructions to manually oil the hook races and grease the gears where the hookshaft goes vertical. Now packed bearings won't last forever, but they are easily replaceable, and they do last a long time. There is a company in China that specializes in Pfaff clones. I have one of these and it is remarkable what they have done. They make the older mainstay models that gave Pfaff their name. If you put permanently packed bearings everywhere, the machines will last essentially forever, because you can do an overhaul and get a new machine. But still, a drop of oil here and there is necessary with even the most bearing-upped machine. Longevity is always a matter of maintenance. Art

The bird is a MI-24 Hind Russian Attack Helo, kind like our AH-1 Cobra. I only know of 2 that are painted like this, both full attack birds. I have no idea of the significance. I've always had a sweet spot for Russian aircraft design philosophy, if you just put enough HP on anything, it will fly. OGA, Electronic Stuff, about all I can say. Art

Leathertoolz, Saying high speed steel is like saying car. Car is different from truck or boat, but there are a whole lot of different cars. High speed steel means generally that it can cut metal and be somewhat impervious to friction in addition to providing a decent finish. The high speed part generally translates into more feet per minute of tool speed, nothing really necessary in a leather knife. These steels range from M2 which has been around since I can remember, to M42 which I also remember quite fondly. These high speed steels don't like to be bendy, which might preclude them from duty in the thin knife department, like I said, the tool manufacturers endeavour to be nebulous concerning their metal compositions, probably because if you knew what they were using, you might buy something else. Art

Continuing saga. I have used this thing a few times since. It cuts, and does so fairly easily. I am not happy for the cut, I can hear it cut, which is not noticeable on a properly sharpened head knife of good steel. The cut looks a little ragged, not clean like a good head knife. This baffles me as it cuts with a moderate effort, as good as a rather expensive "custom" knife of current manufacture. This is on an old piece of leather that rests on the bench for any purpose. It also cuts decent leather. I guess I could sharpen a '56 Chevy front bumper. Not happy with it, just totally suprised. Art

I started sharpening commercial kitchen knives in the late '80s and early '90s. I really enjoyed sharpening and have always enjoyed endeavours that were me and the tool. I fooled around with every abrasive on earth perfecting sharpening, but basically freehand sharpening was not going to cut it. I don't remember how I got in touch with Ben at Edge Pro. I bought one of his setups and eventually a lot of stones films etc. Still have them in a go kit, and believe me that kit made many times more money than it all cost. I actually wore-out stones which means I was sharpening a lot of knives and making a correspondingly good amount of money. The only problem with the edge pro is the amount of knives you can sharpen. The amount of business you can do is directly proportional to the number of knives you can sharpen. That and getting paid. Enter the Tormek, Christmas gift from the wife. This machine doubled or tripled the amount of knives you can do, and changed the complexion of the business to where the sharpening took place in the shop and not on the road. Found it was easier to do a trade/replacement business as opposed to onsite service. The inventory increased but it was worth it. I did this for more than 10 years and then worked for the Feds for 15 more and retired. Needed something to keep me sane, so I went back to sharpening and dealing in tools new and used. Knives, Scissors (both Standard and highly technical Beauty shears and scissors), leather tools, luthier tools, hockey equipment, just not industrial tools (saws, end mills, drills, etc.). Getting to the point that I'm not doing much leatherwork, but I don't have to so I just dabble, and give some support to the Cosplay scene. The Tormek is expensive, but I didn't pay for it either, another Christmas gift from the wife. For the average guy it might be overkill, but if you do wood lathe work, it sure is something. The availability of jigs for almost any tool (sorry no head knives) makes it really a go to item for those who can afford it, and all those jigs WILL cost you more than the machine. I can't do without it as people bring in tools that have been ground into something maybe bordering on obscene modern art. Even with the Tormek, Makitas, the Bader, Burr-King, Powermatic, Edge-Pro, grinders, buffers, scissor machines, and everything else around here, it all can be done by hand with what amounts to various rocks, a little more technical than that, but not much. So if anyones wants to discuss the technical side of sharpening, or the pros and cons of any sharpening system, let's hear it. There is every chance someone on here has used one of whatever has your interest. I am happy to expand on my experiences and to let you know if a particular tool spends most of it's time at the bottom of the unused tool drawer. Art

I gave this some thought over the past couple of days. As you approach finer grits, you should be looking at one pass over the stone or so to raise what amounts to a really small burr. A big hard to remove burr means you are removing too much metal or really don't have the knife sharp enough to be using finer grits yet, or you are not engaging the bevel at the proper angle. It takes a whole lot of experience to engage this bevel at the exact angle without a jig. The only other happenstance is that your steel is soft. This is not a happy thing as the knife really needs to be annealed, worked on if necessary, heat treated, and sharpened, and that brings the complication of knowing what it was made of in the first place. If you keep having trouble, have someone do a hardness test on it up near the edge. Art

