I could not possibly care any less until you show anyone that your grinds are absolutely the same. From what we have seen in the pictures, the edge grinds are a few degrees apart.
Stop feeding us any misleading information, we are looking for concrete proof. Until then, you're not only a hypocrite of your own words but also a source of misleading information.
This is the deal. You spoke about how Ankerson could improve his reviews by eliminating the wood as the backboard. Maybe you could do one to improve your reviews by changing something more important, the Edge Grind.
I will understand if you don't care or pay any attention to this, as you have shown yourself to us this way before.
Your grinds are completely off base with each other, your math gibberish has nothing to do with the difference between all three of your Benchmade 710 variants.
This is my user.
I'm failing to see how you're determining that the edge angles are inconsistent. The top knife's edge bevel may be wider simply due to the fact that the blade is probably thicker at that point since it's been used.
The only other part of the photo that could indicate the angles are inconsistent are the thumbstuds since Vasilli grinds on them when grinding the edge angle. If the thumbstuds are of different heights, then so will the angle that the knife is being held at. Though it's not very clear in the picture, the thumbstuds look about the same, and having done enough similar trigonometry I can tell you that the variation in edge angles are probably no more than 1-2 if they vary at all.
For a knife that's 1" wide, a change in distance from the spine to the hone will result in a change of 1 degree per .020" of height change. However, since the height of the thumbstud does not increase or decrease in direct proportion to the distance between the spine and hone because of the angle, then measuring the knife's width should be done from the point of the thumbstud that makes contact with the hone. Assuming that is .750", then a change in the thumbstud's height of .015" would only throw off the angle by a little over 1 degree. It's really too hard to tell from the picture if the thumbstuds vary by that much, but I'm sure they do, and for that reason the angle is not going to be exact regardless.
Some trig stuff...
a = asin(d/w) * 180 / pi
a = The angle in degrees that the blade is behind held at in relation to the hone
d = distance from spine to hone surface
w = width of blade from spine to edge
I think if you're going to want "absolute" precise angles, then you shouldn't pay attention to any sharpening done outside of a jig. I don't know if anyone has any kind of information showing how much performance difference 1 degree has, but if we want things to be "exact", then the fact that the angle can be changed by .05-.07 degrees per .001" means that in human hands, you're not going to get an angle exactly right unless those human hands can hold the spine to a dimension and not vary it more than +/- .001". Considering that I don't think Vasilli's thumbstuds are within +/- .001" of each other, then there's inevitably some variance in his angles, but how much variance is acceptable?
All that being said, I'm glad Ankerson does his sharpening in a jig to remove all those variables, because I think trying to figure out how much a change in the angle changes performance would just make for even more tests necessary. I mean, is a .07 degree change in the angle going to effect cutting performance? Who can really say one way or the other for sure... If anything it would inevitably come back to subjective comparisons between edges of different angles in other tests that may not have been consistent, and we'd just be chasing ourselves around in circles in some kind of hopeless quest for absolute consistency.
Either way I don't see anything about Vasilli's blades that make me think their edges are too inconsistent to be tested. It might be helpful to match the width of the bevels on each one, but of course that simply begs the question of how much bevel width effects performance...
