How do you know when your knife is sharp after sharpening?

Z

zimmerDN

Joined
Mar 30, 2005
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How do you guys know when your knife is sharp after sharpening it? How do you test it? I usually just use it to cut a few peices of paper and see if it would shave off hair. The hair shaving test is ok but I lost all my leg hair in one week already.... :mad: :yawn:
 
I take a piece of Printer paper and hold an edge and just go at it. If the paper moves or the knife gets clogged in the paper then the knife is not sharp enough.

When the knife goes right through the paper and the paper gives the knife no resistance then I go to the white stone son the sharpmaker.

When that is done I do the Toilet paper test. When I try to cut hanging toilet paper and if it doesn’t snag and goes right through. Then we are in good shape.
 
I do all of my sharpening freehand with small stones, and a leather belt. While I may not be willing to perform microsurgery with any of them, the reassuiring sight of seeing a clean swath of hair removed from my leg removed in one fell swoop assures me that my knives are sharp enough.

I use 4 test in general.
If the knife "Feels," sharp as I run my thumb LIGHTLY along it I will then go to the next finer stone, untill it feels completely smooth, no burr, no roughness.

After the feel test I will either test it against my thumbnail, by trying to shave a chip of it off, or go onto shaving tests.

The easiest shave test for me has been shaving aginst the grain of my leg hair. Leg hair is stiffer and cuts easier than arm hair, at least for me. If it is sharp enough to shave my leg hair I usually consider it sharp enough.

If I am feeling particularly anal I will move up to testing it by shaving my armhair with the grain. It it is sharp enough for that I am fully satisfied with how sharp my knife is.

It's too bad they don't stay that sharp for long... :grumpy:
 
My arm has all sorts of spots. It's not pretty, but shaving is the best sharpness test I've found yet.

_z
 
I use standard laser print paper as a test. I know that if it can slice pieces off, at an angle, like butter - with virtually no effort, it is sharp enough to shave hair and cut whatever I need it to cut. I sharpen by hand.

WYK
 
Normally, if I can roll typing paper into a tube and slice diagonal rings off it, I figure it is sharp. My pocket knife may be a little too sharp... on a whim, I took a rather large crescent out of the side of a phone book with a flick of the wrist (only expected it to sink into it a bit... wasn't expecting to have to sweep all the paper shards off the floor)
 
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