Cutting Report

hank_rearden

hank_rearden

Joined
Jun 7, 2002
Messages
3,411
make this a diary if you want. me, my ego was slightly bruised today, and i don't have the heart to blame my darling delica. over lunch, someone asked me to demonstrate my knife's push-cutting ability so i asked for a corrugated carboard box. well some joker, instead of giving me an ordinary box, gave me HP cartridge refill container box. first i flattened it out and then tried to slice it top to bottom. on the first try, my hold slipped and ended up cutting diagonally. surprised, i held the sheet tighter and cut straight down. i was able to do it but it took upper arm and shoulder muscle to do it. slicing strips from one corner was considerably easier. on inspection, it turned out the box was a composite of thin corrugated, with strong white cardboard glued over it. so that's why it was so tough. i also have white streaks on my vg-10 blade that's hard to remove (probably paint or adhesive.) but my honor was saved when i showed them that, despite that debacle, the delica can still dry-shave my two-day old stubble.

and so one's nursery school teacher is right, don't brag casually; especially when you don't know what you're getting yourself into.

just wanted to share.
 
if the cardboard is very hard it's easier to cut it at an angle. just cut it with the blade tilted lateraly at 45°. not with the tip pointed up/down (it helps too) but 45° to the right/left. it looks counter productive because you are actually cutting more surface but it reduces binding a lot as the sheet doesn't push straight on the blade anymore.
 
second entry. my FFG delica is now one month old.

who the heck said VG-10 is a soft metal to work with?? i've been cutting up paper and cardboard all month (with the inevitable rolls and warps.) all i can really do with my current equipment is to touch up the blade. i've been using my oil stone and a butcher's stick. i can bring the edge back to dry shave my face, and slice paper easily. but i can no longer split hairs.

a comment on those youtube paper slicers. if they're using recent phone book paper to test for rolls and warps, it's not very conclusive. i'm using phone paper that's several years old. the paper has expanded at the edges and warped. it's so hard to cut (almost like tough tissue paper.) but i'm able to slice them after each touch up. i'm just bothered i can't split hairs anymore.
 
hank_rearden said:
second entry. my FFG delica is now one month old.

who the heck said VG-10 is a soft metal to work with?? i've been cutting up paper and cardboard all month (with the inevitable rolls and warps.) all i can really do with my current equipment is to touch up the blade. i've been using my oil stone and a butcher's stick. i can bring the edge back to dry shave my face, and slice paper easily. but i can no longer split hairs.

a comment on those youtube paper slicers. if they're using recent phone book paper to test for rolls and warps, it's not very conclusive. i'm using phone paper that's several years old. the paper has expanded at the edges and warped. it's so hard to cut (almost like tough tissue paper.) but i'm able to slice them after each touch up. i'm just bothered i can't split hairs anymore.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't slice up a new phonebook. What'll I use then? :D
 
by the way, i've been touching up the edge on a stone with a spine clearance of 5mm. this computes to a sharpening angle of 10.5 deg, max of 13 deg. is this really the delica factory edge?
 
hank_rearden said:
by the way, i've been touching up the edge on a stone with a spine clearance of 5mm. this computes to a sharpening angle of 10.5 deg, max of 13 deg. is this really the delica factory edge?
Click to expand...
Majority of the Spydies I receive have to be under 30*. The secondary bevel usually isn't getting touched at all when I sharpen on the 30* angle on the sharpmaker. I would guess something like 25* inclusive perhaps?
 
FFG VG-10 delica is slightly more than a month old. been carrying it daily. it still slices bond paper well, it can still dry shave. but i'm having trouble with the old phone book paper (the one i described earlier.) it won't push cut it. it slices only if i do a draw slice.

i've been touching the edge up maybe every other week with my oil stone. the original factory edge grind is still there. there's a noticeable improvement in slicing everytime i touch it up. but that phone paper is getting to my nerves.

question: when after buying did you finally have to re-profile your vg-10 delica's edge?
 
It sounds like now might be a good time to take off the "shoulders" on your edge. From what you describe it appears that you are forming a microbevel. Over time, as you sharpen the microbevel more and more, the width of the edge behind that microbevel increases. Simply lowering the angle from your current sharpening angle by about 2-3 degrees per side should make you hit the "shoulders."

