How sharp should an EDC knife be?

I used to measure sharpness by cutting paper, now I measure it by shaving the print off it.
 
It should be as sharp as your happy with. As long as my blade is able to slice soft tomatos well, it is good enough for my purposes
 
It's a trick question, you can't answer how sharp is sharp. It's like trying to answer how long is forever or how blue is the sky. You can have sharp at any grit but the edge roughness is ever changing and what degree of edge roughness you like often is determined by your cutting skill/technique or needs.

OP, your edges look pretty good but I can see a little over working of the bevel near the back flats of the edge. That's that recurve you see in the delica. In the last picture I also see the scratch pattern is not as even as it could be. No matter what you use to sharpen your scratch pattern on the bevel in every step should he even form heel to tip and shoulder to apex. If not its probably not as sharp as it could be.
 
Steel_Addiction said:
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.
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I agree that a sharp knife is a safe knife, however this is predicated on the user knowing how to handle a knife, in my opinion. The problem I run into with my EDC blades is that I keep them very sharp, and will not EVER hand them to someone to use. Most people are completely confounded by a simple liner lock, and forget about an AXIS lock! A sharp knife in the hands of the untrained is NOT a safe knife, in my experience. They can just use it to do more damage to themselves.
 
If I can't shave hair it's dull. All I use to sharpen is a smith fine diamond sharpener free hand. I'd like a sharpmaker but 60$ is a lot of $ IMHO.
 
Added the hair whittling pics to my earlier post. I believe I have about 20 total invested in my sharpening set up, and that includes multiple packs of higher grit sandpaper, dense rubber pad, sheet of glass, the home made strop, and the buffing compound.


If you do a few passes per side on the strop after use, and don't let the knife get too dull, it literally takes a few light passes per side to maintain a hair whittling edge with very little effort.
 
Bigfattyt said:
Hair whittling sharp. Meaning you can shave multiple curls from a single free hanging hair without cutting the hair all the way through.

IMG_4030.jpg


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.

IMG_4032.jpg



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.
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These are convexed by you or factory convexed, if so how long did it take you to convex the edge on the sandpaper, I plan to convex a new knife I just bought, it came with a v grind of course, I'm going to use the sandpaper over mouse pad method and then hit it with the green strop.
 
Tim616 said:
These are convexed by you or factory convexed, if so how long did it take you to convex the edge on the sandpaper, I plan to convex a new knife I just bought, it came with a v grind of course, I'm going to use the sandpaper over mouse pad method and then hit it with the green strop.
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These were factory V-Grinds. I convexed them by hand. The Spey blades are pretty much still factory angles. Not much convexed at all, although I did refine the edge with sandpaper over the rubber pad.

I have used the mousepad as well, but now I have a much denser heavy duty rubber base pad (also much bigger than a mousepad).

I don't have to be as careful with light pressure as you do with a mousepad. The mousepad means you have to use a much lighter touch.

I would say the whole process with the varying grits probably took me about 1.5 hours? (maybe less. I was kind of watching a tv show, and talking to my wife, and also these traditional folders had a pretty good edge geometry, so not near as much metal to remove as some beastly knives I have done). I did a very quick job, and probably moved on from each step before I should have, because I was in a hurry.

If the knife you are going to convex has a coating, I suggest leaving it on. It will save the steel from scratches, and you can remove the coating later after the edge is done.

Some, who have the set up, like to remove the shoulder on stones first, before convexing on sandpaper. You can greatly shorten the process with a rough diamond stone, if you have one, by taking the meat out of the shoulder area with stones first, then cleaning them up on the sandpaper. But I have never had nice diamond (or other stones will work as well if you have some rough, medium, fine stones).

Just take it slow, and spend some time on each grit. Watch the pressure (so you don't wrap the edge with either the sandpaper, or the strop), and enjoy.


I suggest doing a knife you don't care as much as a first experiment.

I did a Recon1 (old axis lock design) first years ago, and it was so easy, I moved on to all my Busse etc).

