Notice!!!! sharpening is not an art, its a mechanical skill.

I am not offering my opinion on this . I will say some on this forum have helped me and not belittled me when my questions were a bit silly or not apropos.
I have had others be demeaning in their posts and private messages and left me no further ahead than I was before they saw fit to "enlighten" me.
This thread is about how people get their point across more than we want to admit. That is my 2 cents... Russ
 
Magnaminous_G said:
Jason B’s character and reputation should be beyond reproach, anyone’s personal arguments with him notwithstanding. I wrote that sticky (that has been viewed 80,000 times and referenced on other forums) based largely on what I learned from Jason B. In fact, he taught me and many others here a great deal. Any of the hundreds of people here who have had Jason B put an edge on a knife for them can tell you that he isn't selling snake oil or making anything up. And I’ve never known him to be a prima donna. I’ve never met someone more humble with his time and considerable skills, and I’ve never met someone more willing to teach. There are hundreds of examples here of people thanking him for helping them to learn the art of sharpening.
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I get in touch with Jason when I have questions specific enough that few if any other folks I know can answer - especially coming not from someone that thinks they're good, but from someone who does this for $ on expensive cutlery and cannot afford not to be good. I cannot recall an occasion when he wasn't entirely forthcoming not just with his general knowledge, but with application of technique - something anyone should consider hard-earned information.

He also has his own ideas about basic sharpening that I do not 100% share, but I can tell from reading his responses that he wants folks to have an avenue to develop, and to avoid repeating what he feels are unproductive avenues. When I teach people kettlebell, I sometimes flood them with tidbits that can at times seem contradictory. In reality I want them to have an avenue to develop. This is a trend I have been trying to correct in myself, but I don't want folk to think its dead simple either - when they find after months of exercise they still have many small corrections to their form they might think themselves below average - after all we're just talking about moving a load around.

Further, and this at Fred, if this skill is so simple why the ERU (which you are yourself quite sensitive to criticism of)? If so simple, why the bubble jig? In your own words, doing flat regrinds is a skill that can take many years to develop - for any craft there comes a threshold beyond which it takes on the character of an art form. For every Mona Lisa there are tens of thousands of paintings languishing in piles that will never be sold, every one of them "art".

Yes anyone can learn this skill at least to a base level of competence- in fact most everyone on this forum that practices freehand repeats this over and over to neewbies in search of advice. In fact it is most often the folk that rely on powered or guided system that will go on about how freehand cannot match these forms or their edges were no good until they resorted to these tools. So it is a simple mechanical skill anyone can learn, but how many of your paying customers get a freehand sharpened edge on benchstones?

Lastly, there is huge difference between being competent at freehand sharpening, and sitting down with 10 or 20 pieces of dull and abused cutlery and turning them out in 10-15 minutes max per piece - freehand, and the entire pile meets a minimum level of acceptability, meaning seriously sharp, and then repeat. That's the level of a journeyman craftsman.
 
It's an art, craft, skill, hobby, it's whatever I want it to be because it's my view, my opinion. Not yours.

I keep your name out of my mouth Fred, but you can't keep mine out of yours? So worried about my opinion because yours is different?

This is all really sad.
 
In the practice of Taiji, it's said that students who learnt from the master when the master was also learning (younger days) might have picked up different stuff from thise who came & learnt when the master has grown matured and developed deeper understanding.

I have learnt from Jason (and Martin, Unit, David/OWE, Ohallum, Ken Schwarz, bluntcut, awestib, jackknife, jackknifeh, David Martin, Stitchawl, Mag G, Jdavis, Solo, Komitadjie, and older members such as buzzbait & fulloflead, and many more). It's worth remembering the context of what they taught particular aspect of sharpening, and apply/experiment to find out the applicability.
If some find Jason confusing, try to retrace the timeline. I think he's also growing & as a result his opinion might change.

