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Broadhead Sharpening Advice

VaBruiser

VaBruiser

Active Member
SH Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2020
Messages
193
Location
New River Valley, Virginia
For the love of everything good and pure, can someone throw some advice my way on how to sharpen broadheads. I have the appropriate Stay Sharp Guides for my Black Hornets and Buzz Cuts. Bought the ten different grits of paper. Got the buffing compound. Watched the tutorials. I’ll sit here and work on one edge for 30 minutes and can still run my finger down it with no concern of getting cut. I also feel like this sandpaper is losing its grit really quickly. That may be a factor, I don’t know.

Side note: I’m determined to figure this out. But! With it being so close to opening day, if someone is good at getting a scary sharp edge I will pay you to sharpen some for me. Also take care of shipping of course. Name your price and we’ll talk.
 
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Do u have a bench grinder? If so buy a paper wheel

I use mine for a lot of stuff. Knifes around the kitchen, scissors, hunting knives, broadheads. Didn’t take me long and you can get stuff hair poppin sharp.
 
It is much more difficult than it often looks. If you are losing the grit on the sandpaper, that means you need to switch it out. The biggest mistake I have made is not making sure I have gotten a burr (which means there is an apex) before moving on to finer grits. Keep using the lower grit paper and make sure you have a burr before moving on.

You may go through more sandpaper than you think, which is why I have started to use other means of sharpening. It takes longer than you think to get a burr going, but once you have it, moving to the finer grits goes very quickly.
 
The stay sharp jigs work well. Make sure you have the blade set to the proper depth. Run a few strokes on the course grit and check your sharpie marking a long with burr. If the marks are not gone in a uniformly and there is no burr, reset the blade. Be patient and there is no set number of strokes. Flip over and start the other side.
 
I’ve had the same frustration, @VaBruiser. I even bought the diamond plates to sharpen them on. Then I decided all that wasted time was for the birds and just bought replaceable blade broadheads that come scary sharp. I don’t have a lot of money or time, but time is the more limited of the two.
 
I have used Stay Sharp Guides on my heads with good luck but have not tried sharpening either of the heads you mentioned. As others have said make sure that you mark up the edge with a sharpie and run a few strokes to make sure you are working the edge of the blade and not just reshaping the shoulder of the bevel. If you are running on the shoulder it's going to take a while to re-profile the blade. Move the blade in and out of the guide until you are working on just the edge. Whether you are using sandpaper or diamond plates DO NOT push down hard when you are sharpening. All that does is kill your paper or plates really fast. The blade should be running on top of the grit and not pushing through it. Just use the weight of your hand on the jig and you will get a lot better results than bearing down.
 
If you have a Harbor Freight in town you might get a set of loupes to get a close-up view of your edge. Could be you're removing metal above the edge and have a ways to go before you get to the cutting edge itself. I've had that issue with Lansky jigs in the past and didn't realize it until I took a much closer look at what I was actually doing. Spent a lot of time with the coarser stones to set the bevel before I could actually start sharpening.

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I remember watching a StaySharp video on the RMS Cutthroats where Ron discussed eroding the edge back to the lightening divot behind it, ruining the head. He suggested increasing the blade angle, IIRC from 25 to 32, to remove less of the blade material over the years. You might increase the angle - I think knife makers refer to 'primary bevel' and 'secondary bevel' and ensure you're catching the actual cutting surface
 
If you are wearing your sand paper out really fast you are likely putting too much pressure.

Sent from my SM-A516V using Tapatalk
 
I find that when using anything other than a rigid stone, too much pressure can cause the sharpening surface to ripple or indent around the edge causing it to unintentionally blunt the edge.

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