Hello everyone,

Let me begin this post with an admision that I am a bit OCD when it comes to the sharpness of my swords. That being said here is the sittuation. I only use my swords for dry handling and it seems to me that my swords have become less sharp over time seince I received them from the manufacturer though I have never cut with them. I test blade sharpness with my nail and I desire a more or less paper cutting edge.

The only thing I can ascribe this reduction in the edge sharpness is possibly my oiling of the blade. I fun a oil impregnated sock along the edge so it my sort of "bunch" and rub along the edge. Could this over time- oiled once or twice a week, slightly dull the edge. Or should I bring this issue to a sword mental health professional. ;) :confused:

Is there a way I could restore the sword edge or should this be done by the maker? Incidently, I will continue to work on my fixation as I know a sword does not have to be "that" sharp.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Could be the sock, or the scabbard you keep the sword in that dulled the edge. Well, some swords were as sharp as paper cutting. ;) I tend to keep all my swords that way. You may restore the sharpness yourself if you know how, but usually the polish around the edge area will become different. I don't mind about that so I do this myself with a DMT diamond hone.

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The most acute biting sharpness of the edge of a carbon steel tool or weapon is dulled by fingering after some time. Some people are actually more harmful than others: it depend on the personal mix of your hand sweat. Some people have fingerprints that eat away steel like ferric chloride.
I notice this clearly after demos, when each and every person who gets to hold a sword simply must feel the edge and go: Ohhh! It is a tempation that is too great to resist, regardless if you kindly ask them to please not touch the blade. They just *have* to test the sharpness with a gingerly applied finger.
Some people need only touch a blade once and you get a nice rust print.

After the session, my swords are not so sharp any more, but need a rehoning or a touch up with a leather strop. Their edges are still sharp enough to cut effecitvely, but does not have that popping sharpness.

It should be nopted: this degree of sharpness is not strictly necessary, but can be fun. It depends on what and how you want to cut with your swords. And how much you enjoy maintenance.
If you enjoy this kind of hair popping shaprness, it is adviceable to aquire the skill of honing and stropping.

I need perhaps stress that we are talking about that last crazy degree of sharpness that a sword will have as it is just stropped. How long that kind of sharpness will last is totally dependent on what and how you cut.
If you cut paper with your swords, they will also get dull after a while. Never so dull they will not delvier completley effective cuts, but they will loose that acute popping sharpness. Paper can be rather abrasive actually. Fingerprints along the actual edge is usually the cause for most "dulling" however.

Ask any professional chef or cabinet maker that care about their tools (who use traditional carbon steel tools): they will tell you that you are not supposed to touch the edge of a sharp chisel or knife. That is detrimental to the most acute sharpness.
All afficionadoes of Japanese swords are well aware of this: never touch a naked blade! That is mostly because of th high level of polish of the presentation grade japanese blades but it can have an effect on the edge as well.
In practical/functional terms it is the finely honed edge that is most vulnerable.

A sword that is much less sharp than this will still deliver absolutely effective cuts however.

If you want your swords to keep their absolute keen edge keep fingers away from the blade.
I know myself that can be difficult as the finely honed sharpness is a special joy to feel...

A matter of self control.
;)

Thanks everyone for your replies,

Peter, regarding the use of a leather strop- should I use the shaving razor type and if so should I glue it to a piece of wood. Aren't these strops two sided? What type of honing tool would you recommend? Is there a perferred angle to use the strop?

Also I am reticent to even attempt to sharpen my swords because I do not want any kind of secondary bevel to form. I have sent my swords back to the maker in the past but this is a pain and I want to develop the skill to maintain my own edges.

Gosh! if this were only as easy as it is for my A&A danish axe! :confused:

Thanks again everyone.

I have found that polishing my sword is the main reason it has lost some of its edge. I first started noticing it back when I would clean and polish it with a cloth and polishing cream. Now that I use oil with steel wool or scotchbrite the difference is more accelerated.

