How sharp is sharp enough - A personal thing?

I'm pretty much on the same line as most here. It must slice phone book paper. That usually translates to hair popping sharp.

Ironically, you can't NOT get phone books around here. It's kinda aggravating to see em scattered all over the various yards and business building corners, piled up like soggy leaves in fall. No one wants em, yet the geniuses behind this scourge haven't seemed to figure out that no one within our 5 state area uses landlines anymore. Or that we have Google if we really need to look up a number. O well, more for me. Once a year, I set forth during phone book season to forage for fresh discarded notebooks, ending up with 3 or so that I can use for the various for which things scrap paper is useful.

To end, no one brought up the annoying standards MOST OTHER people hold their knives to. I tend to judge a person's entire bloodline if they whip out a knife to cut a piece of yarn and have to actually saw back and forth till it separates in Rags! Lol. It makes me cringe for all the reasons I don't need to list.
 
For woodworking tools they need to cross cut endgrain pine to a wettish surface. For other people I set them to a near mirror finish, treetopping arm hair if not whittling.

Pocket knives need to shave armhair and be three finger sticky. If for a customer they run to a hazy mirror and treetopping.

Machetes and hatchets should be treetopping to start.

Scissors should cleanly cut minimum 1/32" curls from the edge of a sheet of paper along the entire length without any folding of the paper.
 
One other thought, aLOT of my Dad's co-workers would ask him to sharpen their knives. (As do me) If it was a single bladed knife, Dad would always say, what are you going to do with this knife? Cut up cardboard or shave your arm hair and impress your friends?
Depending on the reply, he'd sharpen accordingly.
 
Well. I believe it's a subjective question. My house keeper likes dull kitchen knifes.
I like them razor sharp.
I'm new on sharpening world and I'm learning a lot here on BF. Thanks everybody by the way.
Recently I sharp my tester knife with sic to grind a new bevel angle and than I used diamond to make it flat. What I notice is that sic wear fast and leave a little convex edge.
I used 120 side then 320 side and then diamond 600. Then I use a green compound to strop it. I can make a push cut just with the weigh of the knife.
My finest stone is 1000 grit and I could take my knife into it but I was trying "to clone" some chefs factory edges visual. Like a satin finish but cutting like hell. And I did it this way.
On a recently past, I used to go with 1000 grit stone and/or sometimes just stop on 320. It depends what I'll do with the knife.
It can't make hair pop up just touching it (I don't know the right word for it) but is shaving sharp even with 20 dps without micro bevel.
So, for me it's enough still.
 
IMO, your housekeeper may hurt herself one day, she will take chances with a dull knife that she would not with a sharp one. No respect for tool. Not afraid of it's capability.
 
I know it seems that I keep either quoting my Father or saying, Dad said this or that, but I really miss him alot. We were even born on the same day.
But, "Dad" always said, a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. You won't monkey around with one of your knives that can shave the printed word off a newspaper!
 
I've used the phonebook paper test for a long time. BUT first I test on double layer cardboard. If my knife cuts the card board cleanly and THEN cut the phonebook paper cleanly with no drag- it is sharp enough for anything I'd ever ask a blade to do. That's using emory paper taped to paint stirrer and clamped to my work bench. 400grit,600,800,1000 finish with 1500. Always drawing the blade away from the edge. That's honing a 30 degree inclusive edge.
Occasionally a very light strop on plain tanned leather to remove any rolled edge.
It is sharp enough for all my tasks. And as always it it easier to keep a sharp knife sharp then to sharpen a dull one.

Rich
 
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brasileiro said:
Well. I believe it's a subjective question. My house keeper likes dull kitchen knifes.
I like them razor sharp. (...)
Click to expand...

Good point. I've refrained from sharpening most of my parents' knives, because they've been using never-resharpened (or never successfully sharpened) kitchen knives for decades; they've never learned how to do it themselves. Consequently, they've developed some very bad blade-handling habits, in full confidence they'll never be able to cut themselves with any of them. At my Dad's request, once he became aware I'd developed some sharpening skill and enjoyed doing it, I sharpened one paring knife that he uses for cutting fruit. He'd been in the habit of cutting apples in half with it on the ceramic tile counter. He still does it that way, which means the belly of the edge gets immediately flattened on first use, after I've sharpened it. And my mother has been in the habit of holding the blade forward of the handle in the moments between cutting tasks, sort of absent-mindedly fiddling with the edge with her fingers. I'd sharpened one butcher knife in a block set on her counter, for my own purposes, and she managed to cut herself with it less than 24 hours after I sharpened it.

