kitchen knife slices very well but doesn't chop

Fallbrook Forge

Fallbrook Forge

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Jan 1, 2006
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so I got HH6 a Victorinox 9" chefs knife with yellow fibrox handle and initially the edge was good enough that stropping kept it sharp.
After a run in with some chicken bones I had to sharpen it with stones and then stropped it back to sharp.

the knife slices like a friggin laser, paper thin slices of tomato without holding the tamato. But it wont chop a thing.

any suggestions would be appreciated
 
Sounds like you have a wire edge. Did you try removing the burr after using the stones? Or you have a "toothy" edge. Try polishing it and see if that helps.


-Xander
 
Use a finer stone. You're discovering the relationship between the grit size used to sharpen your edge, and the cutting characteristics of that edge. A finer stone will give you an edge that chops with less resistance.

HH
 
After the stones I run the edge, with only the knives weight, over an edge of the wood cutting board. Then I strop.

I'm using norton water stones up to 4,000 and then stroping with green compound and then bare leather

I've checked for a wire edge but I'm not catching any reflection, is there another way to detect and fix a wire edge?

Im going to run it up to the 6k stone and see what that does
 
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Coming off of a 4000 Norton stone it should chop pretty well. Is it possible you made the edge more obtuse than what it came with? How does it chop if you don't strop it?
 
40 degrees inclusive (unless it's a microbevel on a steeper secondary edge) sounds a bit wide to me for kitchen use, but I'm not chef. Maybe one of the other members will know more, but to me a 40 degree bevel sounds a bit wide for chopping.

HH
 
maybe, then again the 20* is a complete SWAG on my part, no idea what it really was, if I can manage to recover from the a$$ whoopin I just took in the gym I'm going to redo it tonight
 
If there is a wire edge, running it through a piece of wood will tear/break it off, if it does anything. You'll need to go to something to repair that little bit of damage before going to a strop, or you could go to a coarse then fine strop. I've never found wood to effectively remove a burr. Maybe try going through the wood, then going back to the 4000 stone with very light alternating passes, then strop.
 
My guess here is that your natural wobble (while working on the stones) has cut multi-facets into the bevel and then when you stropped you blended them all into a rounder sort of convex edge. A convex edge slices great but fails in push cutting food.

To check this resharpen but stop at a lower grit stone (like 1k maybe?) and deburr with as few passes on the strop as possible and I think you'll find that your knife will now push cut better.

Also FWIW, it doesn't pay to go past 1k stones anyway on soft steel knives like the Victorinox because when the edge fails (and it will) the smoother it is the quicker it will round over like the tip of a ball point pen. If the edge is left rougher it can be re-aligned to continue to work. With testing we've seen toothy edges on softer Euro knives last way longer than refined edges do.
 
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