Scary Sharp? Shaving Sharp?

Originally posted by 30-30 Cal.
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
Click to expand...

I've only tried my face once when I noticed I missed a spot on my upper cheek while at work. It worked fine, but it pulled quite a bit. It was the 1" pen blade on a Schrade 104OT Minuteman sharpened on a DMT fine stone. I test my knives on sharpness with hair shaving on my body. Legs, belly, inside of arms as I don't like the look of "knife knut mange". I can get 1095 to shave it even when sharpened on a DMT extra coarse stone.
 
My BM943 is scary sharp...came shaving sharp and a little stropping brought it up to scary levels. I was at a party on New Year's Eve, and was goofing around with it while in the kitchen. No one else was around and I don't even remember what I was cutting. But I took off 1/3 of my nail and a good bit of the tip off of my left index finger. Didn't hurt a bit. Bleed like a river though. Proof that alcohol does thin the blood. Once the women found out they were in hysterics about stitches and what not until they realized there was nothing to stitch back on...it was just gone!

Anyway...This knife is so sharp I don't even like to use it as I am afraid of ruining such a great edge. Kind of defeats the purpose. It does have a huge WOW factor though!
 
Guys,
If you want a real appreciation for sharpness shave with a straight edge! I started a few months ago and sharp on a SR is a different world then a thick blade EDC. I've had the full body shiver when the blade is singing along my neck and my wife walks in and starts talking!!

Joe
 
Got a new knife yesterday and had to bring this thread back to the top. I did a trade for a Blackwood HD full sized Ninja. I knew it was pretty sharp as it came with arm hairs on the blade (at least I hope they were arm hairs). I have a custom made waterbuffalo hide neck pouch that I wanted to see if the Ninja would fit, so with no effort at all I started to slide it in, now you've got to remember that basically the weight of the knife was what pushing the knife into the sheath. Next thing I know there's an inch and a half of blade sticking out of the bottom of the sheath. I never even felt the drag of the blade puncturing the leather! This knife has set the standard for what I know consider sharp.
 
Just thought I'd add this to the pile:

Box cutter

Anytime you see something that "looks easy"...try it out for yourself to see if it really is...;)

Yes, that is a US Postal Service triangle shipping box. :D
 
all my knives get a 21 degree on both sides sharpening job, with steeling and leather stropping.... and they are amazingly sharp...

but scary sharp to me, and my knives give you a taste of what sharp could be *my busse asault shaker is zero ground to a point that even if the edge was flat, it would still be able to cut*,

is when you are afraid of touching the blade edge. not just running it across flesh or anything, or applying pressure to skin - i mean touching, where it slips into skin just by sheer assosiation with it.



at 21 degrees, im not sure i could get any of my knives there, but if i brought them down to 10 degrees, or 4 degree on each side... (wich id need a wheel for.... wich i dont have....). then i would be afraid of handling the knife.

when its beyond scalple sharp - one should be afraid of it.


ive be able to shave with things ground at 50 degree's, ala my strider mt - but i wouldnt call that sharp, just with a good clean edge.

so shaving, eh. when you dont know youve cut yourself until you feel that "clink" of blade on bone and go "oh... sh#t" - thats scary sharp.
 
or when you hand it to someone,

and they fumble with it...

and your heart drops and you think "oh.. well... better get the car started for the hospital trip."
 
I've been trying to learn how to "scary sharp" sharpen and it just doesn't seem to work for me. I guess technique is everything. I've got the various sandpaper grits up to 2,000, my granddad's leather & canvas strops..... and scary sharp just doesn't happen. The edge is certainly sharp, and for me the only method so far which gets an edge sharp enough to cut forearm hair is with a sharpening steel. It seems that "everything" else dulls the blade a bit.

So here's a question that came to mind a couple of days ago: can the steel of every knife be expected to be made "only" razor-sharp, much less scary sharp ??

Last Sunday I decided to see how sharp my WWII-vintage Mark 2 Robeson Shuredge could get. I used wetted 2,000 grit sandpaper glued to a flat piece of ceramic tile. Gently and easily I worked the blade, being careful of angle and such. But I could not get it sharp enough to cut any arm hair.
Bad technique first comes to mind. Maybe I didn't work it long enough.

