Hair whittling knife????SOS...

P

panosgallos

Joined
Aug 12, 2024
Messages
2
Hello please i need your help ..I am ready after 5 years of honing,try hair whittling,so as far as i know, need specific hardness of steel to achieve this results.I am between two knives .
1) Spyderco Salt 2 C88PYL2 pocket knife
2) boker caveman Damascus 37 layers of steel.
Please help me gentleman's..or i am open to your opinion about other knives, give me your knowledge..
With love
Nik
 
Not necessarily.... A good carbon steel heat treated right will take a razors edge!!!!!!!
Its more the edge angle than steel when it comes to cutting .....There.are.more.knowledgeable people here though!!! We shall see😉.....
Good luck.
 
I am able to achieve hair whittling sharp on hanging fine arm hairs at a 30 degree bevel, sharpened coarse then fiber stones and I strop at 3 micron then .5 micron on denim. Repeatable results. I've done this with k390 which is roughly 65 hrc ish. Not sure about other steels but id think any steel with a good heat treat is capable. By good heat treat I mean the HT itself, not hrc. I'm nit too knowledgeable on the science but have read touch retained something or another will make it hard to sharpen/duburr
 
I've been hitting sharpening rather hard lately and I have learned a lot in the past couple years. You can get nearly any steel, softer or harder, to whittle hairs if you do it right, some are more trouble than others. I've personally had the hardest time with D2, but even it worked out in the end with enough work.

It goes without saying make sure you've fully apexed the edge. It helps if you finish on a very very fine stone. It can be done with rougher stones and stropping, but it's easier with a smooth, refined edge that is not so "toothy". Make sure the burr is completely removed, and then do a little stropping to bring the edge as close to perfection as possible. Also, hair likes to be split one direction more than the other, it has to do with the way the hairs are formed.

Keep in mind, pretty much any steel loses hair whittling sharpness really easily, so just know this is a fun parlor trick, but not a practical sharpness for anything but razors.

I would direct you to Outdoors55 on Youtube, it's pretty good quality content and it's helped my sharpening immensely.
 
MarkN86 said:
I've been hitting sharpening rather hard lately and I have learned a lot in the past couple years. You can get nearly any steel, softer or harder, to whittle hairs if you do it right, some are more trouble than others. I've personally had the hardest time with D2, but even it worked out in the end with enough work.

It goes without saying make sure you've fully apexed the edge. It helps if you finish on a very very fine stone. It can be done with rougher stones and stropping, but it's easier with a smooth, refined edge that is not so "toothy". Make sure the burr is completely removed, and then do a little stropping to bring the edge as close to perfection as possible. Also, hair likes to be split one direction more than the other, it has to do with the way the hairs are formed.

Keep in mind, pretty much any steel loses hair whittling sharpness really easily, so just know this is a fun parlor trick, but not a practical sharpness for anything but razors.

I would direct you to Outdoors55 on Youtube, it's pretty good quality content and it's helped my sharpening immensely.
Click to expand...
Yep
 
You can easily get hair witling sharp from about any steel, even cheaper steels. It just wont stay that sharp for long on cheap steels w/o heat treating.
 
Well, I would say hair whittling edge has no purpose unless you want to impress someone.
Yeah, I also tried it for fun and had no problem to make those knife hair whittling:
-Opinel Carbone No9
-Opinel Inox No8 and No9
-Petrified Fish PF719
-my friends cheap pocket knife
-Petrified Fish PF949
I would say you can do it with almost any steel but the best would be to buy a very expensive knife like Sebenza, Medford, Rockstead or the one with a horse head or something. Only expensive knife will give you the quality needen to split hairs. Look for the price in the range of +$1k.
🤭

My father laught at me when I mentioned hair whittling so I did it to his SAK Hiker.
Here is the photo:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BDykWU_nafbsRakZwN6oA_oRYRsc-C_V/view?usp=drivesdk

So, what's all about this SOS whittling thing you started?

Ahhh,... forgot to mention...
they say you can only whittle hairs in one direction... toward the root.
Well, here is a knife it can do in both directions:
 
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