Beyond Hair Whittling Sharp?

Broos said:
I have a few that can whittle a hair, Noz.

Gautier, if you try some of those tests, you will see that sharpness determines whether you can make the cut or not. Try to cut a rolled piece of phone book paper with a thin knife that is not sharp - it won't work every time. And Jimmy Fikes knives are not razor blades - they will survive hard use if you are lucky enough to have one of his. Here's a knife with 20 degree bevels and 1/4" thick.



Modded Busse SH-E
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Here we go again. Questin is simple and clear - are you able to sharpen knife to the hair whittling sharpness? Yo may have as many hair whittling sharp knives as you want but do you personally able to do this yourself?

This is fifth time I am asking? Why do not you give direct and straight answer?

Thanks, Vassili.
 
nozh2002 said:
Here we go again. Questin is simple and clear - are you able to sharpen knife to the hair whittling sharpness? Yo may have as many hair whittling sharp knives as you want but do you personally able to do this yourself?

This is fifth time I am asking? Why do not you give direct and straight answer?

Thanks, Vassili.
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And why are you so insistent, Vassili? If he has the tools (self-made or not) to pass your test, and his own, why's it such a big deal?
 
Lucky Bob said:
And why are you so insistent, Vassili? If he has the tools (self-made or not) to pass your test, and his own, why's it such a big deal?
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Because nozh simply has to gain his sense of smug superiority from somewhere.
So by finding ridiculous and irrelevant reasons to dismiss the arguments of those he disagrees with, he never has to actually address those arguments and accept that he just might be wrong...
 
markksr said:
Because nozh simply has to gain his sense of smug superiority from somewhere.
So by finding ridiculous and irrelevant reasons to dismiss the arguments of those he disagrees with, he never has to actually address those arguments and accept that he just might be wrong...
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Quelle domage, he actually has some useful ideas.
 
Lucky Bob said:
And why are you so insistent, Vassili? If he has the tools (self-made or not) to pass your test, and his own, why's it such a big deal?
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Simple because he making statements like he feel that hair whittling sharp is not sharp enough etc. I just like to understand does he know what he is talking about. To me it is pretty clear - if he able to do what he is talking about but not able to whittle hair, then it is pretty logical that hair whittling sharpness is better then whatever he doing.

He is pretty loud about hair whittling not being too sharp, but it seems like this is only loud theory and there is no any proof behind. Unfortunately if you repeat something many times it became a wide spread common believe, so I try this not to happen.

I am not sure what the problem here - quite a bit guys do hair whittling without to much troubles. To me he is so defensive about it only because he can not make it, but instead of geting help he starts saying - "No this is not really sharp..."

To me hair whittling is excellent sharpness test - befor I had to do thread cutting statistical test, but hair whittling make it much easy and so far indicates top sharpness - 10-30gramms in thread test. Except Military CPM S90V NIB sharpness which shows 20g but not whittling hair.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
Lucky Bob said:
-------------------
Originally Posted by markksr View Post
Because nozh simply has to gain his sense of smug superiority from somewhere.
So by finding ridiculous and irrelevant reasons to dismiss the arguments of those he disagrees with, he never has to actually address those arguments and accept that he just might be wrong...
---------------------
Quelle domage, he actually has some useful ideas.
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Wow I have personal troll here chaising me around!
I hope moderators will notice this.

Thanks, Vassili.

I just noticed I made unclear quote - it was about marksr, of course...
 
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uhm, Vassili.. I don't think the folks who have any concept of your dedication and efforts will argue with your definitions and methods, unless it possibly would be from envy.

i'm not a member of your fan club, because i don't belong to anybodys fan club, but fair is fair, you have contributed much and it's educated ME on some of the fine points..

and as far as whether "i" can sharpen knives to hair whittling sharp.. uh, can I pick the knife? in which case, yes. :)

I do have a few knives I can (did) get to that sharp, but then what are they GOOD for? Even a touch on a bone degrades the edge.. and it's way sharper than I need for anything in the kitchen..

ok, yeah, it's fun, on a handful of blades.. but it's NOT MY STANDARD, it's the 'ultimate'..

working edges have to last longer for my cooking based needs...
 
