Sharpening woes and then triumph

[David Bowen]

Have you ever had a blade you got second hand that was so screwed up you couldn't get the right edge on it? I'm no sharpening guru but with my stuff I can get hair shaving sharpness on all my knives. I have this knife with a slight recurve that's been ticking me off for over a month now. I'd even tried reprofiling with a diamond stone, not much help. Well tonight I ended up tossing out the sharpmaker on this, I hit it with one of those ten second sharpeners and then free hand with a diamond rod from the sharpmaker and then used an old crock system I used before the sharpmaker was purchased. Before this knife couldn't even cut news print, and that was using the sharpmaker., now it cuts newsprint and other media like nothing. Was I screwing up something on the sharpmaker? I've never had a problem, somehow the ten second I think reset the angles I was having trouble setting with the sharpmaker. you guys have any ideas what I was doing wrong. I'm tickled pink its finally sharp but I'm stumped as to why my methods that I always use failed.

[MultiMat]

I am very much a sharpening novice & with my Sharpmaker I can get most knives shaving sharp.But some knives I just can not get sharp  .
Drives me a bit bonkers 

[jekostas]

I actually have a small ceramic pull sharpener for doing recurved blades.  While I can control the angle, it does give decent results.

[prime77]

Did you use the sharpie on the bevel before you used the sharpmaker to see if you were hitting the edge? My guess is the angle of the bevel was to obtuse for the preset sharpmaker rods and you were just hitting the sholders of the bevel. Then when you went to freehanding with the diamond rods you thined out the bevels enough to hit the edge with the crock sticks.