Anyone sharpened toothy one side, smooth on the other?

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Morthawt

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May 30, 2017
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This maybe a bit crazy but experimentation has lead to new techniques, new steel alloys etc. Has anyone ever done this with a toothy one side and smooth on the other? Or perhaps have any hypothetical results based on your existing experiences with dealing in general with smooth vs toothy edges?

I have heard people changing the sharpening angle to more broad near the handle for harder cutting techniques but I have never heard anything about side-alternating finish type?

I suppose a logical more sane additional side-question out of this idea is where do you stand on the idea of sharpening one length of the blade, for example the back part, as toothy and having the front half finished to a smoother higher grit level?

What are your thoughts on the practicality/benefits of either of these?
 
I haven’t heard of anyone using different grit on each side. I’m not sure what effect you’d get, since the apex, where they meet, is where the rubber hits the road.

But lots of people compare grit finishes. One set of data that’s slightly better than anecdote is on the Cedric&Ada YouTube channel. He regularly does rope cutting tests at different grit finishes with the same knife to see what effect it has on that workload.

I can’t imagine fine tuning multiple grit finishes on a single blade for what I do. Too hard on a small edc blade, and I’m not sure I’d remember to use the blade differently anyway.

One exception that is similar to what you describe is the Skrama. It has a 34° inclusive angle on most of the blade, and then the 2 inches closest to the handle are sharpened more acutely for detailed work. But it’s a change in angle that’s important, although I suppose you could also do a different finish too if you wanted.
 
I have heard of some sharpening the back half of the blade more toothy, and the front have more polished (or vice versa?).

I haven’t heard of sharpening one side of the edge one grit and the other side of the edge another grit. Like mentioned above, I don’t know why you would, what advantage it would offer.

It’s not like you would have both grits at the apex. It’s one or the other.
 
I have done it, as some Japanese woodworkers do.
They claim that it reduces the force to cut into wood compared to the fully polished edge.
I did not see much benefit of it on utility knives and stopped doing it.

Micro_serration.JPG

(courtesy of seisakunohibi.blog.so-net.ne.jp).
 
It seems to me that the apex would end up being the coarsest of the 2 grits used. Like polishing the urasaki side of a single bevel knife as much as you want (12k), and putting a 500 grit edge on the bevel (or microbevel) on the other side. End result, a 500 grit apex.
 
Roughly it winds up very similar to the average between the two. So 320 grit taken to 1200 on the backside will perform very similar to 700-800 grit. It works but IMHO it is easier to just use the same stone on both sides. This dynamic might not hold if you were using powered units.

Father in law was touring a scalpel factory once and they went to 400 grit on one side and polished the back.
 
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