Both of my parents are into their '80s now, with issues of loss of feeling in the fingertips, arthritis that impairs a steady grip, and memory issues that could easily make them forget their oft-used knives are sharpened today, when maybe they weren't yesterday. So, it's just too easy and a tiny bit naive to assume that 'a dull knife is always dangerous'. In some hands, that'd be true, and there was a time when I would've said so myself. In other's hands, such as my own parents' after decades of being used to handling dull knives, putting a too-sharp knife in their hands is much more dangerous now, than it might've been 30 or 40 years ago.

So, the question of 'How sharp is sharp enough?' has to take individual context into account, for sure.


David
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
Good point. I've refrained from sharpening most of my parents' knives, because they've been using never-resharpened (or never successfully sharpened) kitchen knives for decades; they've never learned how to do it themselves. Consequently, they've developed some very bad blade-handling habits, in full confidence they'll never be able to cut themselves with any of them. At my Dad's request, once he became aware I'd developed some sharpening skill and enjoyed doing it, I sharpened one paring knife that he uses for cutting fruit. He'd been in the habit of cutting apples in half with it on the ceramic tile counter. He still does it that way, which means the belly of the edge gets immediately flattened on first use, after I've sharpened it. And my mother has been in the habit of holding the blade forward of the handle in the moments between cutting tasks, sort of absent-mindedly fiddling with the edge with her fingers. I'd sharpened one butcher knife in a block set on her counter, for my own purposes, and she managed to cut herself with it less than 24 hours after I sharpened it.

Both of my parents are into their '80s now, with issues of loss of feeling in the fingertips, arthritis that impairs a steady grip, and memory issues that could easily make them forget their oft-used knives are sharpened today, when maybe they weren't yesterday. So, it's just too easy and a tiny bit naive to assume that 'a dull knife is always dangerous'. In some hands, that'd be true, and there was a time when I would've said so myself. In other's hands, such as my own parents' after decades of being used to handling dull knives, putting a too-sharp knife in their hands is much more dangerous now, than it might've been 30 or 40 years ago.

So, the question of 'How sharp is sharp enough?' has to take individual context into account, for sure.


David
Click to expand...


And guess what! It happened. The same way your parents (with all respect to them) developed bad habits my housekeeper too.


Uncle Timbo Uncle Timbo also advices me. But I learned that I can't expected that others have the same respect for blades like I have.


It's lunch time here and in food preparation she cut herself. Nothing serious but cut herself and give the bad habits it could be worst. Now that I'm learning how to properly sharp a blade and sharp them properly or at least try to, my blades can be dangerous in negligent hands when a dull blade may not be.


John Juranitch's book The Razors Edge Book of Sharpening, on page 29 he wrote: "Many people think that a sharp knife is a dangerous knife, and as it gets duller, it gets safer. False. It's the unloaded gun and the dull knife that will give you the business. Obviously, part of this is due to no respect. You respect the loaded gun, and you respect the sharp knife, so you are more careful. But there is another culprit hiding in the shadows here, just waiting for a mistake, and it's the slip."


I believe that a dull knife can be dangerous when you move to a sharp knife and you haved memorize that you need force or pressure to cut things. Some peoples look for fast cutting and don't worry about quality cutting. So a negligent gesture early or soon can be bad for you.


That being said and backing to the OP "How sharp is sharp enough" I believe is subjective. Sharp enough for me can be dangerous to someone else. But if it's a question of my preferences then I would say that sharp enough for me is sharp enough to do my ordinary tasks like food preparation, envelope for letter cutting, cardboard cutting and to some of my knifes, branch cutting, soft wood cutting, rope cutting...


P.S. I treat my knives, my machetes, my guns, my hammer, my car, my bicycle, my blender, my sander ... with respect, even my mother-in-law I treat with respect. :D
My guess is everybody should be the same.

Edit: sorry by my bad writing, English is not my native language so I didn't want offend anyone if my writing did it.
 
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Any time you lose respect for any tool, you're a fool and you're going to get hurt. I don't care if you've been a carpenter for 40 years, you lose respect for that circular saw, and there's an accident waiting to happen.
Lose respect for any knife and.....
 
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