In any field, one develop skill then deepen it to be art if that's the choice. Can we just get by with skill? Definitely. Do I enjoy the deepening & pursuit? Yes. I'm not aspiring to be an artist but I do enjoy the learning & sharing about why 52100 makes a good & comfortable shave with green compound and that what is the stainless equivalent that I can buy & EDC, while D2 shouldn't be taken beyond DMT EF, etc..

You know you're my teachers, thank you all. Let us grow together.
 
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It's a skill. If taken to a professional level it's a craft. I don't see why anyone needs to call himself an artist anyway. Seems pretentious to me.
 
I've felt for a very long time that knife sharpening has been so over blown by some folks. It is indeed not rocket science, and is an easy skill to learn. I've taught people to sharpen a knife in 20 or 30 minutes. Heck, even a coffee mug bottom works well on most knives.

There's only one reason t make sharpening seem harder than it is, and that's to sell the knife sharpening gizmos and gadgets to get peoples money into the pockets of the people who make and sell the knife sharpening gizmos and gadgets.

Worst come to worst,any smooth stone out of a creek can do a decent job to get a dull blade functioning again. I don't think the old mountain men that skinned all those beaver pelts had Sharpmakers and Edge Pro's.
 
Hi Carl,

Hope you're not offended. My in laws get the basic Jackknife skill using bottom of mug for their 'Seagull' brand cutlery. They throw them in the sink, cut on ceramic plates, etc. I don't see the point giving more than that.

My wife requirement and usage gets's a more deeper skill as I have to ensure her slicing salmon using Vic paring or Zyliss chef knife is satisfactory. She wash the knives herself, observes using the proper cutting board (plastic), and no, the bottom of the mug won't do.

Since I shave dry daily with my knives, it takes more skill to touch up my 52100 paring on HH washboard + green on paper after using it to cut bread for my lunch (washing included). :D
Again, bottom of the mug won't do ;)

Sometimes it's the stone :p. I can't make the Cara2 finish in such nice non reflective without my natural stone. Can't get Flickr BB code on my phone to show what I meant, but the finish is the best satin/velvety one I could manage.

Finally, will I take on sharpening Yanagiba like what Jason showed in his Video? No way with my skill. Yes, it's skill turn into art. Some keeps it at skill level like me, but without skill there's no way it goes into the realm of art.

Both can live side by side. Why not enrich each other?
 
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Fanglekai said:
It's a skill. If taken to a professional level it's a craft. I don't see why anyone needs to call himself an artist anyway. Seems pretentious to me.
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Who called themselves artists? I don't think I've ever seen it in this forum. Now, English isn't my first language, but when I see someone mention that something is "a bit of an art" I interpret that as something that requires a certain finesse and feel for it that you develop after practising a while.

On the topic of discouraging people, it's pretty discouraging when people say "you just rub the blade on a stone and then it's sharp - any idiot can do it" and you end up with an uneven edge that doesn't cut. Being taught by someone hands-on is one thing, but several years after learning how to sharpen I've now found my first sharpening course - and it's a brand new course. None of my friends knew how to do it. Perhaps it's a personality thing, but I find it easier to implement something when I understand what's going on, so I find the more technical information and tips helpful.

If I can get a decent edge and have a specific question about tips and tricks for, lets say, maintaining a consistent angle, I'd like to think that I could post that question here and hopefully someone more experienced will find time to reply. "Just rub them things together" isn't very helpful at that point.
 
This "notice", or whatever you want to call it, is built on the ridiculous notion that mechanical skill and art are mutually exclusive concepts.

Let's take the aforementioned example of piano playing - at its core, it's simply pressing certain keys down at certain points with certain pressure. It's a mechanical skill. But would you argue that it's not an art because of that? Of course not. And you certainly wouldn't want to listen to a piano player who doesn't posses mechanical skill.

Artistic skills are learned through practice. And more practice. And some more after that. It takes repetition, it takes knowledge that only hard work can reveal. As such, there is absolutely an art to mechanical skill. Watching a master carpenter may just look like physical labor to some, but if you know what to watch for, there is something beautiful about their mastery of that craft.

