Convenient source for throwaway knives for practice sharpening

My lady drags me to thrift shops all the time so I usually just look through all the kitchen knives. I've found some nice German and Japanese chef knifes and others. I learned on my paper wheels by sharpening these.

Of course you'll be able to work up a burr faster on softer or less durable steels compared to m390 or similar. As long as you realize this before hand it helps build muscle memory doing "junk" knives. Hell, you could just take a file to it and start over to practice different bevel angles.
 
creature7 said:
My lady drags me to thrift shops all the time so I usually just look through all the kitchen knives. I've found some nice German and Japanese chef knifes and others. I learned on my paper wheels by sharpening these.

Of course you'll be able to work up a burr faster on softer or less durable steels compared to m390 or similar. As long as you realize this before hand it helps build muscle memory doing "junk" knives. Hell, you could just take a file to it and start over to practice different bevel angles.
Click to expand...

That's a good point about thrift shop or garage sale kitchen knives - while I don't collect any kitchen knives, such knives with half-way decent steel should make good practice knives.

I do intend to simply file them back to butter knife sharpness and starting over, as I try to go up the learning curve for sharpening.

I've now tried to sharpen the $1 Walmart kitchen knives, and did learn a little more about maintaining a consistent angle and width for the edge. However, the steel almost seems like aluminum since it is so soft. However, as was mentioned by someone in this thread, I might be able to learn a little about polishing the edge - it's at least worth a try.

Does anyone think so poorly of 8Cr13MoV steel that they would recommend *not* learning to sharpen knives at the novice level with this? I have looked at the Enlan Bee L05-1 knife, which supposedly features this steel for less than $13 (including free Prime shipping) on Amazon. I wondered if it would be suitable for sharpening practice even though it's long been surpassed by newer high-tech steels. I guess it's a matter of trial and error but for this amount of money I'm willing to gamble. Like practically every other knife I've looked at, they claim 58-60 HRC.

Thanks for the link to a very long bladeforums thread on Ganzo/Enlan/Bee/Sanrenmu knives - it was helpful to review that thread for my throwaway knife sharpening practice purposes.

Finally, it's occurred to me that I really only need a knife *blade* for sharpening practice in my Lansky system (I''m expecting to acquire an Edge Pro or Wicked Edge system later this year). Thus, it doesn't matter to me if it's a fixed blade or a folder since it's just going to be clamped in a blade clamp/vise, sharpened, filed to no edge and then resharpened. I wonder if a cheap naked knife blade would be any cheaper or otherwise better than buying a cheap complete Ganzo etc knife? If so, does anyone know of a good source for cheap knife blades made of somewhat higher quality steels? I suppose I don't necessarily need an edge on a practice knife blade, but I do need to have the complete blade shape - a rectangular knife steel blank won't be of use to me!

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Since I am also trying to build a small collection of decent quality (or better) knives, studying really cheap knives is distressing to me, and I have to remind myself that I'm not intentionally collecting such knives! Having said that, I am surprised at the fit and finish and ergos of $15-20 Chinese branded knives - my Benchmade Grip 551 is not 5x the quality, but it is about 5X the price of my Ganzo sharpening practice knives - almost everything material in this life works that way, I guess. After a certain price, getting even a little more quality takes a lot more money.

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful comments.
 
I've found some real high quality kitchen knives at thrift stores FWIW. They make great gifts too. Most people use dull, shitty knives in their kitchen and it's amazing how big of a difference a good, sharp knife will make. They will thank you once they use it.
 
bf1122 said:
Does anyone think so poorly of 8Cr13MoV steel that they would recommend *not* learning to sharpen knives at the novice level with this? I have looked at the Enlan Bee L05-1 knife, which supposedly features this steel for less than $13 (including free Prime shipping) on Amazon. I wondered if it would be suitable for sharpening practice even though it's long been surpassed by newer high-tech steels. I guess it's a matter of trial and error but for this amount of money I'm willing to gamble. Like practically every other knife I've looked at, they claim 58-60 HRC.

Thanks for the link to a very long bladeforums thread on Ganzo/Enlan/Bee/Sanrenmu knives - it was helpful to review that thread for my throwaway knife sharpening practice purposes.

Finally, it's occurred to me that I really only need a knife *blade* for sharpening practice in my Lansky system (I''m expecting to acquire an Edge Pro or Wicked Edge system later this year). Thus, it doesn't matter to me if it's a fixed blade or a folder since it's just going to be clamped in a blade clamp/vise, sharpened, filed to no edge and then resharpened. I wonder if a cheap naked knife blade would be any cheaper or otherwise better than buying a cheap complete Ganzo etc knife? If so, does anyone know of a good source for cheap knife blades made of somewhat higher quality steels? I suppose I don't necessarily need an edge on a practice knife blade, but I do need to have the complete blade shape - a rectangular knife steel blank won't be of use to me!
Click to expand...

