- Joined
- Jan 25, 2022
- Messages
- 53
I would like to add a comment on the BESS tester. When I started sharpening in earnest I read “Knife Deburring”. It really messed with my mind thinking I needed a truckload of equipment to achieve a sharp, burr free apex. After much time and a thousand knives later I’m here to say, you don’t…. But, to make this journey shorter for you, save your pennies and spring for a tester. If I had not bought a tester I’d still be standing there with a magazine page or cigarette paper wondering if this was sharper than the last time? Within a couple weeks of buying the tester I discovered I was stropping too much, one of my emulsion’s wasn’t doing what I thought it was, how different steels took an edge and some other eye openers. When it was new I would get excited when I achieved 200 on the BESS (utility razor blade). Now I am able to create an apex that tests out to 45 on the tester on some steels… sharper than a Gillette double edged razor blade. That would have never happened without some way to test it definitively.
I needed some way to measure my progress, successes and failures. The tester let me see how many times I needed to pass the knife over a strop before I rounded the edge and it started getting duller. It will let me know if my stropping emulsion is effective… like, should I use diamonds or is Tormek’s paste good enough?, or better? Is my stropping angle too deep or shallow? Am I using enough pressure or too much? How to approach different steels? And of course, how sharp is my knife? No more magazine pages or cigarette papers, you will truly know.
Honestly, for me, the tester changed almost everything I had been doing to get a knife sharp. It took my knives from meh to YEOW in less time.
Regardless of your goal in sharpening, in my humble opinion, a BESS tester will shorten your journey to get there.
Folks have been sharpening forever without it and achieving their goals. I like being able to measure my results and find the BESS tester an effective tool for my style of knife sharpening.
I needed some way to measure my progress, successes and failures. The tester let me see how many times I needed to pass the knife over a strop before I rounded the edge and it started getting duller. It will let me know if my stropping emulsion is effective… like, should I use diamonds or is Tormek’s paste good enough?, or better? Is my stropping angle too deep or shallow? Am I using enough pressure or too much? How to approach different steels? And of course, how sharp is my knife? No more magazine pages or cigarette papers, you will truly know.
Honestly, for me, the tester changed almost everything I had been doing to get a knife sharp. It took my knives from meh to YEOW in less time.
Regardless of your goal in sharpening, in my humble opinion, a BESS tester will shorten your journey to get there.
Folks have been sharpening forever without it and achieving their goals. I like being able to measure my results and find the BESS tester an effective tool for my style of knife sharpening.