Nice sharpening Instructable, with video

umm I have a sharpmaker in the mail... I hope it works for me.

Is it just me or is that guy crazy? I didn't watch much past him drilling with a nail because I need to go. Why would a sane person drill with a nail?
 
Oh Brother :rolleyes:. Now this would be a reason to use this :jerkit: icon, if I have ever seen one.

Yeah, crude methodes are fine to use if you have nothing else, but even with those you don't have to be THAT careless. And then his "knowledge" about different edge just wanna make me puke :barf:.

And then to top it all of: stropping on your forarm....tells me just how "sharp" his knives truly are :jerkit:. Try that with one of mine and you might as well schedule a hospital bed in advance :eek: . One look at the number of scratches and cuts in my strop tell me just how stupid that idea is. What an idiot.
 
MikeMade™ said:
haha totally unqualified to be giving a knife sharpening tutorial
Click to expand...

How so? Does it not work?

HoB said:
Oh Brother :rolleyes:. Now this would be a reason to use this :jerkit: icon, if I have ever seen one.

Yeah, crude methodes are fine to use if you have nothing else, but even with those you don't have to be THAT careless. And then his "knowledge" about different edge just wanna make me puke :barf:.
Click to expand...

Didn't seem especially careless. Nor especially crude. I'll bet most folks in the world sharpen knives about the same way.

HoB said:
And then to top it all of: stropping on your forarm....tells me just how "sharp" his knives truly are :jerkit:. Try that with one of mine and you might as well schedule a hospital bed in advance :eek: . One look at the number of scratches and cuts in my strop tell me just how stupid that idea is. What an idiot.
Click to expand...

If stropping on your forearm means a hospital visit, your stropping method is wrong.
 
shecky said:
Didn't seem especially careless. Nor especially crude. I'll bet most folks in the world sharpen knives about the same way.
Click to expand...
Well, that may very well be, but considering that this is bladeforums, most readers here are not "most folks" when it comes to knives. And just because "most folks" does it this way, still doesn't mean it is a good way of going about it. So if a dude rips along some coarse sandpaper held in one hand half free-hanging, because he is too lazy (?) to even mount it properly does not strike you as particularly careless? Not to mention the nonsense he says about the different edges.
If you want to watch someone who knows what he is doing sharpen on some crude materials (concrete block and cardboard), watch Murray Carters DVD. It looks a bit differently and is not nearly as flashy either.

shecky said:
If stropping on your forearm means a hospital visit, your stropping method is wrong.
Click to expand...
I am pretty sure that I know how to strop a knife. Stropping on a forearm like he indicates is an accident waiting to happen, not very efficient and guaranteed to be irritating for the skin. I would like to know what a good old fashioned barber would say to this....well, actually, I bet he wouldn't say anything....he would be speechless. But maybe he doesn't know how to strop either...:rolleyes:
 
HoB said:
Well, that may very well be, but considering that this is bladeforums, most readers here are not "most folks" when it comes to knives.
Click to expand...

Yes, the forum does bring the snob out of the average knife enthusiast.
 
Riiiight Shecky, I am a snob because I would suggest using a piece of cardboard (free) instead of your bare arm :rolleyes: . What on earth would make you use your bare arm anyways, your jeans, yes, a sleeve of a Carhart jacket, ok, but your bare arm? What brainiac came up with that idea? And then you bring back a waterstone from Japan, whether it cost you $3 or $300, I would advice you do not wet it in the puddle on some tarmak and proceed to flatten it on some dirty piece of asphalt (asphalt of all things!!!!!) and why you would drill a hole into the stone is completely beyond me :confused:? You call me a snob, but I wouldn't even treat a $3 stone like that, let alone one that I lugged with me all the way from Japan. I think the real snob is the idiot in the video.

I don't think I am the only person here thinking that these people don't have a clue. As much as I have written, I think Jaiofspam has summed it up best. But you know, I don't really care what these people do to their own knives and arms. What I do have a problem with is the propagation of this nonsense. When people come to this board seeking advice on how to maintain their knives, I think they deserve better than some self-proclaimed expert (the dude in the video quite literally yells at you:"This is how you sharpen a butcher knife") demonstrating some inherently dangerous hocus-pocus practices.