Actually this is a bit of a bump as I believe others must have insight related to this issue,

So has anyone else noticed a very gradual dulling of their blades due to normal oiling and polishing? How or do you maintain an optimal (sword, non secondary-bevel) edge.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Well, I'm nowhere near as experienced as others who have replied to this topic, but while making my (first) knife with stock removal, I noticed that the edge I put on with my files was dulled after I polished the whole thing with very fine grit sand paper. Nothing a few seconds with a fine file couldn't fix. However, since this is untempered steel my observation may not apply.

Also, is it really necessary to polish and oil your sword once a week, or is it that you cut with it every week so it requires re-polishing and sharpening?

Hello Addison,
I only oil my swords about once a week usually after I handle them- I do not polish them unless I notice a mark of some kind. I have read that one should oil their swords even if they do not touch the blade. I live in a rather labile climate and also like to ensure that no stains or pits are formed by dust collecting on the blade.
I choose not to use a file and/or stone to sharpen my swords as I do not want to form a secondary bevel like that found on knives. I do not believe that I have the skill to sharpen my swords without forming a secondary bevel.
This is why I have posted- to determine how others keep their swords sharp while maintaining a proper edge. Or indeed if others worry about establishing a secondary bevel on their high end swords.

Jeremy

I have never needed to oil/polish my blades often and I'm not a regular cutter, but even those swords I've owned for years have shown no signs of dulling. Do you rub the edge in a particularly abrasive way? A good coating of whatever you use is all in needs.

If you want to oil or polish your swords less, I would recommend picking up a Tuf Cloth (http://www.sentrysolutions.com/TufClothkew.shtml). I made the switch from Silicone polishing cloth about eight months ago, and I couldn't be happier with it. The Silicone was great for long term protection and I found it much cleaner than oil, but it left a moist film on the blade much like oil does. With my Marine Tuf Cloth, I wipe down the blade and fittings; leave them a minute or so, and then give them a rub down with a dry cloth. The sword looks and feels as though nothing is there, but the rust protection is much longer lasting than an application of regular oil, with no need for frequent reapplications. The steel also looks stunning - I hadn't realised how the coat of silicone had dulled its lustre. It's been so long I forget if coatings of oil had the same effect; but the Tuf Cloth coating brought out a beauty in the finish of my swords I never knew was there. I opted for the extra protection of Marine Tuf Cloth, but the regular Tuf Cloth I've linked should be more than sufficient, and that wipes on and dries clean without the need of a second rub down.

I don't use my swords for any serious cutting so the need to sharpen is minimal after just test cutting the occasional piece of paper or minor dulling due to casual handling so my sharpening of my swords is done very very lightly.

A secondary bevel I can only see with an 8X loupe I don't worry about too much and since I got over my obsession with making everything razor sharp I don't go nuts re-sharpening every time I look too hard at my swords' edges.

Now sharpening, creating no secondary bevels. means taking material off the entire main bevel to sharpen an edge. :eek:

Hard to do perfectly when making a sword and even harder to maintain if re-sharpening. If I'm not mistaken Japanese swords are made and maintained this way since repolishing and sharpening are done as one process. ( Although there is no obvious secondary bevel there may be a very subtle apple seed convex final edge even with Japanese swords. )

Again I could be wrong, but European swords when new have a " small " secondary bevel but it is rounded and blended in so that it does not appear on the edge as a distinct bevel. So one would remove as little metal as possible when
re-sharpening and give it a convex apple seed profile. I think there are techniques to do this using an abrasive glued to a soft backing surface and sharpening by rubbing away from the edge.

Me, I just use a smooth steel to burnish the edge or a white ceramic hone very lightly to get or restore a paper cutting edge.

Again, a secondary bevel I can only see with my 8X loupe and not some 1/4" wide secondary bevel.

If I got any technical aspects wrong please feel free to correct me as I am not an expert sharpening swords but I can and do get that razor sharp hair popping edge when sharpening knives.

Ref the MARINE TUFCLOTH...