mitchshrader said:
....I do have a few knives I can (did) get to that sharp, but then what are they GOOD for? Even a touch on a bone degrades the edge.. and it's way sharper than I need for anything in the kitchen..

ok, yeah, it's fun, on a handful of blades.. but it's NOT MY STANDARD, it's the 'ultimate'..

working edges have to last longer for my cooking based needs...
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Although it took me a long time to become convinced of the fact myself, IMO it is generally true that the higher the initial sharpness of a blade, the longer its useful edge life will be doing normal cutting. Now admittedly, hitting a piece of bone does happen in the kitchen, and it can be very damaging to both a "working edge" and a razor-sharp edge alike. But if you weren't hitting bone or sustaining other gross edge damage, you should find that the sharper the initial edge, the more cuts and slices of meat, fish, veggies, etc. you'll get before the need to resharpen.

Of course as a practical matter, most of us take sharpening time and effort into account, and I readily admit that I don't strop kitchen knives or go to any of the extra effort to achieve the finest possible edge ... usually finishing up on fine ceramic, Sharpmaker or CrockSticks, is all I do. IMO that's close to the optimum for sharpening efficiency for kitchen cutlery, with touch-ups very fast and handy.

None of which has anything to do with hair whittling per se, which while I agree is a pretty good test of high sharpness, isn't IMO the best or most practical test, and there are higher levels of sharpness still that hair whittling can't really quantify. Nonetheless nozh has demonstrated considerable skill in his ability to achieve this kind of sharpness with nearly all his knives apparently, and his method looks pretty efficient. As a general rule, I think that kind of skill is valuable, because even if you don't always sharpen all your knives to that level, you're almost bound to be much more efficient maintaining your knives at the desired levels.
 
Coarse edges and onions keep me away from using a "working edge" in the kitchen. :p

Vassili has posted youtube links to his sharpening setup and anyone who can jump from 1200 grit diamond to a CrO-loaded strop and get a hair-whittling edge has a lot of sharpening skill and a knife that was already extremely sharp at 1200 grit.

DoW,

You don't need to cook more, but prepping the food to be cooked is a lot of fun. Sakai Takayuki makes a chef knife out of AEB-L with a heat-treat similar to Kershaw's 13C26 and it's a lot of fun to use (and by use, I mean guillotining vegetables like a modern-day Robespierre).
 
bobofish said:
If we're thinking of the same story, I think it was two swords. One by the apprentice, one by the master.

After long years of practice, yadda yadda the apprentice decided to show off to the master how sharp he got his new awesome sword, and when he placed it in the stream, it cut anything that would flow downstream, including leaves and fish, right in half.

The master said "yes, that is a sharp sword, but you are not a master."
He plucked his hair and dropped it on the sword (or something, I can't remember) to show that his sword was sharp, and put it in the river. As leaves and fish flowed up to the sword, the water sliced away from the edge, and neither leaf nor fish was cut. This was apparently a lesson to the apprentice that a sword must not just be sharp, but must be infused with a respect for innocence and all that.

Nice story anyway.
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Yes! Except..............................The story is about the great Master Masamune and the other great Master Muramasa. Muramasa made fantastic blades but he wasn't right in the head (in an evil way). To this day his swords are considered unlucky and do not fetch near what a Masamune blade brings. By the way one of Masamune's blades was cut and looked at under high magnification and it revealed over 1,000,000 layers of steel in @
1/4" of steel!
 
thombrogan said:
DoW,

You don't need to cook more, but prepping the food to be cooked is a lot of fun. Sakai Takayuki makes a chef knife out of AEB-L with a heat-treat similar to Kershaw's 13C26 and it's a lot of fun to use (and by use, I mean guillotining vegetables like a modern-day Robespierre).
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LOL! Thom, the imagery you come up with sometimes is just classic! C'mon, now, fess up ... you get paid to do this, right?

Maybe a bit embarrassed to admit this, but even being a near-vegetarian and kind of a health fanatic, my bladelove hasn't really extended to the kitchen arena. At least not in terms of allocating much of my steel budget there. The root problem seems to be some odd-ball, imported blades I probably picked up 15+ years ago ... no name on them at all, mystery stainless that actually holds a pretty good edge, made from very thin stock and coated with some kind of teflon/silverstone that has held up just incredibly well. Laminate wood handles, one is kind of a small slicer the other an oversized parer, and I just love these knives, the cleanup and stick-free slicing is wonderful. I've even got an extra set, I don't think they cost even $5 new when I bought 'em. So I have this fear that a dearly priced, Super Ginsu Ultra Carbon Hashimoto would find itself keeping company with all the other unused cutlery at the back of one of the drawers.

