So I got my shipment of Lee Valley belts in today, and did some sharpening.

The progression for most of the knives went something like this: 120 or 180 grit to reprofile (broke my 180 grit belt, hence the confusion), followed by belts in 40, 20, and 9 micron (those correspond to 320, 500, and 1200 grit), and then stropped on a leather belt loaded with the compound that Lee Valley sells.

I didn't use the backplate at all for any of the sanding belts, but did use it with the strop, as the leather was far more stretchy, and simple compression of the leather gives the convexing effect.

I retouched my High Street (doing this one by hand was what drove me to get the belt sander - I just couldn't quite get it hair popping, even though I've done that numerous times with other knives by hand.), then I worked on my SoD, then did the Regulator, and finally worked up the courage to put a nice convex edge on my NMSFNO. All of these blades easily shave hair now, and I've got the bare patches on my arms to prove it.

I didn't bother to photograph all of them, but here are a few pics....

First, the SoD. I didn't get any "before" shots of the edge. It was able to slice paper, but not shaving sharp, and had a fairly obtuse edge geometry. Here's what it looked like after some convexing:




The tip is the hardest part - some of mine came out looking great, and some not so much:



Next up, the NMSFNO... those of you who saw my chopoff know that I was THOROUGHLY disappointed in the performance of this blade. The factory edge was downright pitiful, unable to slice paper and sure as heck not shaving sharp. This thing got it's BUTT WHOOPED in my chopoff... Here's what it looked like before the sharpening:






And here's after ten or twenty minutes on the belt sander:




[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3544/3641876355_24fea9fa12_o.jpg[/img]

All in all, I'm very happy with how these edges turned out. They aren't as pretty as Horn Dog's work, that's for darn sure, but they are extremely functional edges. Can't wait to put them to a test that's more taxing than grooming my arms <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Nice work, MM. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> You'll find that that little HF is one of the handiest tools in the shop. I removed the top guard, the table, and the side belt guard (and sometimes the platen). Tips can be tricky. My problem, at first, was that I tried to drag the tip across the width of the belt, thus changing the angle (usually shallower).

I bet that NMSFNO will chop now, MM. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Those convex edges look great!!! I need to invest in a belt sander.

It better - I just did some serious damage to my resale value <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Nah, I'll still take it off your hands for $10. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> teehee

$10.75

Nice work Mustard. I have been thinking about getting a new belt sander with a variable speed motor. That's really my only gripe with the HF sander.

What? Are you made of money??

For 35 bucks, single speed is fine by me. I found its default speed to be pretty good for sharpening, so no real need to slow it down.

when you do the tip of the blade, do you just stay in the center of the belt?

I try to keep the tip near one of the edges of the belt, to avoid rounding it off - but I haven't exactly gotten the technique down yet. Hopefully someone who's better at this than me can chime in and give BOTH of us some tips....