Thanks for the tip! I just ordered a 2-pack of these for maintaining my Albion Crecy:)

I'm with you now - I was equating an appleseed edge with the niku of a katana; but I hadn't taken into account the (in retrospect obvious) differences between the thinner blades of Euro swords overall, and the generally thicker blades of kats that give added strength to the finer edge. It sounds like Japanese edges can be more 'appleseedy'/more convex without resultant weakening of the edge simply because there's more metal to work with, and the thinner cross-sections of Euro blades make totally convex edges less desirable.

I was just confused as to the definition of 'appleseed' and 'secondary bevel'. Of course swords like the antique you described with the flat main bevels to the edge would have no secondary bevel; but I was thinking that more typical swords with a drastic change in gradient at the cutting edge could still have the hard angle removed through polishing - creating the curved appleseed or niku effect - and that this curve qualified the blade as having no secondary bevel because the angle was completely removed. I'm actually surprised that the smoothing out of the angle weakens the edge on a Euro sword. It makes sense to me, but I'd assumed the amount of material removed was so small that it wouldn't have made a difference.

Would you say that whilst blending out the secondary bevel helps avoid resistance in cutting slightly, the danger of cleaning it up to make it invisible might outweigh that slight benefit? I've read that secondary bevels really don't impede cutting to any great degree, so is the appleseed edge convention purely aesthetic? It seems like there's more to it, or we would probably see a lot more obvious, unashamed secondary bevels on antiques...

Regarding the "most Euro swords" thing - you did indeed say that, but I was focusing on this comment:

Quote:

the most expensive are blended in real well, and the blend may have a name like "appleseed", but its still a different angle right at the cutting edge than the main bevel

I interpreted that as your saying that whilst there is a secondary bevel on most swords, no so-called appleseed edge on any sword actually qualifies as a negation of secondary bevel. But you were talking about the most expensive production swords, as per the first part of the statement - reading it again now it's obvious. Regardless, only a few Euro swords completely lack the secondary bevel, but the trend in the majority is through design wisdom rather than a lack of precision, since too much cleaning up would result in too great a weakening of the edge.

James;

I don't think smoothing the transition from main bevel to secondary bevel would weaken the edge as what is happening is just putting a curve instead of a ridge line, you are not thinning the blade down by removing the ridge to the degree where you would be back to almost a single bevel again.

Think of the primary bevel as the two sides of a flat ground triangle meeting in a perfectly geometric way: The edge would be very very sharp but also fragile.

Alternatively, think of the two sides of the triangle not meeting each other but a flat square edge a few millimetres wide: If you them grind a flat bevel you get a stronger edge than when the side meet, a more obtuse edge.

Now if you just round out the meeting of the bevels you would have your " appleseed " edge.

The appleseed part being just a rounded instead of flat secondary bevel and not a wide convex bevel very gradual over the entire width of a Katana's primary & blended secondary bevel.

Oh, with tentacular European swords the curve of the lenticular main convex bevel will just transition into the curve of the secondary bevel seamlessly: Somewhat like an accelerating parabolic curve.

Hope this help and does not make things more confusing. You're pretty close but maybe you are almost overthinking it. :D

I think you're right Jean, I'm definitely overthinking it. I understand the nature of bevelling, but my problem seems to be one of definition.

Jean Thibodeau wrote:

The appleseed part being just a rounded instead of flat secondary bevel and not a wide convex bevel very gradual over the entire width of a Katana's primary & blended secondary bevel.

Rounding the secondary bevel negates its existence, if I understand the definition of the word correctly. From dictionary.com:

Quote:

Bevel: The angle or inclination of a line or surface that meets another at any angle but 90 degrees.

That suggests to me that the secondary bevel formed by two straight lines becomes a single bevel after sufficient rounding creates a single smooth curve.

I know that the edge geometry of European swords is much straighter than the pronounced, continuous curve of a Japanese sword; but since reading Gus's post I'm wondering if the preference for European sword makers to smooth away the secondary bevels on their edges is more of a balancing act between reducing friction and not weakening the edge.