There is a nuanced art to many things that might not be readily apparent, sharpening included. Just because someone can't see it or appreciate it doesn't mean it's not there.
 
Notice!!!!!Sharpening is not an art, its a mechanical skill....with my ERU sharpening system!

Hahaha couldnt help but to point out the sales pitch.

Im actually curious to try one.
 
My take is that it may have elements of both, skill and art. Yes, it can be taught, but some people are going to have more natural ability, as with anything else. Steadier hands, a better eye, etc. Those are things than can't be taught. Some people can paint, some cannot. You can teach two people the fundamentals of painting, but the one with more talent is going to be the one who becomes an artist, as we commonly define the term, which in and of itself is an abstraction.
 
Actually you first have to define what "art" is. And truth is anything can be an art. Look up postmodernism and what has followed afterward (deconstructivisim). In today's culture you could say anything is art, include farting and belching, because someone out there will accept it as such.

As for sharpening knives? It's no different than how someone cleans or polishes their guns, cars, or anything else they own. If you break it down it's just one of several methods for care and maintenance of a tool (knife). Everyone has their own method which works for them but may or may not work for someone else. This thread is just plain stupid. Please close.
 
I say it can be both (but of course this is my opinion, feel free to disagree)

Anybody can be trained to get a sharp edge on a knife, but there is a next level, where it become art.
I am nowhere near that level yet, but i hope to be.

Photography is another good example, at its basic level, its a mechanical skill, look at the light, make the numbers match and click, take the picture - but there is a big difference between a selfie posted on Instagram and Ansel Adams's landscape work.
the selfie is the photographic equivalent of a few swipes on a Sharpmaker - Ansel's work is the equivalent of high end sharpening/polishing that Magnanimous_G talks about here
Magnaminous_G said:
In the same way, getting any stone, working up a burr, and then knocking it off will have you cutting a potato in a few minutes… but using the right stones to reveal a hamon, eyeballing angles to within 1°, and putting the right edge on a high-end Yanagi ba without ruining it are very different. We won't even go into using Japanese finger stones to bring out the soul of a Katana. You can take sharpening as far as you want to, individualize it, and add your own interpretation. That is art.
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I earn a living with a camera, i work for a newspaper - its the photographic equivalent of a full time sharpener working out of a van - visit a restaurant/gunshow/farmers market, run a few knives over the belt grinder/buffer and on to the next one - Not Art, but a basic skill being applied over and over again - In my time off, i do a landscape photography, some of it is hanging on peoples walls as artwork, I'm no Ansel Adams, but maybe the equivalent of an Edgepro or Wicked Edge owner with a nice selection of stones/strops/tapes that can do nice scary sharp mirrored edges - better than 90% of people can do (the selfie equivalent) but with still with a lot to learn to get to the "Ansel Adams" level - is it art or not ? I think so, as do those with it hanging on their walls.

for what its worth, i recently bought an Edgepro - I'm kind of between the Sharpening equivalent of "First SLR" and "All the gear and No idea"
 
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I'm saying, don't scare people off by making them think sharpening is "art." Not everyone is an artist, but everyone can learn to sharpen a knife, if they want to.
Sharpening is a very simple procedure.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
I'm saying, don't scare people off by making them think sharpening is "art." Not everyone is an artist, but everyone can learn to sharpen a knife, if they want to.
Sharpening is a very simple procedure.
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I think that's an accurate assessment.
 
Some great post here guys. Thanks for taking the time to express your thoughts on this. :thumbup::thumbup:

I had an eight paragraph chat along ready to post but deleted it.

JasonB. This is not about you whatsoever. If you had not chimed in with the "looking for attention" thing you would not have been involved.

It was your words that were the impetus "I only produce a couple of artful edges a year" this is from someone I know, by reputation, to be a masterful sharpener.

This cannot possibly be true, your a masterful sharpener and I am sure the precision you put out is almost total. Its who you are.

Statements such as this from someone who is well respected, diminishes the possibilities for those who are looking to learn.

I am a teacher who cares passionately about students of any kind, anyone wanting to learn.

