Are you missing any hair?

J

jagger67

Joined
May 26, 2009
Messages
191
Have liked knives all my life but am just now getting into it. Interested in many aspects from design to steel to sharpening. Have accumulated quite an array of sharpening devices and have viewed as many videos on the various sites as I can. Have finally gotten the hang of sharpening a flat grind and have purchased my first convex blade, a beautiful Andy Takach model, and am trying to learn the knack of sharpening a convex grind. Cutting paper is really not much of a measure of the sharpness of a blade, IMHO. If it does not cut hair, it's just not sharp. Some butter knives will cut paper. When I do get a blade that sharp, I am forever reaffirming the sharpness by cutting the hair on various parts of my body. Fortunately, I am a pretty hairy guy and so I have lots of areas to choose from. I have little areas all over my chest and belly, as well as both thighs that have sacrificed their hair to prove the sharpness of my various knives. Of course, my left lower arm is almost hairless. Interestingly, it is amazing how much arm hair affords warmth. My left arm is significantly colder than my right on these cold winter mornings at 0600 on the way to work. I am hoping that others will confess to patches of missing hair on various locations of their body. Surely, I am not the only one.
 
Cutting news paper is a great test of sharpness, if it will push cut news paper it will shave hair easy.
 
I find that targeting one or two hairs at a time is as effective a test as shaving a large swath off my arm.

Lately I often test by trying to pop off hand and knuckle hairs without touching the skin.

...since I don't realy want hairy knuckles, or random bald spots on my arms! :p
 
small bald patches on my left arm. I've always wondered if I made it to Blade how many people would have the same 'condition'...
 
yeah, from two places. From left hand I have small patch near wrist from trying knives... 2nd spot is from frost bite I got in army.
 
I do the hair shaving test (on arms) on all new knives and knives I have just sharpened.

"Shaving sharp" is my knife sharpness standard.
 
Guilty as charged! I am very fortunate to have a wonderful wife that in spite of not understanding my knife craze, she allows me to pluck a hair or two on occasion for my testing.





 
I thought it was a requirement to own a knife! My left forearm is constantly splotchy. I'm not satisfied unless the hair appears to "pop" off before the blade even touches it. :)
 
My wife is pissed @ me...my right leg is missing a 4x10 patch of hair....lol

Atleast it's winter...probably won't be wearing shorts til spring/summer anyways.
 
I've had to resort to using my legs once or twice, right now the hair on my arms has mostly grown back from the last sharpening.

Remember that you need to test for sharpness on both arms. If you only do one arm, you're only testing one side of the edge, which could just be a burr. I've found it best to make sure the edge shaves equally well on both sides.
 
I like sharpening my knives. Using wet stones for this.
@My left arm is pretty hairless@
My left arm hairless too :-)
 
Joshua J. said:
I've had to resort to using my legs once or twice, right now the hair on my arms has mostly grown back from the last sharpening.

Remember that you need to test for sharpness on both arms. If you only do one arm, you're only testing one side of the edge, which could just be a burr. I've found it best to make sure the edge shaves equally well on both sides.
Click to expand...

My test is also to see if I can shave easily from both sides of the blade. I have been using the upper thighs so that people can't see the bald patches when I am wearing shorts. My arm hair grew back - so I used it to test my knives again - both arms have almost no hair on them. I am running low on places to test my knives and once my XX course stone arrives I will need to test a couple of blades that I plan on reprofiling.

The knives that I have been stropping a lot have been more economical to test - I only need one hair to see if I can whittle it. Unfortunately I don't have any long hair so it is rather fiddly trying to whittle fairly short hair. I go with a fairly short haircut so that when I take a motorcycle helmet off I don't have 'hat hair'.
 
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