Scary Sharp? Shaving Sharp?

Scary sharp, shaving sharp, spooky sharp, full body shiver sharp...
CHILD'S PLAY !!!!

If you can close your folder without its cutting right through the back of the handle, your hand, and spinning 360 degrees freely for 60 seconds AFTER hitting the floor (even on shag carpet), it....ain't.....sharp!



:rolleyes: :D
 
Scary sharp, shaving sharp, spooky sharp, full body shiver sharp...
CHILD'S PLAY !!!!

:rolleyes: :D
Click to expand...

Sheeesh. Just when I thought I was almost there, some turkey comes along and moves the bar. :eek:

Shalom,
Mark
 
Classification help..........
I have sharpened my S30V Military w/ the 204(30 deg) and stropped on plain saddle leather to the point that if I try to shave with it, it just bites into my skin instead of skinning across the top and shaving.

So where does that fall in sharpness?
 
Originally posted by 30-30 Cal.
Still, a knive can be too sharp to be really useful, can't it
Click to expand...

You know, I've heard people say that before, and never quite knew what they meant. As far as I'm concerned, the sharper the better.

Maybe what people mean is that a knife that's really good at shaving might not be so good at other things, because it's too polished to slice or too thin to take any stress. If that's what meant, I can agree with it. But I think the big mistake is that many people use shaving-type push cutting as the sole measure of how sharp their knife is.

That's fine if your your knife is a straight razor; for any other knife, it makes no sense to make shaving your sole measure of sharpness. I always do at least one other test. I take a big piece of hard poly rope and see how far into the rope I can get with one slice. A knife super razor-polished and stropped will not do well with that test, so I have to rough the edge back up. This leads to a little challenge: Getting a knife "scary sharp" through razor polishing may be the first major goal in developing your sharpening skills, but the real art comes in the ability to retain most of the performance of the razor-polished blade but with a blade that also slices hard materials well.

For reference, I find that most factory edges, and edges that are razor polished, often make it around 1/9 the way through the particular hard poly rope I use (that is, 1/3 through 1 of the 3 strands) on one very hard slice. The best factory edges I've tried make it around halfway through. I can get my knives to go 8/9 to all the way through, a 100%-800% performance increase (!!!). These are on knives that will still shave easily (often I get the slicing performance with a dual-grit finish rather than roughing up the whole edge). Since I'm mechanically inept, it's not because I've developed some mystical skill at sharpening, I haven't, I'm just picking the right grits and angles. I do not cheat by picking angles that will crumble for my intended use, or grits that don't make sense.

Back to the main point: With your sharpening set should be a piece of 1" hard poly rope. Taking a slice out of that rope should be one of your sharpening tests, right after you test how well your blade shaves arm hair. For your personal knife usage, balancing arm-hair-shaving performance vs poly-rope-slicing performance will be something you intuitively understand if you do this test every time, and you'll be able to fine-tune, with less compromise than you might think.

Joe
 
Obviously, we're playing around here. If I gave Pendentive three of my knives, and explained why they were in that condition, he'd obviously know why.

For example, my Companion is at 23 degrees, very uniform bevel, and it's 'sharp.' It's in my jeans on rainy or snowy days as a good utility knife. It may get sharper after a few polishes, but that's not it's function.

Then I'd give him my AR. Now we have to be a bit careful. It is fully 'scary sharp,' perhaps a tad beyond that. It's good for slicing, and because of its overall toughness, I'm not afraid to use it with a finer edge.

Then there's my Buck Big Sky 403. I'd hand that one to Pendentive IN THE CASE, and I'd probably say nothing. I'd let him study the edge, let him admire the gleam of its uniformity and polish, then he could pop hairs or cleanly slice newsprint.

Without a doubt, he'd respond, "This is a good caping knife."

So, all three are well maintained, all are sharp, all serve a function. Then again, some are the queens we just scare our friends with!
 
Some time ago, a custom swordmaker (I believe it was Randal Graham) listed his 5 primary categories of sharpness:

stage 1 - Needs sharpening
stage 2 - sharp
stage 3 - very sharp (this is where shaving sharp would come in)
stage 4 - scary sharp (the sharpest edge you can expect a knife to maintain)
stage 5 - stupid sharp (reserved for those situations where you want to perform stupid stunts like cutting a phone book in half, returns to stage 4 after first cut)

I don't remember how long ago that was, several years I'm sure. I did like the classifications well enough to remember them.
 
Stupid Sharp.
Yes!
So sharp that any inattention will damage something.
You, your surroundings or the stupid sharp edge.
Excellent classifications.
 
where does RJ Martin's well-known sharp edges fall in that classification?

I personally prefer shaving sharp (but not too polished) for general work - it's got the bite that's needed to cut fibrous material or soft foods (like tomatoes).
 
Originally posted by ROM831
...my S30V Military...just bites into my skin instead of skinning across the top and shaving. So where does that fall in sharpness?
Click to expand...
"Beyond the realm of the practical" :rolleyes:

S30V is notoriously difficult for the average Joe to sharpen. You'll need Spyderco's diamond hones to do it.