Below is a picture that is representative of why I love teaching and helping people to learn. There are 1o students in the right picture, they started with me at the ages of 11 or 12. All of them but one, now in the picture to the left, stayed with me for @ least 8 years, some of them for 12 years, each obtaining the rank of first or second degree black belt. A thousand hours training at the very least. Eight of the ten went on to get college degrees, several saved human lives, all of them were successful. One was sick and is not pictured.
This is so rare in the martial world that I think it could be "considered a work of art" :) I was but a little part of this accomplishment, just the facilitator. It took dedication to purpose that is rarely seen in the young.

Anytime anyone with knowledge that is worth sharing, has a chance to do so, please do so. Never make someone feel as if their goal cannot be achieved.

Please accept my apology for any slight endured. Regards, Fred

Scan.bmp.jpg
 
Bill DeShivs said:
I'm saying, don't scare people off by making them think sharpening is "art." Not everyone is an artist, but everyone can learn to sharpen a knife, if they want to.
Sharpening is a very simple procedure.
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I guess it all depends on the context, I see everyone as an artist, I never said they all had to be Picasso though...
 
That's a cool photo, Fred. It really puts your comments into perspective. Congrats on sticking with those kids and congrats to them for achieving a very difficult goal. :thumbup:
 
jackknife said:
I've felt for a very long time that knife sharpening has been so over blown by some folks. It is indeed not rocket science, and is an easy skill to learn. I've taught people to sharpen a knife in 20 or 30 minutes. Heck, even a coffee mug bottom works well on most knives.

There's only one reason t make sharpening seem harder than it is, and that's to sell the knife sharpening gizmos and gadgets to get peoples money into the pockets of the people who make and sell the knife sharpening gizmos and gadgets.

Worst come to worst,any smooth stone out of a creek can do a decent job to get a dull blade functioning again. I don't think the old mountain men that skinned all those beaver pelts had Sharpmakers and Edge Pro's.
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You are correct, but let's put this into the context of today.

Unfortunately, you aren't physically around to teach this skill to everyone here who wants to learn. Hopefully Jackknife knows me well enough to know that I'm not being sarcastic with that statement. I would have loved to have an adult male show me how to sharpen when I was growing up, but didn't. I would go to a specific barber in town just because he would clean up my neck and around my ears with a straight razor, and I loved watching him hone it. He showed me how he did it, but I would never have laid a hand on his equipment, so I couldn't practice.

Then when I was in the Army, I had several NCO's and Warrant Officers who thought they were all John Wayne or Rambo (depending on their age), and they were even bigger fools than me because they couldn't admit they didn't know how to sharpen either (ego). Then came Bladeforums and the Edge Pro. It was the first system that truly worked for me the first time, and every time after that. That's how I learned what a truly sharp edge felt and cut like. It also taught me the best way to get there. I hardly ever use it any more, because it improved my freehand skills so much. Now I know what to look for and how to get there using handheld stones. But I needed to learn what a sharp edge was before I could repeatedly learn how to make one.

It also taught me that sharpening is a repetitive task - I will put my EP edges up against anyone else's edges, either system or freehand. Anyone. And the great thing about the EP is that anyone else who uses it can get their knives just as sharp as mine. It is repeatable from knife to knife, and from person to person. That's a pretty impressive system. Some other systems might be as good, I haven't used them all. But sure, once you develop the skill, you can go without the system, muscle memory can then take over.

And you can successfully argue that such edges really aren't necessary. I think that for a lot of people, myself included, you can get so thrilled by *finally* getting a screaming sharp edge after a lifetime of frustration, that you become pretty exuberant for a while. It wears off, especially when the HHT or tree topping edge is gone after the third cut. :D Half an hour of work, 30 seconds to lose it...

There's a lot of mutual respect here, but I don't see much (if any) hero worship. Go check out some of the straight razor forums on the web, it's really bad there... Mythical sharpening formulas, magic stones, "honemeisters', it's a different reality.... :D
 
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