Sharporexia Nervosa--aka cumpulsive sharpening

While hunting a couple weeks ago our party ended up with 9 rabbits to clean on the hood of my Montero in the dark. We all had our elk knives on our belts, but they were oversized for neatly gutting and skinning rabbits. I had my Buck 501 Master Series in my pocket and it was perfect for the job--3" razor sharp BG-42 blade. I also had my Victorinox Adventurer SAK with razor sharp 420HC alloy blade. This covered two of us. My son had a small Gerber lockback that just wasn't sharp enough for the job. I think it was made from a 440 variety of steel. I've spent hours on that blade without ever getting it to meet my standards. (The Browning 725 I got last week is to replace the Gerber.) Fortunately we were back at the car where I had my full field butchering supply. I got out a vanadium steel paring knife for my son to use.

Anyway, I sure do like razor sharp steel when I'm seperating hide and innards. When you're working on your car hood it's nice not to have to bear down too hard with your blade. Getting out in the field even reduces immediate sharpening impulses. Of course I brought my medium diamond plate and a pocket diamond rod.
 
I'm glad to know I am not alone. I am just a knife amateur with a Spyderco 204 Tri-Angle Sharpmaker, but I spent about three hours the other night while watching TV trying to find the best way to shave arm hair and reproduce the paper slicing tests I saw at the 34th Annual Seki Cutlery Festival. I slice up sheets of paper, then resharpen to make up for the dulling, then have to recheck, even at the office. I shaved my entire forearm to make sure one knife, my new SOG Bowie I picked up at half retail, was ok.

Eric Takabayashi
Fukuyama, Japan

P.S. My coworker, a former Australian drill sergeant of simple tastes, showed me how to maintain an edge by sharpening on an upturned porcelein mug. I was astonished to find my knives were restored.

[This message has been edited by E (edited 02 November 1999).]
 
My wife loves to travel. When do they hold the annual Seki Cutlery festival? I've got a couple Japanese water stones and on some knives they give the best edge.

The bottom of the right kind of plate or mug is a great improvised hone. It works real well on AUS-8. I got a Japanese MAC carving kitchen knife at a garage sale (AUS-8 steel). The seller told me that when she bought the knife she was instructed to only sharpen it on the bottom of a plate or she would ruin it. I use crock sticks for the same effect.
 
Jeff, what angle (approx) do you sharpen the Buck 501?

Mine has a significant edge bevel, at least as wide (if not wider) than the one on the Calypso Jr ... that would seem to indicate a really thin edge (small included angle?)

I was wondering how well this factory edge holds up under heavy use.
 
You know what they say, "you can't be too thin or too rich". So the first thing I did with my 501 was to thin the edge down even more. I haven't measured it, but I went to lower than the factory edge angle. It handles rabbit cleaning and utility tasks well. This includes removing rabbit heads, splitting rabbit pelvises, and cutting ribs. One of the reasons I wanted BG-42 is to be durable with a thin edge.
 
OK, I think I reached ultimate sharpness on that one. I've cut myself painlessly. I've left it in my drawer at home. I should be OK so long as I don't buy another immediately. (Don't think about that interesting filleting knife I bought at Goodwill, it's in my secret stash of used cutlery bought for "experimentation".)
 
Steelwolf, you had to mention the fishhooks??!!!
I buy jigs & hooks by the hundred & have to sharpen them as soon as they arrive...all of 'em. They get it again when the go in the box, & once more when they go on the line!
I guess this means I'm slacking off on my blades!!!???!!!

------------------
Can it core a apple?
 
Another fun fillet knife to play with is the $3 to $5 Normark, a very thin stainless blade that gets sharp.
 
One thing to think about if you suffer from
"hidden honing" as posted by Jeff Clark:
Keep all the kitcken knives nicely sharpened
and you will never hear a complaint when you
are sharpening your knives. Unless, of course
the kitcken knives are yours as well!
smile.gif


Warhawk
 
The kitchen knives are mine (over 50 of them), but I share freely. This helps a lot. One of the kitchen knives is a Normark filleting knife. I assume it's made from Sandvik 12C27 and takes a razor edge (but the single saber bevel doesn't cut as well as longer tapers).

My wife is totally spoiled by sharp kitchen knives. When she helps prepare holiday meals at a friend's house she always brings some of our knives. She usually has me bring a hone and sharpen our friend's knives at the same time. On occasion she has friends drop off knives or even gives away some of our knives. I usually get the knives for one or two dollars at a garage sale or Goodwill. It lets me try lots of types for very little money (and they all need sharpening).

Even with all this my wife thinks I spend too much time sharpening.
 
So Jeff, what's your opinion on the Outdoor Edge Impulse ... it has the same Sandvik 12C27 stainless and sells for cheap (I hear).

How does 12C27 compare to ATS-34, 440V and the others in terms of sharpening and holding an edge. Not looking for the "Stamp of approval", just an off the cuff.

Also, where does everyone find this Normark filleting knife ... not that I'd ever catch myself fishing
smile.gif
 
Well, I may not sharpen and resharpen as much as some of you guys, but i do have a habit of picking up stray pieces of cardboard out of the trash can at work and slicing it into strips..While I am talking to people. If it doesn't do as well as i think, I frown and finger the edge while glancing up sideways. Seems I hava rep as a potentially dangerous guy. I DO find that carbon steel blades do dull just from existing, slicing cardboard, at least the first few cuts, sharpens 'em right back up. 'Like a butchers steel? or maybe removes oxides? Dunnknow.
 
