I hate pesky burrs but every so often they happen. FWIW and I have no idea if this will be helpful or not, here’s some things that I do when some burr is a hair pulling freak show to remove.
If it’s LOW that’s the problem, identify which side of the blade it’s on. From what I’ve seen, LOW is a pile of crud metal that’s stuck from the edge going down one side of the bevel. It can be stuck there pretty well and the trick is to get it pried off the bevel so it stands up.
Hold the blade by hand and decrease the sharpening angle a tiny bit. Maybe 1 degree. Then do a pass or two on the SB belt with a bit more pressure than seems reasonable. I know! It seems creepy like its going to dull the blade but sometimes it works and surprisingly does not screw up the edge. My theory as to why this works is that the SB wraps the bevel but due to the decreased angel does not dull the edge.
Then check the edge and see if the LOW has been popped up. If it has, and this is even creepier, by hand, hold the blade at almost 90° to the belt and just barely tickle the edge against the SB. Creepy, eh? Then flip the blade over and do it again. The idea here is to bend the burr at an extreme angle to fatigue fracture it off the edge while at the same time letting the SB slice up the burr.
Then switch to leather and do the same only with a bit more pressure. Then a couple of passes at sharpening angle with a bit more pressure than normal. I’m guessing the last passes on leather at sharpening angle cleans things up and straightens the edge from all the torture. I’ve seen that work a number of times.
Then check sharpness. If it is still not as sharp as you think it should be, try a couple of more passes on leather at sharpening angle with a bit more pressure than normal. Chances are it will get sharper. This may be due to burnishing of the edge, but as long as it was sharpened with a coarse belt to begin with it can hold up to this procedure and still remain nice and toothy.
At first I thought it was crazy to even think of tickling the edge against SB at almost 90°, but I tried it anyway and was surprised it worked. Same with doing the same on leather. Just always finish with a pass or two on leather at sharpening angle.
The key is to figure out why the burr is a problem, think about what’s going on at the edge and then don’t be afraid to experiment with different ideas on how to remove it even if those ideas seem crazy. About the worst that can happen is it won’t work. These edges seem more resilient to abuse than it seems they might be.
I’ve found close to 90° on both leather and SB can be useful even without big LOW. Sometimes burrs are really malleable and bend back and forth without fracturing off almost like they were made of gold. Extreme angle bending helps.
Here are a couple of microscope pictures I took. If the problem is LOW they show what you are dealing with. The first shows a fine, nasty pile of LOW. Its round, smooth and can be difficult to grab on to in order to pry it from the edge.
This second image is cool because it shows LOW after it’s pried from the bevel, is hanging loosely and exposing the clean sharp edge under it. It's obvious to see why low reads duller than the clean edge. Once the LOW is loose it’s easily removed with leather or SB.
Hope that is helps. If you try any of those nutty ideas let us know if it panned out. I hate pesky burrs!
