You keep saying that this was the common thought of the time.
In reference to the internet discussions, in fact it still isn't widely even accepted today.
There is even published writings and articals about this. Just to name two, John Juranitch and Leonard Lee.
Lee's book was published in 1995, I first read Swaim's tests in early 1997 on usenet and these were not the first ones he performed. I referenced Lee's work years later as it influenced my viewpoint on micro-bevels. Swaim referenced Juranitch's work, but wasn't completely positive because he is misleading on many aspects, presents limited to no detailed evidence, has been directly contradicted by others such as Verhoeven and Lee, and is heavily commercial.
Lee's viewpoint on micro-bevels is limited to ease of sharpening, not on optomizing the bevels from a force responce point of view. He does mention this but focuses on the edge angle directly and not on a depth functional perspective. Juranitch doesn't have this viewpoint either, nor does he explore in detail the profile is effected by the steel, heat treatment or scope of work. Lee notes some of these influences which were also discussed on the wood working usenet group about that time. Landes covers this in detail and was doing such work in 1997 but his work isn't even well known (here) now.
I have shown for example that you can take a stock edge at 20 degrees and convert this to an edge of 8:0.025"/14 and it will both cut better initially, have better durability and long term edge retention, and have measured the magnitude of the effects you can expect for each effect as well as the influences on different grit finishes and how they are effected by type of cutting. This was based on work Swaim had done, in particular idea he proposed that an increase in cutting ability will directly increase the cutting lifetime because under a given amount of blunting the cutting ability will still be greater. Thus he distinctly separates sharpness from cutting ability, something again which isn't even close to uniformly accepted now. Buck also years later published CATRA data to this effect.
It is also based on the fact that as the reduced cross section increases the cutting ability increase directly counters the decrease in strength because there is a lower load on the knife in a given task. Thus the math says directly that the relationship should be peaked because you have a ratio of differing power laws :
f(x)=x^n/x^m (n !=m)
This says that you can expect "sweet spot" behavior and that further the behavior can be fairly complex, there can be multiple "sweet spots" depending on exactly which properties you are trying to maximize and to what extent. These ideas are not explored in depth by Juranitch or Lee and in fact are based on a completely different viewpoint of edge optomization where by both the angle of the edge and relief are optomized independently and are specific to the medium and method.
common thought of the time is in reference to a majority, not necessarily every individual.
It was actually way less than that, early versions of Joe's FAQ show this as do the posts on rec.knives at the time which were long before UBB forums. Even now, how common it is to have 20 degree settings on jigs. Ask manufacturers what would happen if you used a 15 degree jig instead. The answer is almost always the same "The edge retention would be too low." Benchmade even noted this publically in responce to discussion due to regrinds people were doing based on work by Swaim/Talmadge. Many makers at that time were even promoting the fact that steels and not grinds were responsible for cutting ability which was also opposed by Swaim.
it would be interesting to take a metalurgy, chemestry, biology, or any science class in general where they did not use graphs, models, mathmatics or charts.
People learn better by different methods, some respond well to vocalization while some are more suited to the written word. Some are very visual so charts are better and some see equations like others see words. Still yet there are those who only learn well with physical involvement. When teaching, you try to cover as much as you can presenting the information as simple as possible which still allows full utilization. However in many cases the time constraints are heavy. There are also courses for individuals not persuing that academic field and are mainly qualitative.
Would befriending someone in the material science department and contributing a case of beer once in a while be an inappropriate use of university equipment?
It isn't difficult to get private HRC tests done, I have done that in the past. However, most people would be really surprised by what you can actually learn simply because they have not done physical measurement on a research level and don't understand basic statistics. If you consider that any non-ideal heat treatment tends to reduce hardness if you ask people who have done HRC checks on production knives you will find that a knife spec'ed at 59 HRC doesn't actually deviate uniformly around that but mainly below it and is well represented by 57.5 (1.5). If the spread was actually even a little larger than that it would mean for example that a lot of knives were being released which included those similar in hardness to the really low end kitchen cutlery and others were were harder than files in the same model. Would anyone argue there is a significant probability (>5%) that a Sebenza for example would have a hardness less than 54 or above 61.