If you were to do a search on sharpening on this forum (but why would someone seek out a bladeforums for advice on sharpening a knife??? Clearly a bladeforum will only be populated by snobs who don't know anything about knives right?), I think you get much better advice than in those videos - and the advice will be better regardless whether you are a knife-nut or a NKP.
 
shecky said:
If stropping on your forearm means a hospital visit, your stropping method is wrong.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with HoB here. If you are stropping correctly, you won't cut your arm, but how many strokes do you think you will need to strop on your arm to smooth out a burr? Probably more than a compound-loaded leather. I generally do about 100 per-side on Cr-O loaded leather. And with that many strokes over a bunch of knives, you are bound to mess up once. This is not something I would leave to chance.

Further, it looks like he is using some sort of grit on his skin. That should irritate. It certainly makes you look tough, but I think that is the purpose... to prove that he is "old school." So it is more like this guy is acting tough and hasn't spent a lot of time learning about sharpening techniques. If you want to be a teacher, you need to read a few books... Or at least a few posts.
 
clmayfield said:
I have to agree with HoB here. If you are stropping correctly, you won't cut your arm
Click to expand...

Thank you. But it sounds more like you're agreeing with me here.

HoB said:
And then you bring back a waterstone from Japan, whether it cost you $3 or $300, I would advice you do not wet it in the puddle on some tarmak and proceed to flatten it on some dirty piece of asphalt (asphalt of all things!!!!!) and why you would drill a hole into the stone is completely beyond me ? You call me a snob, but I wouldn't even treat a $3 stone like that, let alone one that I lugged with me all the way from Japan.
Click to expand...

Ok. You're a snob. Despite all the fingerwagging, I have yet to hear how the methods won't work.

If you were to do a search on sharpening on this forum (but why would someone seek out a bladeforums for advice on sharpening a knife??? Clearly a bladeforum will only be populated by snobs who don't know anything about knives right?), I think you get much better advice than in those videos - and the advice will be better regardless whether you are a knife-nut or a NKP.
Click to expand...

I would disagree with you here. What you get is a wider variety of advice, some of it better than others. Knife nuts and self appointed knife experts are just as prone to perpetuating falsehoods, bad advice, and myth as any layperson.
 
shecky said:
Ok. You're a snob. Despite all the fingerwagging, I have yet to hear how the methods won't work.
Click to expand...

I was very much debating why I should make the effort to pick this video apart. If you read a few posts here you should be able to do that yourself, and I do not appreciate being called names. Below I have assembled a list that is by no means complete:

1.) Dilling a hole into a sharpeing stone? Why would you do that? Usually you want to maximize sharpening surface and keep it as uniform as possible. Drilling a hole in it destroys surface area that you paid a premium for (not to mention that his claim that he bought a japanese waterstone in Japan for $3 is somewhat questionable). If you want to attach a lanyard to your stone for reasons that are not apparent to me, mount the stone and attach the lanyard to the mount.

2.) Oil is poison for a waterstone. A puddle on some tarmak were clearly vehicles drive on is bound to have oil in/on it. Asphalt itself contains oil. Asphalt contains tar, even fairly old asphalt. The last thing you would want is getting tar on your stone. If you want to true your stone, a glass plate with some carborundum powder is best. The powder is cheap and the glass plate you can probably get somewhere for free. A cinderblock works as well, especially if made of fine concrete and trued beforehand. This is simple BS to show of how cool he his. How hard would it be to get a bucket of water and a cinderblock? If it were not a waterstone but something like an arkansas, I can guarantee that he would be scrubbing on that asphalt for a looooong time. Now, most people don't have a chance of buying japanese waterstones in Japan for $3. If you do some homework, you will find that waterstones will usually cost you a pretty penny and to treat your investment like this because some internet dude told you so would be very sad indeed. Same goes for a hard arkansas, not to mention the more expensive varieties. The cheaper stones are a different grit and we get to that in a moment.

