Random Thought Thread

yoko said:
I've cut myself a couple times (beer can was too close to the tip of the blade and barely grazed it while reaching for the beer)

A normal person would learn to not drink while sharpening


I leaned .... move the beers further from the tip of the knife lol
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The most common way people cut themselves while sharpening something—especially on a setup with a fixed blade—is when they reach for something. In your case, for beer 😅

But actually, nothing is scarier than accidentally knocking something over so it starts falling, and most people's natural reflex is to quickly catch it... right where your knife is.

A sharpened knife.

Oof.

When you drop napkins, oil, beer—let them fall, don't try to catch them!

I suggest practicing.

Drop beer cans while sharpening a blade.

You need to train yourself not to catch them.

I know it'll be tough, but at least you'll stay safe!
 
Moorik said:
The most common way people cut themselves while sharpening something—especially on a setup with a fixed blade—is when they reach for something. In your case, for beer 😅

But actually, nothing is scarier than accidentally knocking something over so it starts falling, and most people's natural reflex is to quickly catch it... right where your knife is.

A sharpened knife.

Oof.

When you drop napkins, oil, beer—let them fall, don't try to catch them!

I suggest practicing.

Drop beer cans while sharpening a blade.

You need to train yourself not to catch them.

I know it'll be tough, but at least you'll stay safe!
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Bruh ..... never shake a baby.... don't urinate in the wind..... and never ever EVER drop your beer lol
 
By the way, speaking of special shmoo for sharpening.

I've tried about 100 different extremely niche/expensive/complex abrasives.

In the end, I realized that nothing works better than diamond paste with a good concentration and some additives—not even the most expensive stones or abrasives.

I make it myself: I sourced a properly charged cast iron blank and broke it in for a specific paste.

If we're talking specifically about blanks (not stropping belts), I've concluded for myself that this is the most effective setup.

Especially for carbon steels.

For some reason, they interact better directly with diamonds.

And cast iron allows the diamonds to sharpen the blade directly. As a result, it's an extremely aggressive abrasive that, for a very low cost, gives results I couldn't achieve with any other stones 🤔
I should try shmoo.
Cast iron can also work like this

Example of cast iron with diamond paste:

IMG_6901.jpeg

IMG_6899.jpeg

IMG_6769.jpeg

I like that you don’t have to worry about the sequence of diamond sizes.

I can just work on something like 15,000 grit and get a mirror polish.

And I can get there straight from a 300 grit abrasive.

Like, 100/80 micron > 1 micron.

A more realistic variant: 100 micron > 20 micron > from 1 to 5 micron.
 
Moorik said:
View attachment 3062120

Surprisingly, I’ve never cut myself while sharpening. Once, though, the clamp — you know, the kind with a petal/lever that you release to open the jaws — it basically shot a thin knife at me. I didn’t even fully understand how it happened; I just clamped the knife way too hard.

I usually sharpen while wearing a pink apron that I took from my wife — she used to work in it at a confectionery shop. It’s literally a sturdy pink apron.

That apron saved me from the knife that the clamp decided to fire at me.

With larger knives that I can secure properly, I sharpen in shorts.

I’d love to sharpen just sitting in my underwear, but I’m more afraid of how that would look from the outside than of it being unsafe 😁
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This is how we sharpen here



20251229_152349.jpg


The knife is attached to a parallelogram hanging from the ceiling and the angle is set on the platen with this.

20251229_152605.jpg


This is how we are able to control our edge angle geometry pretty accurate and it allows me to rotate the blade so the angle stays closer to true as it goes around to the tip compared to most other sharpening setups.

This means we have a sharp knife attached to the end of a stick.

We have had surprisingly few injuries from sharpening. Mark once poked a double-edged Shiv about a half an inch into the meat of his palm, and I once got a non-trivial cut sharpening a sword.

Not too bad considering the many thousands of knives we have processed over the years.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
This is how we sharpen here



View attachment 3062149


The knife is attached to a parallelogram hanging from the ceiling and the angle is set on the platen with this.

View attachment 3062153


This is how we are able to control our edge angle geometry pretty accurate and it allows me to rotate the blade so the angle stays closer to true as it goes around to the tip compared to most other sharpening setups.