If you HRC test a knife what you usually end up with is a reduction of this spread to just 1, that is all. And to get that you have to make sure the testor is recently and properly calibrated (the blocks are expensive). The surface of the steel has to be prepared, flats have to be ground and polished and if any of these are not done it will increase the deviations significantly even beyond what you know just from a QC standpoint. The very most you can expect is to minimize to 0.5 HRC which requires expensive calibration blocks and careful checks on the equipment. It isn't unusual if you can measure to this precision that you find the HRC actually changes more than that along the blade.
Plus most people who do such work will not lightly have the data offically published, it would be similar to asking a lawyer for a comment on a public issue you were going to post on Bladeforums noting the source, try to get that for a case of beer. Cashen talked about this at length on SwordForums where he noted a lot of makers would agree with him in private where he called people on hype and misinformation but would not challenge it publically. This however is actually a critical part of scientific work. You are responsible for contending any work just as much as you are for citing references which are in agreement with your work. Of course the people you contend don't always appreciate it.
But as I said, if it was available to me readily I would avail myself of it, as I would of any materials data, any refinement or information is of value. However if I had to pick between getting a HRC test on a knife or a two week field trial, then it is fairly obvious which one is more informative and since my time and money is limited for such work I apply it to where information is maximized. Plus there is nothing preventing me from getting it done in the future. I have a box of pieces of knives which eventually I will get HRC tested, micro-graphed, Q-Fog, impact'ed, tensile tested, etc., just like at some point I will do such work as is done in in detail on many of the knives I own. Anyone who thinks any single experiment is supposed to be all encompassing simply has no idea of how research is actually performed. You are always limited by time/funds and thus focus on what is most imformative , tempered to your personal interests.
For example now when I think about lists of steel "properties" you find on websites, or the generalized claims made by manufacturers and makers about toughness, edge holding, etc., I realize not only how worthless they are, but potentially very misleading.
Indeed. Busse was one of the first makers I talked to who noted blunts takes place by deformation, fracture, wear or corrosion and cited tests he had done on high wear steels which were too soft to retain a high sharpness for chopping wood but would do very well on light abrasive cutting with a coarse finish. Landes expanded on this and showed that the amount of blunting can actually determine which steel is superior because the cutting lifetime curves actually are non-parallel and intersect and the ratios invert. He also noted the angles use can also change the curves. Johnston introduced a lot of the same ideas on rec.knives without the math on almost the exact same steels.
Not a lot of accountability out there, why the enthusiast community in general doesn't demand better ....?
Because they don't know they are being misinformed, try pointing it out and see how often it is appreciated. Often many makers use their reputation to enforce their viewpoint and thus link the two together which has obvious consequences when you contend the arguement.
I think that's a big benefit you get from having these discussions here, the exposure should bring in more participants.
Indeed, it is why I link the webpages to this form and rec.knives which isn't moderated and no one but the poster has editorial control. However that isn't in general how research is done. It dramatically slows down the process as more time can often be spent correcting misinterpertation and dealing with really inappropiate suggestions/demands.
A focused group is many times more productive because they all respect each other. A lot of times on the forums you see people make absurd demands which are never consistently applied and it is never done among the people who do the work, just the people who are protecting hype/misinformation.
IMO is a great approach, combining information and discussion from these forums and other sources and creating a very useable reference.
Thanks, that's the idea. It started as a reference I was using to eliminate common material from the reviews but expanded to an indepth book mark page. It is still crude in most areas, though the stainless steel section is decent. I need to work in the C/Cr viewpoint I noted here a few weeks ago. You can do this for the tool steels as well but it requires significant computation and the programs to do so are not cheap.
I don't usually notice Cliff name calling ...
He is referring to the fact I have said recently he has been trolling. Which I do very rarely and it takes something really blatent and repeated. He is doing this clearly in the above using arguements which are specific to the speaker and not consistently applied to the data/method.
The specific delivery is also intentionally used to inflame as it is heavily sarcastic as noted. This isn't how you engage for the purpose of learning but simply to troll. See the difference clearly on how db comments on HRC testing vs Phil, Seth and kel_aa.
I agree with you, however, that the scientific approach with charts is hard to understand for those not scientifically inclined and it is also a good idea to exlain in laymans terms how a knife worked out.
One of the reasons I present such data is for these purposes so people can ask for an interpertation of any level. My background is in non-linear numerical modeling so the above is actually how I "see" such comparisons. I have always made my contact information freely available so I am open to phone/email.
-Cliff