3.) Why do you have to hold your sandpaper flopping around in one hand to show off how cool you are. Don't you think it would be a lot easier and safer to somehow mount or attach the sandpaper to something. It also keeps the sandpaper from rolling (which you can see nicely in the video) which will pretty much destroy your edge. You know he goes about flatting a stone in the first video and tells you it is important but doesn't take the time to flatten his sand paper, huh? And you don't see this as especially careless? Not to mention that one wrong motion the way he does it will cost him his thumb.

4.) It is a lie, that you would require a "feathery" edge to cut meat. He simply has a burr that he doesn't bother about and obviously the edge won't last, surprise, surprise. And it has not much to do with the direction of the stroke. A trailing stroke will pull up more of a burr, but if you actually know what you are doing, you can remove that burr as well using only trailing strokes, too. After all a lot of people sharpen and shape on a beld grinder only edge trailing and they do so for axes and choppers, too. So much for your "edge for cutting wood". Also, even an edge refined to 8000 grit will slice meat wonderfully, fish too and styrofoam aswell (foam actually much better than his 220# edge). The Japanese have made an artform of that. Actually an excessively coarse edge (which is different the crappy edge that he is getting) will pull the fibers an not make a clean cut. An edge finished at 220# certainly has advantages (I am thinking field dressing an animal with very coarse hide, rope cutting etc), but this guys doesn't even bother to put a decent 220# edge on that knife, which by the way is much more difficult than getting a good edge at a higher finish, so this is most certainly NOT the way to go about it for a NKP.

5.) The way he pushes that sandpaper looks a bit peculiar to me. Usually you want to take good sized strokes, and I still see the sandpaper curl up, which again will round the edge. You REALLY should watch Murry Carter. The differences between someone who knows what he is doing and one who doesn't are difficult do put in words, its VERY apparent once you see it.

6.) Stong edge, weak edge has absolutely nothing to do with any of his claims. This is really not the place to go into edge geometry and and edge stability, but there is plenty information on this here on this forum. Do a search for crying out loud.

7.) Stropping on his arm: His arm must but hard as steel :rolleyes:, because usually you would want a firmer support to keep the edge from rolling. I don't know if you have ever stropped a blade all the way to the tip. You are bound to scratch the strop here and there. Ask one of the bladesmiths how their strops are looking. Even my razor strop which I am very careful with has some nicks in it. Also you draw of residuals of a burr. The burr (steel) essentially scratches along the strop till it is abraded. Does that sound like something you would want to do with your skin? Now you put some abrasive on the arm. I don't know if you know how abrasives on a soft backing work: The particles imbed themselves in the soft backing till they don't move anymore and thus abrade the harder material. You really want to have abrasive embedded in your skin? And tell me, why do I have point that out to you? You have been on this forum for half a year, you should be able to realize that youself I would think. And what is wrong with using any of the readily available alternatives as strop. An old jeans, some cardboard, an old belt or a mousepad....well I tell you what is wrong with that, it is not cool enough for these people.

This has absolutely nothing to do with any arrogance on my part or on part of any knifenut. And well trained professional working with edged tools, any carpenter, any barber, any butcher, any lumberjack would shake his/her head in disbelief. If you look up some older posts of mine, you will see that I have played around with some $5 hardware store abrasives, I have honed knives on the bottom of mugs and stropped them on card board. You can get pretty decent results, certainly a shaving edge with them. So I happen to know that the way they show in their video is not the way of going about it. See the thing is, the cruder your tools, the more difficult it is to get good results. It is MUCH easier to get a good edge using a $30 combi waterstone with two grids and a woodbacked strop with compound (or with properly fixated sand paper of different grits, on a mousepad for example) than with cruder methods. So I don't think it is helpful to guide a NKP or beginner to the more difficult methods, just because....well I honestly don't know why they are doing this.

Have you noticed how often sharpening threads appear on this forum? That means there are plenty of people struggeling with the sharpening of their knives looking for advice. Take a step back and tell me: Do you honestly think that they would profit from trying to doublicate the procedures shown in the video? I think most people would be far happier (and safer) if they would simply invest in a Sharpmaker.

I have now invested far more into this thead than I think it is worth, so I am signing off.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top