Schuey2002 said:
How does one get wear on the blade like in that last pic? By pounding it through dozens of cinder blocks?
The big white blob was paint, I never clean large knives, it all gets burnished off with use eventually. They get a rinse and a wipe with a towel, but that is about it usually.
The profile has not changed much as noted, there is very little wear on the knife due to the fact that the edge doesn't chip significantly in use and thus sharpening needs to remove very little metal.
One summer I freshtly sharpened it and kept a log of how much wood I would have to cut before I would need to rehone it. I stropped it occasionally on CrO loaded leather and stopped at about 20 000 2x4's worth of wood.
(I wasn't cutting 2x4's, I was using the SHBM on limbing and bucking wood to length, plus occasionally using it to cut to length for burning instead of a swede saw, and yes that isn't a typo, four zero's)
At this point the edge had little slicing aggression and had been weakened from the cold work so was starting to roll/dent a little more than optimal, and a few test cuts on some light bone showed some deformation, so regound the edge and sharpened it.
I have basically pseudo-retired it because it is too light and I like the balance point further out on larger knives now. I mainly use it as benchmark for comparisons.
I may at some point send it back in for a custom handle refit, ideally get a stress relief on the blade, taper and drop the tang, do an anneal if possible on the tang, ideally run it differentially soft back from the choil, and fit it with an enclosed grip similar to the fusion line.
-Cliff