Cyis, On your particular tool, I think we are reading some kind of purpose instead of sharpening and use. The toes are way to long to have come from a factory. The factory is not going to waste that much tool steel on every one they make; that would add up. If you are going to do an angle, and apparently folks were doing this, why not a more pronounced angle like a 45° or so; if going for an effect, a more pronounced angle would have more of that effect. To accomplish this on a large edger, you would be wasting a lot of tool cutting it back. I wonder if some folks tried sharpening on the edge of a wheel and got this result. I don't mind sharpening French Edgers as I have the tools for it, however, I can sympathise with the dilemma of those who don't. Any port in a storm, and if it still worked when you were finished, well then it was good enough for then. Tool companies were competitive back in the heyday of tools and harness ruled. If one of these manufacturers thought he could provide a tool with a purpose that would garner more sales or suck a little of his competitors volume, these things would be all over the place, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. As it is, I don't think these angled French Edgers were never a production item, if they were, they would have appeared in some of the old catalogs. Art

Yep, pretty much. Art

I have sharpened a fair amount of vintage tools over the years, I haven't encountered one of these yet. Who is the maker? This is probably a question for Bruce Johnson who has seen more french edgers then me for sure. I'm sticking by my guns on this one, it is a sharpening mistake. Art

A pricking iron for pricking welts A float (though it won't) A Fudge Wheel for marking stitch lines on welts A Crease or bead raiser The rest are pretty much sole irons. Art

That type of knife has been used in the shoe trade for hundreds of years. If you use them heavily (like a cobbler or shoemaker would) you have to sharpen them often, but that goes for most knives. I have no idea what they make saw blades of today. Back in my day, usually O-6 or L-6, both good oil hardening steels. Less than a flat 10° bevel, one side only makes a great skiving knife, wrap the handle with split, some folks just use duct tape, and you are good to go. One thing to be careful about. In the past, you pretty much knew what metal was used in common tools, saws, files, drills, etc. This is not necessarily the case today. Materials science has come a long way since my dad and I worked in the shop, and I could pretty much count on a file to be O-1 or W-1 or 2. Now they use sophisticated metals that have complicated heat treats, and are oftimes just a cheaper means to profit. Files are not "superior" anymore, they are good enough. I can imagine that saw blades (bandsaw - hacksaw) are not the same either. You don't want to know what has happened with "drill rod". Art

Hi Greg, I remember seeing straps from COUSU MAIN that also had an Omega stamp on the inside liner. If it is the same company, then they are doing OEM work. Art

Greg, I have seen some that definitely were hand sewn (and with a few mistrakes), and some that appear to be machine sewn. There may be more than one "line" of straps with different price points and manufacture. Is this assertion "killing" your business, or does it just tick you off? If you are trying to land a contract with Omega, then they are looking for Style, Quality, Price, and the ability to deliver, in pretty much that order, but that order may change over the course of the day. Hand stitching may only come into play if the customer thinks it will from a sales standpoint. Omega really sells watches. Your watchbands are replacement, upgrade, OEM. I never recommend anyone get into an OEM type of business anymore than I would recommend they start competing, or even selling to Wal-Mart. Little fish in the Amazon have problems swimming with big fish. Transfer those same fish to a pond and they become a lot bigger fish and have a lot less trouble surviving. Sounds like you already have your own niche; if you're not having problems, leave it alone. Art

Good point. When skiving anything, try to attack at an angle. Even the Tandy Skife should be used at an angle (although they, whoever they are, never tell you that). Of course that is for long skiving along an edge. It seems that skiving toward an edge (should we call it peeling) works ok with a blade parallel to the edge. Art

Could be a bad sharpening job. The toes are a bit long so it probably has been sharpened. However, if in as manufactured condition, it might be set that way for right handed use. Art

Springfield Leather Sheridan Leather Outfitters Check out our advertisers at the top of each page, Weaver Leather, OTB, many others. Art

If you can make them work well for you, then use them. Personally, I have always used Fiebing's and have never had a reason to change. That doesn't mean that companies don't occasionally change formulations and muck things up. Glues were crazy there for a while, and I changed. Fiebing's spirit and oil dyes just keep on keepin' on. If it ain't broke, I don't fix it. Art

What steel is this knife made from. D2 can be a bit of a PITA to sharpen. I had sonny watch me do what you are doing and the only thing he remarked on is that I hold the knife at a 45° angle to the stone. The other thing is you have to have enough angle on the knife to engage the burr. The thing is, if you are proceeding to finer and finer stones, the burr should be getting smaller and smaller. Art

Rick, Run the knife along the end edge of a pine board as if you were slicing, apply pressure straight down and pull back. Pull the blade in a stropping motion (away from the edge) on a piece of leather or a strop burr side down on the strop. Pull the blade in a stropping motion (away from the edge) on a 4000 grit or finer stone, burr side down on the stone. In the last two instances, pull quickly along the stone or strop away from the edge for an inch or two. In any case, be sure to remove the burr from the strop or stone. Art