Your thoughts and opinions are most welcome.

Cheers,

Carl
 
The answer is no, Carl. :(


Some steels are easier to sharpen, some are harder to sharpen, some hold edges well, some don't. But one thing's for sure: soft steel will not sharpen to a scary edge. (now that I said it, someone's going to prove me wrong...probably cliff stamp:rolleyes: )

Anyway, I've always maintained that sharpening is a 2 step process. Grind and polish. No matter what kind of edge you want, first you grind the final edge, then you polish it. Those that prefer a "coarse" edge (a myth, actually, all hand-sharpened edges are coarse) have merely decreased the amount of polishing they do. Obviously someone who prefers a polished edge still has to grind the bevel.

So, if you're nice to your knives, you should really only ever have to re-polish. Not re-grind.

I have sharpened hundreds of knives for other people and most are surprised to find that all I did to sharpen their never-been-sharpened kitchen knife, was to "power-strop" it for about 90 seconds and hand it back fully sharpened. Power stropping is polishing, btw.

My point? Keep your knives away from your coarse grit stones unless there are dents and dings, etc. Otherwise, start with a medium or fine grit - lay into hard at first (until it start to "slide" rather than "grab") and then ease up as you go.

To get that scary-sharp edge, though, you really do need to strop or use a very hard/fine ceramic rod. Paper on glass won't do it, IMHO.




p.s. the first knife I sharpened was a cheap pakistani steel knife. I still can't get that thing razor sharp, let alone scary sharp. Too darn soft. I keep it in the drawer as a hard lesson learned...;)

p.p.s. if you like, I'll give your WWII a shot. Email me.
 
I should also point out that it is indeed possible to put on a hair-shaving edge with 80 grit sandpaper. I have done it many times - on nearly a weekly basis. It will grab a little, but it will still shave. So why bother polishing the edge? To get it scary sharp...:D

Have I shown this video here?

40 sheets of paper

And this is with a long, heavy khukuri. Not a cute, lil' SAK.

Dan
 
Dan,

How do you "power strop"? Can I put some compound on a mylar-sheet covered mousepad or do I need to get the one from my brother's PowerMac?

Seriously, though, how do you power strop?
 
Just going to add another 2 cents to this thread...

I've got 2 knives that are more than sharp enough... does that mean I'm gonna quit working thier edges? nope :D

Spydie bone(standard) Kiwi... stupid sharp. I test the edge on yellow earplugs. I can slice layers off, and then slice within that fillet. No squishing. dead on 30deg. spydie whites and a 0.5 micron paste(veritas green) on my strop... and a lot of patience.

Will Leavitt Wancliff(custom)... mini lightsaber. Tried it last night on thick seatbelt mat'l(we have lots at work)... it cuts it quicker and better than my ss se spydie cricket. And I have a ways to go for refinement.
 
Dan,

great info and insight, Thank You !!

As luck would have it, yesterday afternoon Mr FedEx brought me some green micro-fine compound (0.5 micron ??) so I staged another please-work-this-time-and-get-sharp experiment for the WWII Robeson.

I spray-glued a 10" long by 4" wide strip of leather (fuzzy side up) to a mouse pad, duct taped the pad to the workbench, and more-than-liberally applied compound to leather. Then using both hands on the knife handle and applying reasonable pressure I began what you might consider a power strop.

I played around like this for about 45 minutes, adding more compound at times.... at other times using a wire brush to clean off the leather and then reapply compound. Great fun !!
Final result: (apparently) not scary sharp but at least arm hair was being cut, but not in the mass quantities I'd hoped for.

What was Most Very Interesting: I then stropped a nothing-fancy cheapie folder for 120 seconds and it oh-so-easily harvested massive quantities of arm hair !!
So I grabbed a $2 super-cheap-piece-o-trash China-stainless-steel fishing knife and stropped it for 60 seconds.... and it too commenced the oh-to-easy harvesting.

Bottom Line # 1: Go Figure !! Makes no sense to me. The Robeson just doesn't seem to cut it (pun intended) and the cheapies become apparently dangerously sharp.
Are we talking blade angles here ??? Might the Robeson need to be re-profiled ?? Or is that detail unimportant when stropping ??

