Z
zaedion
I know you’ll appreciate this story.
I sharpen knives, by the way, and I’ve been doing it in my area for about two years now. It just so happened that I’ve sharpened A LOT—no, a TON—of knives. Often, I would hone my skills by taking a blade, sharpening it, then deliberately dulling it just to sharpen it again, intentionally building my experience. And I made it a principle to never draw information from others. In other words, I wanted to figure out the best abrasive, the best parameters, and everything else on my own, through my own notes and experiments. That’s just how it went.
I’ve only cut myself once, about six months ago. I was sharpening a tanto, and its tip wasn’t like a typical tanto—it was more like a dagger, an Unobi-zukuri style, look it up, it’s a dagger-like tip. I sharpened it to 11,000 grit, to a perfect edge that could cut a napkin effortlessly. As I reached for a microscope and pulled my hand back, I lightly brushed my right ring finger against the tip. It was so light, I didn’t even feel it. But, my God, I didn’t even feel the cut when the room and table turned into a scene straight out of *Kill Bill*, you know, the one where she fights the Crazy 88. And here’s the kicker—I didn’t feel any pain.
The finger took a long time to heal, and for a while, the tip of it lost sensation. I was a bit worried, but the feeling came back after about a week. Now there’s just a tiny scar at the tip of my finger, barely noticeable. But the lesson I learned? It was only then, after a year and a half, that I truly understood HOW SHARP well-honed blades are. Anything—a kitchen knife, or even, you know, a butter knife (WHERE’S MINE?!)—if I sharpen it the way I do, it becomes a deadly weapon.
Since then, I’ve been extremely careful about safety when sharpening. That moment also made me realize how utterly useless “self-defense against a knife” is—or God forbid, against a blade or an axe (I sharpen axes too). If you so much as graze a blade I’ve just sharpened, even by a fraction of an inch, with any part of your body, you’re done. The most interesting thing I realized is that the tip of that tanto, sharpened to one micron, was so sharp you wouldn’t even know you’d been cut. Not until the whole room looks like a scene from *Kill Bill*.
It’s sobering. And since then, I don’t sharpen knives for strangers, especially ones that could remotely be used as weapons. Only for people I know personally.
I’m honestly afraid to even imagine how dangerous it is—not so much the Tyrant, since it’s small, more like a Roman sword than a typical blade. But the Fell Beast, sharpened by me, is so sharp it cuts deep into thick, rough, dry wood—sometimes so deep that I have to pull it out by leaning my whole body weight into it. This is more about the whole “self-defense against a knife” thing. Not sure why I thought of this.
(It’s dangerous because of its lightness and the fact that it can be wielded like a sword. By the way, until we get swords from Huntsman, I think this is the most weaponized thing Huntsman has at the moment.)
By the way, getting cut so “lightly” in the sense that it was just the tip of my finger was actually useful. It made me realize that I wasn’t arranging items safely around the sharpening station where I secure my knife. Because, for example, brushing any other part of your body against a freshly sharpened blade would be absolutely brutal. Since then, I haven’t even gotten a scratch. I’ve developed my own specific safety system for this, and it hasn’t failed me. Also, with how much I chop things with blades, everything always goes perfectly—but that’s because I know how to fence and more or less understand how to handle blades properly.
I completely respect your mastery in sharpening, deep respect for the knives and having safety systems that works for you!!
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