Alternatively, it might be a good idea to consider re-beveling (what a lot of people call "re-profiling") at this time. Thinning out the secondary bevels will take your knife to the next level of sharpness.
 
thanks. you know, you're right. looking at it close, it's the upper half of the orignal factory edge that's starting to disappear. funny thing is i'm already doing it with just a 5mm clearance of the spine over the stone (21 degrees inclusive.) that's how i saw the original edge. lemme stone it at that angle.
 
finally, a report card i'm proud to show mom and dad. the deli can split hairs again! and it took me all morning. did it real slow and careful. it wasn't a perfect sharpening. the right side was infernal (the one you sharpen edge towards you, i'm having trouble with that.) special thanks to that gorilla guy over at maintenance. his tutorials really helped one understand correct free-hand sharpening.
 
hank_rearden said:
finally, a report card i'm proud to show mom and dad. the deli can split hairs again! and it took me all morning. did it real slow and careful. it wasn't a perfect sharpening. the right side was infernal (the one you sharpen edge towards you, i'm having trouble with that.) special thanks to that gorilla guy over at maintenance. his tutorials really helped one understand correct free-hand sharpening.
Click to expand...

Maybe it helps that I'm ambidextrous, but I just switch the knife into the opposite hands. That way the action remains the same across the sides of the body, so the angle is easier to keep the same.
 
some guys at youtube do that. another guy sharpens only at 10 degrees so he rigged an inclined holder for his stones and he attacks the stone with the blades flat. i suppose one's eye and hand can easily flatten a blade.
 
i corrected the bad right side of the blade last week. the delica's edge is now perfectly apexed, and the grind marks were very uniform until they totally disappeared into a mirror polish.

but the best thing is, it's been a week now and my sharpened edge can still split hairs. in fact i can still shave two curls along the same length of the strand. why? because that's all i do since i last sharpened. no nonsense about pulling out two sheets of phone paper every 4 hours just to see how well it cuts. with the factory edge, hair-splitting disappeared in a couple of days because of too much paper and cardboard time. but now, the edge lies still and cold like the samurai's katana during peace time. now i want to find out how long i can split hairs without touching up if i don't use the vg-10 for anything else.
 
I use delica ffg as my edc, and its really good knife, light enough and strong enough for all tasks.Try to convex it..........I did and it performs amazingly .......love ffg spydercos!Will get ffg endura too ......have other spydercos too but this is my most used one !
 
My delica ffg is my most carried knife. I love everything about this thing, took it overseas for a month and didn't sharpen it till I got back home. Held up pretty well
 
alright! up until now i was only able to split hairs in one direction (towards the root) as the edge easily snags against a hair scale. but since everyone here claims he can split hairs in either direction, i decided to lap my edge more carefully this time. result: yes! i can now split them towards the end-taper as well. but there are different hairs. some are thick and "scaly" (no trouble with that.) some are baby-soft and very thin (hard to split even towards the root.)
 
i discovered over the weekend what a beast zdp 189 is on the stone. i was able to re-profile vg-10 and s30v quite easily. no problem with maintaining angle, scratch patterns, and ensuring a uniform apex. i've been touching up the zdp ffg endura for 3 months now. not much complaints against the factory edge (around 18 deg) but i saw it was noticeably thick and loses its hair-splitting property in a couple of weeks (but stays working sharp indefinitely.) it's the closest one has to a no-sharpen plain edge, barring ceramics.

so i decided to bring the zdp down to 10 degrees either side with no micro. on a freehand stone that's just a 5mm clearance of the spine above the stone. the first 5 minutes i was doing it slowly, being careful to stay consistent. on the 2x lens, i saw i was barely scratching the shoulder on the factory edge! i sped it up, having gotten the 'attack' right. on the course side of the carborandum stone, there's a noticeable difference between a wet and dry grind. i kept dunking the stone in water but carborandum drains very fast. in maybe 1 hour, horrors! i was grinding the edge too agressively on some parts. on others, the original sharpening angle was still more than 50% visible. the sharpening shoulder was starting to recede in a multiple S pattern. so i did it in parts, then went to the medium side of the stone. when i thought i had finally apexed correctly (more than 1 hour!) i went to the soft stone and then my glass slab. it can push cut paper but it won't split hair. i looked through the lens and only then in its semi-polished state that i saw some of the old sharpening angle remained :( so it was back to the stone. more selective grinding, keeping the touch light to avoid chips. then re-polish. finally i did a double-spit on hair (i can't do more than a double-split mainly due to bad eyesight.) since i spent nearly the entire morning sharpening one blade i napped a bit and then gave myself a shave. whew, that 10 degree edge gave me the closest and smoothest hand-shave yet!

last word on zdp (for now.) now i see why zdp doesn't suite all blade types. the edge on the endura curves gradually and is easy enough to freehand. god help those who have to freehand recurves and upsweeps towards the tip on their zdp blades. that's why i'm kinda glad i chose the zdp endura over the zdp stretch. thinking further, a zdp yojimbo would make an awesome working knife.
 
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