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TIPS AND SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
  1. Always wear leather gloves and safety glasses. Until you become experienced, you are more than likely going to ruin a few belts and have the knife dislodged from your grip.
  2. Keep a firm grip on your knife with both hands and go SLOWLY until you get experience and confidence in what you are doing. Be especially careful as you draw the knife across the belt and the hook of the knife approaches the edge of the belt. If you are careless or try to sharpen too close to the hook, you WILL ruin a belt!.
  3. When sharpening, the belt is running downwards and the knife-edge is facing upwards, which is why safety precautions are in order. I do this so that I can observe how closely I am sharpening near the edge. When you are trying to cut down your bevel angle you need to apply more pressure. If you are too close to your edge you will sand away more edge than necessary and possibly over heat the steel, which can happen quickly as you approach the edge of the knife. CAUTION! If you are not comfortable with this method, try turning your knife the other way. Only you can determine if you are satisfied with the results and it might involve different guidelines that I am not aware of.
  4. Start by making a high-pressure pass with the inside curve of your knife parallel with the belt. This cleans the entire surface of debris and shines up the knife for professional appearance. Do the same thing on the backside. Make a few extra passes until satisfied with the results.
  5. The next step is to address the condition of the bevel. This is a point at which you can decide to continue using your 400 grit belt or switch to a 150 grit belt. Using the 150 grit belt will speed up bevel removal and save your 400 grit for the finer requirements of edge sharpening.  Even new knives such as the frost hoof knives can stand to have a wider bevel.
  6. Make several passes with the knife tipped slightly towards the belt, but not so much that you are sanding the edge itself. Watch carefully as you approach the edge of the knife. If you are too close or are applying too much pressure, the edge will turn blue rather quickly. The pressure you apply will vary with the amount of bevel you are trying to remove and the condition of your belt.  You know when you need to remove bevel when the knife-edge is sharp but still doesn't seem to glide through the sole tissue as if "cutting through butter". As usual there is a trade off between ease of use and knife longevity. When you reduce the bevel you remove steel. However at the end of a long day of trimming, I would rather pay for a new knife than deal with sore wrists and shoulders.
  7. The next step is to sharpen the edge of the knife itself. Start your next pass with the knife parallel with the belt and slowly turn towards the belt until you notice the belt making contact with the edge. Use very light pressure so as to not remove too much edge and/or overheat the metal. The condition of your belt will also affect how much pressure you need to apply. After one or two passes, make a pass on the back side of the knife. NEVER turn the back side of the knife towards the belt. Always keep it parallel with the belt and be careful not to apply too much pressure or you will begin to create a bevel. You do not want any bevel whatsoever on the back side of the knife. Repeat STEP 7 several times while reducing the amount of pressure each time until you are just lightly making contact with the belt. By holding the knife edgeways under a bright light and looking down on the edge, you can actually see if the nicks have been removed.
  8. Use whatever favorite method you prefer to buff the edges when finished. With experience, you may even find that you don't need to do this. I have found that as the 400 grit belts wear down, they are even better at getting the perfect edge.
  9. Other suggestions: Once you are experienced, you could look at even more options to make the process more efficient and convenient.
    1. buy an extra sander to avoid belt switching when doing bevel reduction.
    2. Keep one in your truck for onsite touchups. With experience you will be surprised at how quickly you can touch up a knife "on the fly"
    3. Buy extra knives instead of a sander and have a "bevel reducing session" every so often so that you minimize the belt switching process. ( I leave the cover off my sander and can switch the belts in ten seconds).
    4. File the hook of the knife with a chain saw file and use the belt sander on the back side of the hook to clean up the edge.