I tried the mat and fine 'wet and dry' paper technique. I think I may have pressed down a little too much when pushing the edge forwards into the paper (I usually use an oilstone) so I may have rounded off the edge by pushing it into the mat rather than sharpening it... The black coating was abraded a little upto about 2/3 mm from the edge and the edge itself was lovely and polished shiny but DULL (a steel made no real difference, still deadly dull). On my stone the time spent would have got me a nice sharp V profile, my Scrapper still resembles the banana previously lamented! I think I may go with the stone on this one... (Just to gets my facts straight is the main benefit of a convex edge a little more chip resistance or something else?)

Paul, that is why I stick with the V grind!

dry stones, dmts, crock-sticks, pull throughs, sidewalks if needed.

I experimented a bit on the edge (after getting my eye in on a couple of (ok 4!) old cheaper knives first).. I reprofiled the edge to give a more gradual angle (the gradient was about '1 in 1.5 or 2' on delivery if that makes sense, it reminded me of a hatchet grind...) then polished it using the mouse mat trick and finally used a white crock stick to put the edge on. Now it pops hairs with the best of them! Now I'd describe it as a an elonged (3 to 4mm of bare steel showing) and slightly finer convex edge. I don't know how durable the edge set up will be, but a similar angle on my Tram Bolo and Ontario navy knife have lasted well so I have high hopes!

As I said before Paul, go with what works for you and you're comfortable with! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Happiness is a hair poppin' (sort-of...) paper push cutting (yep) Scrapper 6! Bring on the bowies!

I only had 1 hair popping fixed blade knife, the rest were hair scraping. A Fehrman first strike....that beast was scary sharp!

Keep at it, GravelFace, and you'll quickly reach the point where only hair-popping is a bit of a buzzkill.

Wouldn't want to nick myself with any of your blades Thom I'd lose a finger...!

wow i want to play with a Thom Brogan-sharpened blade...

Borrow some band-aids at the same time!

I love it when an edge is so keen that you can't touch it straight-on without being cut. that's a beautiful thing... i really need to get better at sharpening...