Your over thinking things, what is important about sharpening is practice practice practice. It is how you get better. To make things easier you get decent quality equipment instead of cheap low quality stuff. The difference between a low wear resistance and high wear resistance steel while sharpening is one takes more repetition aka longer to sharpen and thus is "harder" for the average joe to sharpen as they need to hold that consistant angle longer and doing the "5 strokes on one side and flip and 5 strokes on the other side, repeat 5 times" doesn't work to make a knife sharp which is the kind of instructions you see on a lot of sharpening equipment.

One of the reasons why I mentioned picking up something like an Opinel paring knife was because it had a lot of things going for it. It's cheap, has a decent steel with a good heat treat, and it has an easy blade shape to sharpen and this goes for the carbon and stainless versions. Oh and due to the thin blade compared to a lot of the overbuilt folders it be quicker to sharpen as you don't have to remove as much steel to see results. If you want something cheap to sharpen with multiple blade shapes take a look at Rough Riders, their Stockman is probably what you want as they typically have 3 different blades. It's 440a but with a good heat treat, don't underestimate it (these are highly recommended on the traditional sub-forum to test knife patterns for a reason). 8CR13MOV is an acceptable steel, it's nothing spectacular but if it has a good heat treat it get the job done and you can learn to sharpen on it like practically everything else.

For starters if you get the lansky try to master it instead of switching to something else because you think it be "better" before you give it a chance. When you start falling under that perception your going to wind up with a bunch of sharpening systems and you can't sharpen half decently with any of them and just have a bunch of wasted time and skills. Where as if you spent the time mastering just one than you can achieve some excellent results from it as knife sharpening has a lot to do with your sharpening skills whether your freehand sharpening or using a guided setup.

And why are you going to file down an edge to nothing before putting a bevel back on it, that's just a waste of time and metal. Just sharpen it at an more acute angle like the rest of us since most knives come with some fairly obtuse angles anyway.
 
Bee/Enlan is good to go. Ganzo maybe, but not Navy (their 440c is likely not that but 7Cr). I'm surprised that Amazon now has them. Good pick!

IIRC there are kershaws can be had for 10-12$ and also should be good with 8Cr.

Get some and start practicing! :thumbup:
As seen here it's quite capable of taking keen edge: Enlan EL02
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After considering everyone's suggestions (Thanks!), the low price and seemingly acceptable specs of an Enlan Bee L05-1 knife at $13 US dollars (including free shipping under Amazon Prime) seemed worth taking a chance for use in sharpening practice. For now I am using a Lansky diamond hone-based sharpening system.

For convenience, here's a link for this knife at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHC6P5O/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also, I decided to give up on the ultra-cheap Walmart kitchen knives I bought since sharpening them was like sharpening aluminum. While I did get to practice some basics such as how to create a reasonably uniform edge width across the whole blade, I sense that I would be picking up sharpening habits that might be hard to transfer to higher quality steels.

This Enlan Bee knife arrived yesterday - I was quite surprised at how well-made the Enlan Bee L05-1 is at this low price. The blade is well-centered, it is easy to open but stays shut in my pocket, edge uniformity is reasonable, and it's almost as sharp for cutting computer paper as some much more expensive knives I have. I don't personally like its wooden scales, though. While it won't set any world records for materials quality, manufacturing quality, or design, it seems OK or at least not obviously defective based on my casual inspection. Of course its 8Cr13Mov steel is lower quality than steels such as S30VN, Elmax, etc, etc. Basically, it seems reasonably suitable for beginner sharpening practice. Hopefully it will help me avoid trashing my more expensive knives when I attempt to sharpen them.

Thanks again for all the recommendations and comments.
 
Old Hickory, Opinel, and Mora.
These are real quality knives with real quality steel all for about $10 a piece
You can get the Opinel and More in both carbon and SS, so you can see the difference in sharpening
You will learn more by sharpening these knives than trying of some soft no name steel that will flip flop a burr from side to side
 
bf1122 said:
Of course its 8Cr13Mov steel is lower quality than steels such as S30VN, Elmax, etc, etc. Basically, it seems reasonably suitable for beginner sharpening practice.
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When it comes to sharpening the main difference between these "lower quality" steels and "higher" end ones like you mention is wear resistance. That just means more repetition (thus more time) to remove the same amount of steel as it removes less steel per pass compared to a less wear resistant steel. By most people standards this make it harder to sharpen as they will fatigue faster or use a bad technique and can't keep a consistent angle or a million other different things in which can happen during that longer duration of sharpening. You should be able to master how to sharpen on those more basic steels and be fine moving to more wear resistant steels as long as you have proper technique and stay consistent. You don't need various steels to practice on, the skills are the same. The metal just behaves a bit differently.
 
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