Overview
Our sharpening service will provide a good serviceable edge on the blade. The result is typically “very sharp” with a small secondary bevel and a bit of an “apple seed” profile. The resulting edge is somewhat dependent on the particular blade. Some blades will take and hold sharper edges than others and the thickness of the blade will determine how wide the bevel will need to be. We adjust the angle of the edge to suit the specific blade and attempt to get as close to a bevel-less edge as possible without marring the surface of the blade.
The Sharpening Process
The sharpening service is done with a belt sander. The process involves many passes with sanding belts of various grits. The blades are rested between passes to prevent them from becoming hot and damaging their temper. By default we will sharpen as much of the blade as possible including any false edges if appropriate. If you have a different preference, feel free to make that request in the special instructions at check out. We can sharpen only the last half or third of an edge, for example. Our sword sharpening expert has personally sharpened several thousand swords at this point, so will provide you with a professional service.
What the Service is Not
The resulting edge will be “sword sharp” not razor sharp. Our goal is to provide you with a usable edge for cutting practice that will hold up to some use and not require constant re-sharpening. In other words, we intend to provide you with a serviceable weapon, not a personal grooming implement. The service will not provide a completely bevel-less edge. To create that type of edge will necessarily scratch up the blade surface and we lack the machinery and time to provide a full re-polishing of a blade’s surface. A service of that nature would be significantly more expensive as a great deal more time would be required. We do not offer this type of service at this time.
Disclaimer
We make no guarantee that the resulting edge will meet with your expectations. Every blade is different and some will take and hold a sharper edge than others, due to the blade material, heat treatment or geometry. Some customers can also have incorrect assumptions about sword sharpness and improper expectations as a result. All we can say for sure is that the resulting edge will be sharper than the default edge, in most cases, significantly so. We can not provide any refunds for the service once it has been completed, so consider it to be provided “as is”. That being said, if you are unhappy with the product for any reason, we do still allow you to return the item for a full refund, including the sharpening costs under our normal return policy. This does not apply to special sharpening requests, for example if we sharpen something specially for you that does not normally list that option on our site. The vast majority of our customers are happy with the results of the service, so as long as you keep the above mentioned in mind, we are confident you will be pleased with the results as well.
Henry –
It’s okay The blade is dull and doesn’t fit in the sheath
Archimedes One –
Not sharp, not ergonomic Despite the fact that I was able to salvage something out of this knife, it’s not something I would recommend anyone buy. To start, it’s not as sharp as advertised above. In fact, it’s not sharp at all. There isn’t even what could be considered an edge bevel, because it’s just completely blunt at the edge. So shame on you KoA for that.
The second problem with this knife is that it doesn’t fit the hand, or feel good at all in the hand, both comfort-wise and PoB-wise. No matter how you hold it, it’s just wrong. I was so annoyed by this that I actually purchased a blowtorch so I could reforge the handle into something designed for humans, however I still need to go back and round off the corners so that they don’t dig into the hand so much.
The third problem was largely my own fault. From the pictures alone, I thought I knew how big this knife was, but I was wrong. It’s actually huge. The measurements are listed so there’s no excuse for this, but I assumed, going purely off of the pictures, that the design of the knife’s handle would only make sense if the knife was rather small. And I was right that the knife’s handle shape would only make sense if the knife was scaled down to about 8 inches. However it’s not 8 inches, so it doesn’t work on this knife, as I’ve already established.
Now, while my review has been pretty scathing so far, I will say that there have been some upsides to buying this knife, though I doubt very customers would appreciate these things (hence the 1 star). Firstly, the sheath isn’t horrible. Secondly, I like using my whetstones, and the plain finish to this knifes bevels was as good excuse as any to break out the stones and get to grinding. And lastly, I did my first little bit of blacksmithing because of this knife. As you can see though, these are all very much ‘silver-lining’ style compliments, so the 1 star rating still stands.