How sharp should an EDC knife be?

[Soulfir]

Hi,
I wonder, how sharp should an EDC be?
I keep my EDC's shaving sharp and able to cut paper easily.
Some photos:

Should my knifes be sharper, are they too sharp or are they good like this?
How sharp is your EDC?

Thanks in advance.

Soulfir

 

[Bigfattyt]

Hair whittling sharp. Meaning you can shave multiple curls from a single free hanging hair without cutting the hair all the way through.

The steel is 1095. I did a very (and I mean very quick) reprofile with sandpaper over a dense rubber pad. Set the bevel at 400, then 600, then a minute or two per side on 1000 grit. Then hit it with my loaded strop (crap leather, home made, with harbor freight buffing compound.....only cost me about $6 total to make, including the compound). These are the first knives I have ever even used 1000 grit paper on before moving on to the strop. Normally I just go from 400 or 600 grit straight to the strop.

You can just see the hair sitting in between the two knives in this pic. It has already been whittled to make the curls.......but they are so small you can't see them until I get the camera up close and change the setting to macro.

There are those who say that this level of maintenance is too much work. That edge has not been sharpened on paper for quite a while. I just hit the edge with a few light passes per side on my strop at night after using it. Literally a few passes per side, and it is that sharp every day.

I keep the spey blades on those knives at shaving sharp, but not hair whittling. The edges on the spay blades are pretty much at factory angle, and pretty robust (probably like 25-30 degrees per side?). This gives me one hair whittling, and one hair popping (as it it will jump the hairs off the arm, but won't quite whittle hair).

I find that some of the simpler steels are just so easy to maintain at this level of sharpness with basically no effort at all (5160, 1095, 1075, etc).

Handing one of these blades to a non knife person is not always the brightest thing to do, however. You can warn them, but they just don't understand what a sharp knife means.


Now, the edges on these (even the hair whittling edges) are not what a true edge nut would consider refined at all. Under magnification they look terrible. There are about 10 levels of polish above what I am doing with my home made strop, and my cheap harbor freight buffing compound. It is green stuff, so probably cromium oxide? But, I guarantee, no where near the micron size of the better stuff that you get from sharpening sources.

I bet I could get it so much sharper, without much more effort with a better strop, and quality compound in smaller micron size, but I am lazy.

 

[Big Barn]

What you have should do.

 

[WvHiker]

Man, I just use a hard and a soft Arkansas stone for mine. They're plenty sharp, but not as sharp as yours.

 

[Brerarnold]

Sharp enough to do what you need it to do. Not so sharp that it won't hold an edge doing it.

 

[singularity35]

Doesn't seem to be a question, more like bragging.

Anyway that's sharp and that should work for EDC. This me bragging too.


[youtube]TRt_aCz0mmc[/youtube]

 

[Ryanol]

This...I only want to sharpen once every month or so at the most.

 

[me2]

I sharpen them to the medium brown stones on the Sharpmaker or a medium grit water stone. Either way they'll shave my arm, and catch head hair above the skin. Sometimes I'll go all the way through my available grits. 220, 1000, 4000, 10,000. These are approximate grits for the lapping/honing films I sometimes use, though it's been a long time. Sharper cuts longer.

It's good to see someone with a Delica as worn as mine.

 

[BePrepared]

when you cut something with ANY knife, you should see small sparks caused by the atomic fission induced as the sub-micron honed blade splits the atoms of what you are cutting..

of course, when using a properly sharpened knife, it is recommended that you wear a lead vest and lead crotch protector (this prevents your children from being squid babies)

 

[singularity35]

when you cut something with ANY knife, you should see small sparks caused by the atomic fission induced as the sub-micron honed blade splits the atoms of what you are cutting..

of course, when using a properly sharpened knife, it is recommended that you wear a lead vest and lead crotch protector (this prevents your children from being squid babies)

I love this!

 

[Talley1013]

For daily EDC I like a more course edge like what I get from a fine DMT of medium Spyderco stone(around the 600 grit range). Sharp enough to pass all the usual tests like shave, push cut, etc. but with plenty of "bite" for things like rope and para cord

 

[Groove]

Sharp enough to cut stuff that you might need to cut on a daily basis.

 

[Glock26]

Sharp like the way you described it. I view knives similar to firearms, always ready and when they need to be sharpen similar to being reloaded I always have a smith's key chain sharpener that is very effective.

 

[HuntBomb]

We can all agree that it is definitely possible to "oversharpen" or "sharpen too much" though...right?
Otherwise you're wasting steel or "practicing".

 

[singularity35]

We can all agree that it is definitely possible to "oversharpen" or "sharpen too much" though...right?
Otherwise you're wasting steel or "practicing".

Indeed.

 

[Groove]

I concur.

 

[singularity35]

Sharp like the way you described it. I view knives similar to firearms, always ready and when they need to be sharpen similar to being reloaded I always have a smith's key chain sharpener that is very effective.

You mean this? I wouldn't call using this, sharpening.

 

[Hadji Flip Me Over]

I try to keep mine shaving sharp with basic maintenance. The less I have to break out the stones, the better.

 

[Dorito Monk]

Sharp as all hell works for me. I usually go with that, but not 'so-sharp-even-god-is-afraid-of-cutting-himself' sharp or even 'scary sharp'. Those take way too much focus for someone with as short an attention span as I have.

 

[Steel_Addiction]

I get mine hair shaving sharp to a point where it'll slice TP.

Then I add a microbevel atleast 15* higher than the main bevel, which leaves it hair shaving sharp (won't slice tp anymore...) but lasts forever and is very easy to maintain, three passes on each side with a ceramic rod or on the edgepro and it's back to shaving hair again.

I 100% believe that a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife...I've seen this first hand at work, my boss believes that sharp knives are dangerous...yet he uses ungodly amounts of pressure to cut something with his butter knife and always ends up pushing the knife off into his thumb or leg or something near by...'
I can't seem to get him in the mentality that a sharper knife uses less pressure to make the same cut.