Newbie question: does anyone wear out a knife?

stabman said:
For the blade, just don't suck at sharpening, and it should be fine. :)

For the locking mechanism, if you flick it open and shut 1000 times per movie you watch, that might wear it out a tad. ;)
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And the cautionary word on sharpening would be....???

No, I don't have a Dermel or a belt sander. I do have a Lansky stone set. So far for my new knives, I have found the fine stone and the leather stop work well enough for me. But I do worry about not having a precise angle. The ZT300 I think is set at 22 degrees, but my Lansky offers 17, 20 and 25 degree settings. Is this getting into the realm of obsessing over nothing?
 
Pier23 said:
Gentlefolk,

I am a newbie knife guy, but have puttered in the gun world for a while. The gun world has endless threads about a gun's durability - will the new WunderBanger REALLY last 700,000 rounds as YouTube claims--- while in reality if most guns ever have 5000 rounds through them, that is "heavy" use.

I have read here threads concerning blade and hardware durability, so I wonder if this is a similar concern? Do knife people fixate on knife durability when in reality no such wear theshhold will ever be normally reached? Or is knife durability a more real-world concern?
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Go to the grand amercian trap shoot. 3000 ppl that put 20k a year through there guns. I have had 12k in a year at most.

I have seen many insulation guy wear out a knife. But there stones are course and wear the steel more. And I have seen meat cutters do the same. The use course stones and throw away knives. But when u spend 8-10hrs a day, 5-6 days a week Using knives. U will wear them out.
 
I've worn out a few knives. I do not oversharpen, nor sharpen excessively either. A good working edge is fine for me.

However, I use my knives so much, and dulled a few and sharpened them so much that I've changed the blade profile, and then eventually didn't have much to work with. I'd consider them worn out.

I gave one of them to my brother and he still uses it. He calls it his "Texas toothpick" because the blades are literally worn down to barely bigger than toothpicks.

With most modern steels, I don't see it as being that much of a problem. I have used a couple of modern folders for well over 10 years, and changed the blade profile by sharpening, but they are not what I would consider worn out.

Just be careful sharpening and don't sharpen a knife until you really need to. Steels and strops help to maintain the edge in between, so you can preserve your edge longer, and not have to take off that much to get back to a usable edge.
 
I've seen knives that were pretty much worn out, usually low priced knives. One that my father found and gave me recently was a frame lock Gerber. The blade was loose and the lock didn't hold. The tip was gone off of the blade and the edge was extremely dull. The handle was very scratched up and the finish was worn off of the blade. I could probably sharpen the edge but it would be more difficult to get the point back. Maybe the blade play could be removed with some adjustment but I'm not sure that the lock could be fixed. I think a similar Benchmade or Spyderco would be in much better shape after the same amount of abuse.
 
Pier23 said:
And the cautionary word on sharpening would be....???

No, I don't have a Dermel or a belt sander. I do have a Lansky stone set. So far for my new knives, I have found the fine stone and the leather stop work well enough for me. But I do worry about not having a precise angle. The ZT300 I think is set at 22 degrees, but my Lansky offers 17, 20 and 25 degree settings. Is this getting into the realm of obsessing over nothing?
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Personally I don't obsess too much over exact angle, but if you want to, that's fine. :)

As to sucking at sharpening, in my teenage years, each time I sharpened a knife it ended up losing quite a bit of metal.
We didn't have fancy sharpening systems around the house, so I had to fiddle around with old, warped bench-stones and files.
The positive side of it all was that eventually I ended up getting decent at freehand sharpening. :thumbup:

Some knives had their lifespans drastically shortened though before I learned...:foot:
 
I've worn out the lock on a Buck 110, due mostly to the sandy/wet environment it was used it. It rounded the corner on the lockbar where it engages the blade. Buck replaced it because they're awesome like that. My ESEE 3 is about 1/8-1/4" narrower from the spine than a new one now but its still got many many years left.

The wear put on those two was from when I had a job that had me cutting stuff constantly, now that I'm at a desk there is no way I'll ever wear out a knife. My grandfather was one of those,"Take it to the bench grinder" to sharpen sort of guy so the knives I've inherited from him were already on their last legs and left that way.
 
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