Spark - We need a Sharpening Forum

Daniel Koster

Daniel Koster

www.kosterknives.com
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
20,978
I can think of only a few reasons why not to have one....



But I can think of plenty more reasons why we NEED to have a forum dedicated to sharpening.


You've been working on stuff with Talmage for a while, why not go ahead and get a forum going for it?

Could be a sub-forum, or a stand-alone forum. Wouldn't require much moderating (easily absorbed by staff).

The same questions get asked (and answered) over and over again. If they were all in one place with several Very Good sticky notes.....would save a lot of time, be less hassle, and provide a place for people to go to learn about the various sharpening techniques.

It would be great to have a place I could refer people to when I'm sent questions about sharpening. I don't think you'd take away from the other forums by moving the sharpening discussion there....on the contrary, it would be a chance for people to have more specific discussions rather than get the run-around.


How about a thread on the Blade Discussion Forum to gauge potential interest?
 
A Sharpening Forum would be excellent...I'll even volunteer to moderate it.:).
 
One more thing (just to be clear).....this would need to be separate from the ShopTalk Forums....this would be for knife buyers mainly...and should be under the "General" area.

If a knifemaker can't sharpen...that's his own problem. :D :p










edited to add - glad to have you on board, Dann.
 
That's a very sound idea. A German knife forum I frequent has a knife care & sharpening sub-forum that gets quite a lot of traffic, and they are much smaller than BFC.
 
It would be an exciting place.

Iit would never be dull!!!!...............:rolleyes:
 
Why do we need a sharpening forum? I can't see sustainable traffic, since there aren't a lot of advances in sharpening. Hell, just about every thread could be answered with "Install Spyderco Sharpmaker, problem solved" or something similar. Sorry guys, most of this would go in the general forum
 
Hi Spark,

Doing a rudimentary forum title search of forums from the last 12 months I count:
192 Threads with "sharpening" in the title
37 Threads with "sharpen" in the title
11 Threads with "stropping" in the title
18 Threads with "strop" in the title
===
258 Total

This probably didn't catch everything, particularly since some of our posters are bad at spelling. If you do a rough approximation of 10 posts per thread (this may be high, but I think the total thread count is low) you guesstimate 2,580 postings on the topic. If you guess 10 views per posting you get around 25,800 views on the sharpening topic in the last year. If we divide this by the number of days in a year you get around 7 postings and 70 views on an average day. I think you have other forums with less traffic.

PS, A Sharpmaker is only useful for periodic edge maintenance, serious sharpening takes more (and I really like my Sharpmaker). There is also all that discussion on the relative merits of smooth vs rough edges, raising a burr, edge-forwards vs edge-trailing honing, steeling, grinding, waterstones vs diamond hones, etc.

PPS. I kind of like the visibility that sharpening threads get in the general forum.
 
Agreed, Jeff.


My biggest concern with having a Sharpening Forum, would be whether or not the Mods would be willing to take on the extra task of moving sharpening-related threads there. It's sure to be a hassle. But if there's someone willing to do it.....;)



The problem, actually, is that many sharpening threads do end up as "Buy a Sharpmaker" infomercials. I have no beef with the Sharpmaker, but like Jeff said, there is much more to it.

The sharpening threads get lost amongst the regular discussion. Searches on the topic are clumsy at best. And there are people who are interested in serious discussions on the subject - something that's difficult to achieve in a general discussion forum.



Like I said....an "interest" thread in the Blade Discussion Forum would be a better gauge at whether or not it is needed. If there's interest, then great. If not, subject closed.
 
For the Sharpmaker infomercials AND the more detailed theory-of-sharpening answers alike, I think we'd be better served by one big sticky thread ... in the FAQ.

Maybe we need to update and broaden the Sharpening FAQ, but directing newbies to it when they ask would at least give them most of the information they need to read first, and then they could come back to the forums to discuss the fine points.
 
I'd also like a sharpening forum, but , how many questions are redundant by those who dont know how to 'search' or even scan thru threads and postings. How about a sticky on how to search?
 
guy g said:
I'd also like a sharpening forum, but , how many questions are redundant by those who dont know how to 'search' or even scan thru threads and postings. How about a sticky on how to search?
Click to expand...

I find the same thing and sometimes get tired of redirecting people who don't even have the gumption to do a search.

I find myself doing the looking up for them and instead of answering just posting the link.

It just irritates me when they don't even have enough ambition to help themselves.
 
Over at the Colonel's place, the sharpening forum and the lefty forum (two we've clamored for at BFC) have sparse traffic. Also, now that I'm getting better at sharpening, I didn't think that Dan and Jeff were being plaqued as often (assuming that 273 out of 278 sharpening questions were asked by me, but may be underestimating).
 
When I first came to BladeForums I sure wished there was a Sharpening Forum. But it didn't take long to learn how to use the search function. Reading through the search threads also got me interested in knives and since then have started a small collection of SAK's, a Spyderco and have developed a slight case of HIKV.
Funny that I came here to learn how to sharpen my kitchen knives with not much interest in any other knives or collecting.

I too took the SharpMaker advice and I don't regret it.
I also purchased a few sharpening books including Lee's Complete Guide to Sharpening (which got me interested in the Belt Sander method).Most of what I learned about the belt sander was offsite and lately on the HI forums as applicable to khukuris.
Much like anything else I have learned through practice.

Obviously sharpening is a very important aspect to knives and like with my experience if "new users" could come here and find out "everything" they needed to know about sharpening with the click of the mouse and the press of the print button they might not get a feel for the site and not feel a need to ever return.( My sitiuation was probably not very common)

A dedicated place to ask questions about sharpening would be nice though.

I guess I have learned enough from this site and have hung around long enough to become at least a Basic Member.

Thanks for this place Spark.

Chuck
 
actually having to many forums is more of a hinderance in my opinion.There are so many forums here already that one for sharpening doesn't seem to warrant one IMO.I don't think it is popular enough subject and the questions that come up are redundent to th say the least.
 
Most of the questions _are_ redundant. Instead of a sharpening forum, there could be a sharpening thread (sticky) that we could contribute to. Call it "sharpening tips"?? Ask members to post their methods in this thread. It could be edited to weed out the non-topic posts, and a disclaimer that questions be asked in the general forum. (or questions could be moved to the main forum)?

More of a sticky-resource, than a thread.
 
klattman said:
Most of the questions _are_ redundant. Instead of a sharpening forum, there could be a sharpening thread (sticky) that we could contribute to. Call it "sharpening tips"?? Ask members to post their methods in this thread. It could be edited to weed out the non-topic posts, and a disclaimer that questions be asked in the general forum. (or questions could be moved to the main forum)?

More of a sticky-resource, than a thread.
Click to expand...


This would seem to be the best solution.A sticky in say the General Blade Discussion Forums.
 
I'm not sure I understand the idea of a sticky thread for sharpening. Put all posts on sharpening from now on into one monster thread? It would blow up the servers! Tell newbies "Read the sticky thread" instead of telling them "Run a search"? If they can't see "Search" near the top of the page can they see a sticky thread farther down?

I sometimes get the impression the best way to keep a secret is to put it in a sticky thread with phrases like "Please Read" and "Important" in the title.
 
This is another reason why I should probably just open a Knives FAQ forum for Joe Talmadge or the like. A place to put common questions that get repeatedly asked over and over again.
 
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