Still, Sandvik and/or AEB-L might just lead me to explore....
 
Who has cut tubes of phone book paper or done some paper push cutting tests? How you think it compares with whittling a hair. I think a phone book paper tube requires more sharpness than whittling an adult hair. And push cutting paper tests can require very high sharpness.
 
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Broos said:
Who has cut tubes of phone book paper or done some paper push cutting tests? How you think it compares with whittling a hair. I think a phone book paper tube requires more sharpness than whittling an adult hair. And push cutting paper tests can require very high sharpness.
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Agree, paper push cutting tests let you quantify results, at least on a relative basis, and can be adjusted for even the highest levels of sharpness by changing dimensions and stiffness/thickness of the paper. Also hair is highly variable, not a consistent medium.
 
Dog of War said:
Still, Sandvik and/or AEB-L might just lead me to explore....
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Thanks, again, for your kind words, DoW. Our friends, Pyromancer and Razorsharp244, have found kitchen knives in 12C27(M?) that appear to be more affordable than the Grand Cheff knife I mentioned.

Broos said:
Who has cut tubes of phone book paper or done some paper push cutting tests? How you think it compares with whittling a hair. I think a phone book paper tube requires more sharpness than whittling an adult hair. And push cutting paper tests can require very high sharpness.
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Depending on what I scrounge from the comb, pushcutting thin paper past a certain distance is either slightly harder or much harder. The paper-tube tests are generally out of my league, but I thought it was more skill/dexterity than sharpness (as I have no dexterity, but can sharpen).
 
Broos said:
Who has cut tubes of phone book paper or done some paper push cutting tests? How you think it compares with whittling a hair. I think a phone book paper tube requires more sharpness than whittling an adult hair. And push cutting paper tests can require very high sharpness.
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I like how your sepcific about saying a human hair and in your other post asking to cut a childs hair, there is a huge difference in hair thickness among different people and age groups so as a sharpness test its subjective to what specimin you use...overall I can say if you can whittle any hair you got a sharp knife, but I know us knife nuts are always trying to take it to the next level, lol...
 
Broos said:
Who has cut tubes of phone book paper or done some paper push cutting tests? How you think it compares with whittling a hair. I think a phone book paper tube requires more sharpness than whittling an adult hair. And push cutting paper tests can require very high sharpness.
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It is simple logic - how can you say that some test sharper then hair whitteling if you never sharpen you knive to be able to whittle hair. How can you compare something you acheaved with something you did not. You sharpen it to the tube cutting sharpness but did not to hair whittling - which one is sharper - isn't it obvious?

Did I miss something? Is it beyond classical logic?

Thanks, Vassili.
 
Thanks for the replies, gentlemen. I've found that at times it is almost impossible to do a true push cut of paper or cut a tube of phone book paper, and think it happens when the humidity is high, or when I'm on the low swing of my sharpening biorhythms. :confused:

cutlerylover said:
overall I can say if you can whittle any hair you got a sharp knife, but I know us knife nuts are always trying to take it to the next level, lol...
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I agree, and there are a number here who will try to get to that next level, no matter how impractical or difficult.

Broos said:
I have a few that can whittle a hair, Noz.
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I tried to ignore your wacked out behaviour above, but you keep on like a 4 year old, so I'll reply. What part of the above statement do you not understand? Does arrogance and assumed self-superiority hinder reading comprehension?

Either shut the heck up in this thread about sharpness tests OTHER than cutting hair, or offer up some real reason why whittling a hair (very inconsistent media) is superior to demonstrations using more consistent media (paper), making them much more comparable from user to user.

Have you tried any of the sharpness demonstrations mentioned in this thread? Any at all?
 
I can't push cut phone book paper. I can split hairs, cleanly slice tp, and cut light thread with single digit grams of force, but the Gulf South weather will not let me do it. Those other tests of freestanding media require too much technique, imo.
 
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