Bottom Line # 2: the Robeson is certainly sharp enough to use as my EveryDayDinnerKnife (EDDK), but it is just not "that" sharp. If nothing else the stropped edge sure is nice and shiny.
Oh, one more proof it is not "that" sharp: on the rubber mouse pad is a cloth covering. Using a sawing motion the Robeson would not cut the cloth. It cut the rubber easily enough, but not the cloth. By comparison my SOG Field Knife had no problem cutting through the cloth.

Plan Of Action: get busy using my new mousestrop setup and wail away on my SOG Tech I. I reckon that particular steel composition is capable of becoming scary sharp and will test that theory this very evening.

Cheers,

Carl
 
By the way, Pen... I am sure someone has said this before, but that vid with the Kuk slicing the paper is badass...seriously. I watched several times in a row, laughing.

Please do more vids like that with the Kuk! The fedex box was nice, but HOW ABOUT A PHONE BOOK!!!

Good work.


Robb
 
Phalanx7.62,

Thanks for the info on the HandAmerican strops. I was asking Dan to explain his tecnique for those puppies (but then, when I'm in the market, I now have your info as well).

The 921 project is in limbo. I'm gutting out an EZE-LAP 150 grit diamond to fit on my EdgePro and when that's done, I'm going to bring it down to a polished edge of about 12 degrees (6 per side) with a 20 degree (10 per side) microbevel. KCSteve told me it's going to end up like a fillet knife, but I'm trying to get it to fillet large molecules. :D

Until then, my 921 of choice is the 921BT-03PUR that Jeff/1911 traded away to me.
 
Phalanx - LOL. Thanks for lookin'...:eek: I like makin' vids. Stick around...;)

carl - a few things come to mind

1 - final cutting edge has not been properly set (or irregular)
2 - you are stropping at too shallow of an angle
3 - insufficient polishing before stropping
4 - the steel might just be hard to sharpen


Fixes

1 - reset angle. Check for flatness by running a black magic marker down the edge, then give it a few passes on your finest surface. If there's still black on the blade, need to reset it.

2 - are you stropping at the same angle that you sharpen? You need to actually raise the spine a bit when stropping. Otherwise, you're just polishing the bevel...

3 - if I want a nice coarse edge, I stop at 120 grit and then strop (I always strop, no matter what stone I finished on). However, if I want a super-polished edge, I go through all the grits carefully. Could it be that one of the medium grits was not fully employed resulting in a coarse edge (one that will still shave hair, but not "scary sharp")?

4 - just adds extra time...same principles apply.


thombrogan - LOL.

2 basic methods to power-stropping:

1 - use a cardboard or paper wheel on a buffer, loaded with compound
2 - use a leather belt on a small belt sander, loaded with compound
 
What would you call this kind of sharp?

This was a post from Sal of Spyderco about a sashimi knife:

"One time several years ago while I was on on business trip to Seki, one of my friends there told me of a knife made by one of their makers that was so sharp that you could put a folded piece of rice paper on the edge help upwards, blow on the paper and by the time the paper hit the tip, it would be cut. Naturally I said Bullsh*t.

Several weeks later, I received a flat ground Yanagi Sashimi model with a folded piece of rice paper and some hand drawn instructions on how to place the paper and which direction to blow on it.

I did and it actually did. The steel was AUS8W. A tungsten added AUS8. I tested the knife for about 6 months and it became one of my favorites in the kitchen. The AUS8W doesn't stay as sharp as long as even AUS8, but the edge is VERY sharp. I decided that a test run would be fun, but the standard length of the Yanagi was too long for the average American kitchen, so we custom made a short one, about 7" blade. We only made several hundered as I asumed a small number of ELUs would appreciatge this knife as I do. The 7" Sashimi (really too short to be called a sashimi knife), is now my favortie using in the kitcfhen model. We probably won't make any more after this run, because the market is too small. But I recommend that anyone that enjoys using knives in the kitchen, try this model.

hope that helps.

sal"

If anyone's interested, the limited-run 7" sashimi knife he's talking about is the Model KX05 available at SFO. (Note: the KX05 is not the Yanagi sashimi model he used in the paper cutting test).
 
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