Edge Rebevel and Metal Cutting

M

me2

Joined
Oct 11, 2003
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Some of you may have seen the thread on the traditional folders forum about the Parker Cutlery Trapper I have been using. I am shamelessly posting my testing on this blade here in an attempt to get more attention.

So, I rebeveled my inhereted Parker Cutlery trapper to 7 degrees per side (dps) and set a microbevel with a 1000 grit King waterstone at 10 dps. Then I hand stropped at something like 12 dps on 0.3 um honing film, roughly an 8000 grit waterstone. I then proceded to cut over 300 inches of sheet aluminum with this edge, and it will still split/whittle a beard hair. I've posted testing like this here before, and can't find it, so I'm posting again about it to get some fresh perspective. I'm pretty surprised that this thin a bevel can handle this so well. The other times I've done it were with much higher angles, and they also held up fine.
 
Great performance! What steel is it? Any chipping with the sheet aluminum? Sounds like there's none if it will still whittle hair, have you been able to look at the edge under magnification? That's impressive.
 
sodak said:
Great performance! What steel is it? Any chipping with the sheet aluminum? Sounds like there's none if it will still whittle hair, have you been able to look at the edge under magnification? That's impressive.
Click to expand...

No magnification yet. The tip has developed a very small burr in the last 10 to 15 cuts, but just on the tip. No chipping is observable by unaided eye, and the edge still feels smooth on my thumb nail. The steel is (wait for it) Japanese mystery stainless from the early 90's, when my dad bought this knife. He died and left it to me 11 years ago. I just started carrying it again in the last year or so.

I've also split soda bottle caps, and cut into the hard plastic openings of a couple of soda bottles. It would whittle beard hair after that too, with just the 1000 stone finish, at 10 dps with no stropping.
 
Took a little damage yesterday cutting electrical wire at work. The damage was just visible. When cutting the same wire, my S30V Griptillian also took a little damage. It could be felt on my thumb nail, but not seen. The Grip was at 17 degrees per side with a 20 dps Sharpmaker microbevel, so it was more than twice the angle of the trapper.
 
7 dps is pretty thin - how high up did you have to grind?

I've had very similar experience with D2 - a Queen 4180 fixed drop point. I put a really thin bevel on it (don't remember the exact, but I could go back and measure it), and it took a lot of damage, but when I put a microbevel on it, it cut like there was no tomorrow. Still does. And the nice part was that even though I put some pretty back chips in it, they came out very quickly on a a diamond hone because of the thin bevel.

It's amazing how simple changes in geometry can radically alter my perceptions of a knife and steel.

Here is the damage before the microbevel. I want to add, completely my fault, I took the knife way out of it's design parameters, but I wanted to see how low I could go.

http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q203/sodak_photos/testing/queen_4180.jpg

It took less than 5 min to remove 95% of the damage, you can barely see one of the chips now, the rest are gone, and this remains a cutting monster.
 
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