Your blade is grabbing your skin for 2 reasons:

1 - not polished (hard to do on S30V)
2 - has a burr

You need to get rid of the burr (or at least refine it) before you can shave with it. You do that by using finer diamond grit hones and then stropping (a lot of stropping).


One time, I was playing around with a patang (short sword) that I took to full-body-shiver-sharp, with my brother-in-law. He wanted to see how sharp it was, so I borrowed his arm and proceeded to slowly shave some hair off. Problem is, he has loose skin and instead of hair, it took off the top layer of skin! :eek: :eek: Didn't even bleed, but it removed a layer about the size of a dime that you could see through (yes, he wanted to keep it - thought it was "cool").


Ichabod - anytime, my friend. I'd gladly share a table with you, anytime. :D Thanks for the chuckles. Made my day.

Dan
 
Good comment Joe, a knife edge must strike a balance between sharpness level,edge retention because of polish level and durability.

I have seen knives so sharp that they feel smoothe, no tooth, yet shave hair like mad until you make one cut through even something as soft a cardboard then are too dull to shave hair off your arm.

I prefer an aggresive toothy edge for most purposes.
 
I think it's important to differentiate here between "face shaving sharp" and "arm shaving sharp." I think the original poster believes "shaving sharp" refers to face shaving.
 
It's funny that many people mention the Leek as being one of the sharpest. When I wanted a real knife but wouldn't committ very much money to it I bought a Kershaw Vapor. I was bleeding within minutes of opening it up. Made my current Benchmades look just sharp by comparison.

I shave dry. A standard new knife test of mine includes taking the knife into the bathroom. Opening up the three way mirror and shaving the back of my neck. Since I shave my face regularly and the hair my forearms have the Knut mange as someone else described it, I'm going to steal that phrase by the way, the back of my neck is prime new knife territory. The Mini Socom Elite and the LCC came with the factory WOW factor.

I was playing with my Sharpmaker and had an old Buck 112 that has done more than it's far share of game, but needed some attention. After sharpening and not spending much time on it. That blade was scary. I can probably look it up, but what steel did they use in those $25 knives? It has given me all I could ever ask for in a blade: solid lock up, takes an edge easily and very rust resistant. I'm not quite ready to trade the LCC for another 112, but still a great knife.
 
Your'e right, I was thinking of shaving sharp as shaving the face. That's why I was so critical, oh, I know you guys could do it, but it's not an easy test, I'd think. The blade would have to be very thin. As I mentioned, the Keershaw leek seems to come the closest of the knives in my limited arsenal. The other knife that also works decently in an old pocketknife my Grandfather owned called a Keen Kutter.

I've learned a lot from you guys in this thread.

Thanks,
Dave
 
As I mentioned, I can't get scary sharp. But I can get shaving sharp with some bite. I strop the edges till it pops hairs like nobodies business, then stroke it a couple of times down the brown ceramic edges of the spyderco - it now has some "bite" (from micro serrations I think) and doesn't slip on rope.

But I would really like to get scary sharp - is it only available on a highly polished blade with no "bite"? can such a blade cut through wet rope?
 
Originally posted by spyken
is it only available on a highly polished blade with no "bite"? can such a blade cut through wet rope?
Click to expand...

Such a blade may or may not have slicing aggression, but it it should be able to push-cut through rope.
 
It's sharp when your LADY wants to use it.

When she sidles up and sez "Waxing hurts, honey, can I use your knife?" you know you have it.

:D
 
Originally posted by thombrogan
Such a blade may or may not have slicing aggression, but it it should be able to push-cut through rope.
Click to expand...

You won't be able to push-cut through hard poly rope, which is specifically why I picked it. With manila rope, you're exactly right -- if you polish the blade enough, you can push-cut through it, because the rope is nice and soft. With some materials you end up with this two-step performance curve. Very coarse slices through easily, very polished push-cuts through even easier, mid-level coarseness doesn't perform as well because slicing is compromised but you don't have enough polish to push-cut to make up for it. That's a good reason that, instead of just picking one compromise grit, I like to put two grits on the same blade, very polished at the front and coarser near the hilt.

Anyway, back to hard poly rope. I do find that in everyday utility I sometimes have to cut something that's very hard and can't be easily push-cut through -- hard poly rope is one, the twigs on some of the plants in my yard is another. Good slicing ability is the only way to go to cut these.
 
After reading this discussion, I just had to try it, I shaved with a couple of my knives this morning. I used a S30V warncliffe blade on the right side and it worked fine. On the left I used a D2 drop point bird and trout knife whidh dragged a little more, butwas effective. This was on a three day growth.

Both knives seemed scary sharp prior to the trial, but the S30V was slightly better, which was what I expected. However I am right handed and may have introduced a bias that way-Maybe I will try the same thing again next weekend with the sides reversed.
 
Shgeo,

Aside from beard trimming, how did you decide that both blades were equally sharp? Feel? Cutting soft media?

Could you also try lower-chrome steel such as 3V or 52100 or is there only so much beard you can grow at one time?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top