Originally Posted by
Robert Hazelwood
The wear bevel is very small. I haven't measured but perhaps a thou or two? Maybe smaller than that. You can see it as a strip on the back of the blade, right at the edge. You just keep working the bevel until it is gone. It's usually not too much work unless the blade is pretty far gone. The important point is to realize that you can raise a burr from working on the bevel side without having completely removed the wear bevel. Typical sharpening advice would have you stop once you raise the burr, but you should check if the wear bevel remains. If it does then keep working.
You can get a decent edge without totally removing the wear bevel, but the edge quality and endurance seem significantly improved if you do. Within certain limits, I would say it has a bigger effect than the typical sharpening obsessions like grit size, type of stone, number of microbevels, etc.
+1 on this. To me not removing the wear bevel means the job isn't finished. The wear bevel may seem akin to the "ruler trick" to some when sharpening a blade, it isn't. It is metal deformed by wear, not by strategy.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
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