You want to see beautiful, symmetrical bevels that are not ground? Check this baby out on the bottom (Of which I am now the proud owner):
http://64.176.180.203/photo21.htm
Those perfectly symmetrical bevels (I invite anyone geographically located near me to check them out personally) were made with a hammer - not a grinder. Ok, enough bragging on Lively's stuff...
Now - as to the grind angles you speak of (I assume you are referring to the bevels).
"Do they achieve balance?" - If you are referring to weight balance between the blade and the handle, they can but there are other methods for doing this. If your talking about a balance in resistance on either side of the blade as your cutting, yes they will achieve this sort of balance. Try cutting something first with a flat or hollow ground blade, and then with a chisel ground. It is different...
"Do they push its cutting ability to an optimal level?" - If done right, yes. Basically it streamlines the blade (like a fighter jet) as it cuts through material. Remember a blade that is cutting through material is encountering resistance from the material it is cutting. Streamlining the blade helps minimalize the resistance. As an example, I made a knife for a guide in NY who wanted something solely for the purpose of field dressing game. I made him the following knife. These aren't finished photos. I still have a hand-rubbed finish to do, but for our purposes here they will work.
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/timwi...w=l&.src=bc&.done=http://briefcase.yahoo.com/
Look closely and you'll see that there are no distinct bevel lines. Every bevel line was smoothed over for the purpose of making the knife as resistance-free as possible as it cuts through meat and hide. It won't need to pop bones or cut wood or anything like that so I could make the knife specific to it's intended purpose.
"Do they enhance its penetrating power?" - If done right, yes. See above.
"What goes on in a knifemaker's mind when he sees the grind lines in his head even as his hands do the work?" - Boy, where to begin... With some knifemaker's I know, you don't even want to know what goes on in their head
. With mine, usually it's Aerosmith tunes, or situations involving the beautiful Brooke Burke from Wild on E. I find the less I think about it and just let my hands work steadily on the grinder, the better off the knife is. Incidentally, I've found that I make better bevels with a file than with a belt grinder. It just takes so long using a file...
Tim
