What an excellent way to catalogue your knives and the necessary data for sharpening. Looking at mine, I am embarrassed!! This Wiki is such a great idea and so now I must redo my catalogue and rethink my edges based on what I have recently learned here.Nice work dschur!

Best regards
Leo

The best trick to clamp the FFG blades such as the Spyderco Military is to use a narrow strip of 3M double stick the stuff that's about 1/16" thick. Cut a strip 3/32"-1/8" and stick it at the top of each clamp jaw. A little care in getting the blade vertical as you tighten the top and then the bottom till the gap is parallel. Very solid and doubles to not mark the blade. Sometimes I fold the handle vertical 90 degrees to the blade to check the set-up with a square on both sides of the handle. The double stick idea came from Clay and the really nice young lady that answers the phone, very knife knowledgeable.

CAW

CAW,

This might sound like a really silly question but after you "stick" the tape to the jaws of the clamp, do you remove the protective film from the opposite side of the tape? Tried this on a couple of FFG Spyderco's but gave it up because I couldn't seem to get the jaws to hold the blade without slipping; any thoughts?

Thanks, Mike

mseabee7 wrote:


Best success for me has been to leave the film on. I had a couple of knives slip but then managed to hold them after making sure that the jaws were parallel before snugging up the top screw. If you loosen the top screw and slide the blade in between the jaws down by the bottom screw so that the free jaw is forced out to the thickness of the spine, you can turn the bottom screw until it meets the edge of the free jaw. Then go ahead and mount the knife as usual and snug up the top screw and then tighten the bottom screw.

Another possibility is having too wide a strip of tape. The grip should be metal on metal on the spine of the knife and then the tape can act a filler for the empty space.

Please let me know if that works for you.

Hello Clay,

After reading your post a light bulb went on and I did remember that the last time I tried to use the “mounting” tape the pieces I cut were quite wide and the tape covered an area from the tip of the jaw extending down toward the base that was too deep. To prove it to myself, I got the knife I was sharpening at the time (Manix 2) and clamped it in the jaws once again today but this time I used strips of tape that were quite skinny and this time it was much easier to compress them as the jaws tightened. In case anyone is wondering I was able to work around my wide tape error by wrapping the spine of the knife with a small piece of soft chamois. This also served to cushion the blade on both sides and help keep the blade in a symmetrical position.

Thanks for the speedy reply and your tip on the width of the tape strip, worked great!

Best regards,

Mike

Lots of good discussion here which is nice to see. Thanks for all the suggestions.

wickededge wrote:


Clay, an idea for your webmaster if it's not too late. Allow a brief area for free-form comments on the settings (twitter length). For example, while I would want to share my Spyderco Navaja settings, I would recommend "In the future I might try clamping this knife in two positions, the second with the handle tilted down and sharpen it like a more like tanto.". I might have others where I said "bevel came out a bit wide in the front, would move further back on next reprofile." Likewise I might add on my Paramilitary 2 This setting nailed it, I wouldn't change a thing."

I wouldn't want others to repeat the mistakes I've made and it might help to iterate collectively better.



I

With the 3M XHB tape I am using I do remove the release. The strips can sometimes be used again, but doesn't really matter as it holds the blade really firm and is easy to get the blade vertical in the jaws with this set-up.

CAW

CAW,

Just did a Google looking for the 3M XHB tape you are referring to but all I can come up with is something called 3M VHB. It appears to be double sided as well but is much thinner (45 mils) than the foam type.

Any thoughts or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance, Mike

Oops, i believe you are correct it is VHB (very high bond) and yes it is not a foam, but more plastic, gel,gum like. Actually thickness without the release measures,.045". You found it despite my poor description.

CAW