Edhead,

The error was not his it was in my instruction, and I must respectfully disagree with you. Not a single skilled craftsman, in any trade, started with all the knowledge needed to successfully and skillfully ply his trade. He began as an apprentice, studied until he was skilled enough to become a journeyman, and eventually became a master. Along that road he makes many mistakes, some of which seem to be common sense to the journeyman or master. However, many things only become common sense with years of training and experience.

To explain it another way, when a helicopter pilot wishes for his helicopter to fly forward he moves the cyclic control forward. This causes the rotor blades to change pitch at a particular point in the rotation which causes the entire disc to tilt. To a layman or apprentice it is "common sense" to assume the pitch change occurs at the point in which the rotor tilts, e.g. If the front of the disc moves down, the pitch change occurs at the front, however this is incorrect. To me, an experienced and learned helicopter pilot, it is common sense that the pitch change occurs 90° before the response of the rotor. In other words, if you want the front of the disc to tilt down you have to cause a pitch change at the right hand side of the rotor disc. This applies to a counter clockwise rotating system. Common sense dictates that it will be opposite in a clockwise rotating system.

It's common sense and easily intuited because I have training and experience. I don't know you personally so I'm going to assume that you don't have that training or experience, or other training that would help you make that determination.

My point is that a lack of knowledge in a subject shouldn't stop you from studying and learning that skill. I wasn't born a helicopter pilot, a blade smith, or a sharpener. I have learned these skills through study, training, and application. I've made plenty of mistakes along the way, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have undertaken the learning of these skills. Nor did my mistakes mean that I should have given up and left it to other more skilled persons.

As it stands he has sharpened several more knives and is becoming more skilled every time. Each time he works on a knife the quality of his work improves, and he is able to work more independently.

As to the original question, how would you have fixed the knife?

p.s. my apologies for any spelling errors, grammatical errors, or typos. I'm on my iPhone, so it's difficult to get it all right.

He was trying to raise a burr, but there was a void in the metal so it wouldn't raise. He spent so much time scrubbing on only that side that he inadvertently made the bevels so uneven.

A couple of weeks ago I let a friend use my WE to sharpen a cheapie (fake) damascus knife. He wanted to learn how to use the WE so he could maintain his own knives on it. I spent about 10 minutes explaining everything and set him to work. I had some other stuff to do so I walked away thinking "how could he possible mess this up."

I came back after about 20 minutes and he tells me "I think I did something wrong." From across the room I look at the knife and it looks fine. The bevel was about 3/16th wide and appeared to have a nice burr. It didn't occur to me at the time that I shouldn't be able to see a burr from across the room. Then I walked up to it and I looked at the other side. Holy diamond dust batman, the bevel was about an inch wide!

I set to work with my 50/80 stones to fix the bevel. I spent some time working on the narrow side, and was able to get both bevels even, and about 1/2 an inch wide.

So now for the question: How would you fix this knife?