This means we have a sharp knife attached to the end of a stick.

We have had surprisingly few injuries from sharpening. Mark once poked a double-edged Shiv about a half an inch into the meat of his palm, and I once got a non-trivial cut sharpening a sword.

Not too bad considering the many thousands of knives we have processed over the years.
Click to expand...
Screenshot 2025-12-29 at 4.35.54 PM.jpg
 
Like I said before- our house is supposed to look Bavarian / Swiss when done.
So the balcony and deck balustrades are getting hearts. 20 done, 180 to go.

IMG_9484-X2.jpg
 
Blues said:
One of whom was a buddy of mine. (Not to put a damper on it. Just made me think of George.)

Went into the Florida Straits with one of our Black Hawks and was the only one lost. His remains were never recovered.
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I had a friend, John, who was a pilot and A&P Mechanic. Oddly, he was not in the pilot's seat when they went in over the mountains around Yosemite. He was in the back taking pictures.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
This is how we sharpen here



View attachment 3062149


The knife is attached to a parallelogram hanging from the ceiling and the angle is set on the platen with this.

View attachment 3062153


This is how we are able to control our edge angle geometry pretty accurate and it allows me to rotate the blade so the angle stays closer to true as it goes around to the tip compared to most other sharpening setups.

This means we have a sharp knife attached to the end of a stick.

We have had surprisingly few injuries from sharpening. Mark once poked a double-edged Shiv about a half an inch into the meat of his palm, and I once got a non-trivial cut sharpening a sword.

Not too bad considering the many thousands of knives we have processed over the years.
Click to expand...

SharpBits said:
View attachment 3062241
Click to expand...

Come and see our sharpening set up

1000021751.gif
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
This is how we sharpen here



View attachment 3062149


The knife is attached to a parallelogram hanging from the ceiling and the angle is set on the platen with this.

View attachment 3062153


This is how we are able to control our edge angle geometry pretty accurate and it allows me to rotate the blade so the angle stays closer to true as it goes around to the tip compared to most other sharpening setups.

This means we have a sharp knife attached to the end of a stick.

We have had surprisingly few injuries from sharpening. Mark once poked a double-edged Shiv about a half an inch into the meat of his palm, and I once got a non-trivial cut sharpening a sword.

Not too bad considering the many thousands of knives we have processed over the years.
Click to expand...
I’ve sharpened a total of more than 1000 knives, but fewer than 1500.And that includes a huge pile of custom knives and even real katanas/swords (old ones, not new)


unnamed.jpg
I noticed just how well your blades are sharpened.My introduction to BladeForums and your work happened only after I already had a Field Knife in 3V steel.I didn’t know any of the details at all — literally nothing.


And the first time I sharpened the Field Knife, I set the angle to 20°, and toward the tip the angle naturally increased on its own while I was sharpening — which is extremely cool — and at the same time, there was still just as much steel left behind the cutting edge.


I thought to myself:'oh, whoever sharpened this really knows what they’re doing.'


Since then I’ve sharpened the FK, HDFK, SDFK, and Medium Chopper.The geometry and the cutting edge are done exceptionally well.


For some reason I have hundreds of microscope photos and test results — just out of pure curiosity!
The only downside of fixed-angle sharpening systems is that sharpening 50 knives in a day is much harder than doing it on a grinder.


Essentially, you made a rod/clamp setup, and that in itself is a fixed-angle sharpening jig.


When I do it on a grinder, I do something similar — I thought it was a crazy idea, but turns out you guys do it the exact same way.
Well, I slightly lied when I said I never cut myself while sharpening.When I was flipping the katana over on the jig, I managed to catch my leg.Technically, I cut myself while turning the blade over.


Still, if you’ve made so many knives and you still have all ten fingers on your hands, that can definitely be considered an achievement

photo_2025-12-30_01-01-09.jpg
Damn, my calves are the size of someone else’s whole leg
 
Retired UPS Driver said:
I’m so sorry E 😥🙏🏻
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Well, that's fate...but thank you.

And as fate would have it, I was on the team that took those bastards down sometime after the incident. We weren't told who the subjects were until we were on site and ready to take the door. It made it all the more gratifying, personally, though it was decidedly less comfortable for those we took down that morning.
 
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