12C27 is nowhere near as hard as ATS, 440C, and generally is about a rockwell point below AUS-8. I wouldn't use it if I expected to hit anything real hard when working. It's better than the 420 steels in general and much better for sharpness. It works like a razor blade steel.

David Block from Outdoor edge had this to say about 12C27 use in the Impulse:

" Outdoor Edge chose 12C27 for the Impulse because it is the best quality steel we could find for fine blanking. In an annealed state it is much softer than ATS, 8A, 440C. Therefore it fine blanks very well. These other steels mentioned can not be fine blanked because they are too hard in an annealed condition and would damage the tool. Fine blanking is required for the Impulse in order to get clean holes for the blade slots. If we had to machine these slots if would have raised the price for the Impulse considerably.
I believe most knife users will be pleased with the performance of 12C27. We are cryogenically quenching the blades and the final grain structure is very fine so you get get a keen, wicked sharp final edge. So far all cutting and edge retention reports from BF members on the Impulse have been positive.

As far as Darrel's comment of RC59 for the Impulse, this is probably 1-2 points high. Max hardness for the Impulse should be in the 57-58 range.

The main reason Sandvik is not used in more US production knives is they have made virtually no effort marketing this steel to the US, Japanese or Taiwanese knife manufacturers. Sandvik is large steel and hand tool manufacturer. Their hand tool catalog alone is thicker than a phone book. Therefore selling 12C27 to knife companies seems to be a very low priority in their marketing plans."
 
I've seen the Normark fishing knives at stores like The Sports Authority, and I think even at a Rite-Aid drug store.

I'm not really very compulsive a sharpener, but sometimes if there's a knife that I feel is just not sharp enough, I'll spend quite a bit of time on it to get it sharp. I had a bit of difficulty sharpening my mother's Gerber E-Z-Out Jr., but finally succeeded. Another Gerber, the L.S.T., also seemed to take a longer than usual time to resharpen.

Sometimes I'll resharpen a knife and it performs fine, but when I thumb across the edge, it doesn't have that super-sharp feel, and I feel a weird anxiety about it, like, what if I'm in an emergency and I find out it really is too dull??? And I'll resharpen, then check the edge's cross-section against the light on under a magnifying glass over and over. Damn! I guess I am getting a bit compulsive.

Oh, by the way, I have heard that pure carbon steels do dull from just sitting around due to oxidation.
Jim
 
There are probably other surface reactions happening in carbon steels besides iron picking up oxygen atoms. The surface probably picks up a very thin film of water plus various kinds of dirt. The internal atoms of the metal all connect to similar metal atoms. A freshly cut or honed surface has atoms that have vacant bonding sites at the surface where their old neighbors have been stripped away. These atoms tend to shift around and grab onto things. For example thats why you sand things before painting or gluing them together. For various reasons the edge will change or "grow" as the razor makers would describe it. Stropping attacks just this surface layer and helps line it up for shaving. A freshly honed stainless would be a lot more reactive than the rest of the blade surface as well.

PS, I never got my Gerber LST as sharp as I wanted so I got a Browning Signature 725 which will.



[This message has been edited by Jeff Clark (edited 04 November 1999).]
 
Hi Jeff,

Feel for you! Have you thought about turning your addictive affinity in to a way to make some extra income? (Sounds like a late night infomercial huh?). Seriously, 99% of the population doesn't know how to sharpen anything. Get your friends to bring you their dull, their tired, their handicaped knives.

If business really took off you may end up with more knives that you can sharpen. I once heard a story about a guy trying to quit smoking. He chainsmoked a pack of unfiltered Camels while wearing a bucket on his head. Never touched another smoke. Same prinicpal might apply here? LOL

Two things can never be too sharp,
your knives and your wit!

Good Luck,
Joyce
 
When I was in college one year I couldn't find a summer job. I hand wrote some "business cards" and went door-to-door as "Clark's Sharpening Service". This was very succesful. A major fraction of my business was sharpening scissors and garden clippers as well as knives. I ran across a lot of crummy knives, but I also ran across some real good ones. The most remarkable was a set of Randall custom carving knives.

You need a pretty upscale and traditional area to make it work. My best market was the "old money" side of Pasadena, California. I don't know how well it works in a more disposable-product society. The convenience factor of the business seems like a natural for people. If I was doing it for a real living I'd bring along a small belt sander to rough down the worst blades. Many of my old customers insisted on a full manual job, and paid extra for it.
 
I like it better here than in other threads where the hormones are running a bit too high.

Jeff...since you're sharp-inclined and have a technical background, how about devising an ingenious way for us to measure the included angle of our edges?

I mean, if Robert Stroud can teach himself to build a microtome out of tin cans in Alcatraz... there must be something we can do to measure a measly blade edge with household items! Items should be readily available at any hardware store and cost less than $50. Got any ideas?

PS. Is your Buck 501 forgiven yet?
 
Budget calipers are in the $20 and less range now, which could be modified to enable a thickness measurement at a given depth, allowing an angle to be calculated given some assumptions of equal angles on both sides and such.
 
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