It is not rocket science. Search on the forums here for tutorials first and watch a few.

Also, I usually suggest starting out at a higher grit than most. Start out at 400 or so (or even 600 grit if you want) and them move up. It will take a bit longer, but you also can't screw up as fast.

Another side benefit, is you won't get as bad of scratches on the steel where you don't want them if you do this. You can get some pretty deep scratches on a nice shiny knife if you start out at 150 or 200 grit.

I have gone as low as 60 and 80 grit on knives where I am doing a lot of metal removal, (or changing the total blade profile) but I don't recommend doing this.

Of course, I also have 1x30 belt sander for really removing some metal on some knives if I need to. I usually only do that on knives where the edge is so thick, and the knife so big that it will take me forever to do it by hand (I have done a 10 inch Busse Battle Mistress LE entirely by hand, so I know how long it can take!!!!).

There are some pretty decent tutorials on here, if you know how to search.

Watch these video's as a place to start before doing your knife. Some sharpening tutorials could have shortened my learning curve a little to start with.

http://www.knivesshipfree.com/pages/Sharpening-Videos
 
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My EDC will normally shave hair or slice paper when I start the day. But it will usually be much duller by the end of the day, if I've had to use it as I often do. The other day I managed to drop it, open, onto concrete. It fell edge first, evidently, so at the moment I am sharpening out chips. It's still sharp enough to shave or slice paper. I haven't ever gotten a knife sharp enough to whittle hair, don't think I ever will need to accomplish that task.

Andy
 
You have some sharp knifes Bigfattyt!
I used on mines a lansky system with the ceramic hones and the super saphire hone.
How sharp should I be able to get my knifes with this system?
Should I buy/make a strop?
 
Soulfir said:
You have some sharp knifes Bigfattyt!
I used on mines a lansky system with the ceramic hones and the super saphire hone.
How sharp should I be able to get my knifes with this system?
Should I buy/make a strop?
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With some creative wrapping you can use sandpaper with Lansky hones, I use carbide 2000 (or higher when I can find it) grit and skip stropping. However I should note that may be because my strop technique "needs work," if I was better at it I may rethink my approach but for the time being this method gets my blades shaving-sharp which is plenty sharp for my purposes.

With just the hones you should easily be able to get a Lansky system make your knives sharp enough to push cut paper and shave arm hair.
 
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I keep all of mine sharp enough to cut air at all times... and no, I don't mean hair... think about it...
 
BePrepared said:
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)
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+1 Lol

I would imagine that getting them to the sharpness that you can or want to get them to yourself would be more proficient then having them sharpened off location.
 
Soulfir said:
You have some sharp knifes Bigfattyt!
I used on mines a lansky system with the ceramic hones and the super saphire hone.
How sharp should I be able to get my knifes with this system?
Should I buy/make a strop?
Click to expand...

If you are taking your edges through the grits and then finishing with a sapphire stone, you should get an edge sharp enough to jump the hairs off your arm. I have that same set up, with the saphire stone as the final in my Lansky kit and it will get knives very sharp. In fact, I want to say that the saphire stone might even be more of a mirror polish than the strop compound I use (it is cheap stuff).

The key to sharp with the lansky system is a couple of things. Don't move on before you have actually gotten the bevel all the way down to the edge! Spend enough time with each stone grit to remove all the deeper scratches from the coarser stone. Don't push too hard either. It will remove metal faster, but can too much pressure (in addition to increasing the risk of you hurting your self) can also bend the guide rods, and change the angle you are sharpening at).

Don't know how many times I have hurt my self with my lansky system as a youngster!


You don't need a strop to get sharp knives.

I just like them because they are easy, and quick, and give excellent results without too much fuss! Great for finishing an edge. But you need to have a decently sharp edge to take advantage of the strop!
 
I use a sharpmaker on all my folders, works well for me with just the two stones that came with it, med and fine I believe. Im happy if it cuts paper like the op showed
 
Dorito Monk said:
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.
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Amen brother +1
 
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