What's your favorite knife test material?

Your favorite cutting test material(s) are:

  • printer paper

    Votes: 8 17.0%

  • magazine pages

    Votes: 11 23.4%

  • phonebook pages

    Votes: 14 29.8%

  • newspaper

    Votes: 9 19.1%

  • post-it notes

    Votes: 1 2.1%

  • packing peanuts

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • packing paper

    Votes: 2 4.3%

  • junk mail

    Votes: 5 10.6%

  • arm hair (shave)

    Votes: 14 29.8%

  • other (please explain)

    Votes: 17 36.2%
  • Total voters
    47
The weekly mailer (newsprint), receipt paper and magazine paper are a good gauge for me. I normally will do draw and push cuts on each. Push cuts especially can normally be a good indicator of the sharpness - or at least for what I care about.

The sound is key as well, I like to really listen to the cut; I can typically hear if something is hanging up or if I need to work on an area on the blade.
 
I've been experimenting with receipt paper lately, and it's not bad, but there are a couple of major issues.

Issue number 1: the paper is inconsistent. A receipt you get from taco bell isn't going to use the same paper as a receipt from best buy or the local gas station. If you're doing a lot of test cuts this is going to have the potential to throw off your judgement. Some receipt paper is going to be easier to get good cuts with than others. You really want consistency between cuts to be able to judge how you are progressing with your edge.

Issue number 2: receipts tend to get crinkled. Any folds or creases in the paper will tend to affect the the cuts you do through the paper to test your edge.

Because of these two problems, while I would say that in general receipt paper is better for edge testing than regular paper, the lack of consistency and the tendency for the paper to get wrinkled or creased make it difficult to do reliably consistent testing with it.

I haven't run into this during testing but I have also noticed that some receipts come out more curved than others due to the paper itself and how it is spooled in the printer. I hypothesize that extreme curvature of the paper might also have an effect on edge testing.
 
Interesting bump - I still like receipt paper, but do agree on the varying thickness and tendency to wrinkle. The wrinkles themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing however, I like to see if my edges can slide through those with little effort.

More recently I have also come to appreciate a paper towel slice, if I knife can cleanly cut through a paper towel - whether held in the hand or on a roll; it is definitely sharp.

IMG_3755.jpeg
 
Paper towel is a good test, but it depends a whole lot on the particular brand you're using. In my experience, the more "premium" the brand, the easier it is to cut. Really cheap, single-ply paper towel is almost impossible to slice cleanly, even with a razor. The test also favors toothy edges. If you can make wavey cuts in paper towel with a mirror edge, you've really done something.
 
IUKE12 said:
I like to test on what I cut most of the time.
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Right.

Bradford Guardian 3, 15 DPS, BESS 132, great at slicing paper, lousy at cutting multilayer corrugated cardboard.
Civivi Cogent, 25 DPS, BESS 212, can't slice paper, great at cutting multilayer corrugated cardboard.
 
Another Shepherd said:
Right.

Bradford Guardian 3, 15 DPS, BESS 132, great at slicing paper, lousy at cutting multilayer corrugated cardboard.
Civivi Cogent, 25 DPS, BESS 212, can't slice paper, great at cutting multilayer corrugated cardboard.
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Different tools for different jobs. I wouldn't test my axe with phonebook paper because the purpose of an axe is to split wood. It's very clearly an impact tool, while a typical knife is not made for impacts, it is made for carving and slicing. It's thinner. It's not as thick of a wedge as an axe and it's not really a good idea to use it for splitting large pieces of wood in spite of what idiotic youtubers do because it looks cool on camera.

And so we get into the whole argument about batonning, which really sets me off... most of the batonning you see on youtube is a bad use case for a knife and it is giving people the wrong impression about how to properly use a knife for fire craft. You should only baton thin pieces with your knife. For thicker pieces, there are alternative methods to batonning which are much better and safer options for splitting wood to get to the dry parts on the inside. You can break your knife that way. Risking your knife is risking your life in the wrong situation. It makes me so mad how dumb and irresponsible people can be with this subject.

So yeah, anyway... think about your edge geometry and how it relates to what the knife can do and what it can and can't handle, and maintain and treat that knife accordingly. Wider edge anlge, thicker knife, more robust. Thinner edge angle, thinner blade, more fragile, more precise. Right tool, right job. Understand and respect your tools and they will treat you well in return.
 
I use old t shirts for various things while sharpening. The first test is balling up a section of shirt, then draw cutting through to see how many layers it cuts, how cleanly, the amount of effort required, etc. This (along with lightly passing my fingertips across the edge to check for bad spots) is enough when I am putting a 600 grit finish on work knives for friends. As we usually have index cards around, I will slowly cut through one to check for dead spots. If I am going further with edge finish, the final test is shaving arm or leg hair.
 
For a knife that I want to be "show-off sharp," I test with receipt paper or the BESS machine. You can't really cheat or game the results with those tests. I tried to buy a roll of receipt paper online, but I found I had to buy forty or so rolls! It is cheap and effective for testing the whole length of the blade. Having so much ensures that my great-grandchildren will always have a consistent supply of receipt paper.

For a working knife, kitchen or yard, I like a sterner test, something close to whatever it will be cutting on the job. I find I can grab about anything and get a pretty good idea of how a blade will perform on tougher tasks, just from experience.
 
You can totally cheat the BESS tester if you're so inclined. You see it all the time on IG and Youtube. Basically, if you quickly chop down on the test media it will give you a dramatically low result. I just tested an edge that came in at 100g ... done properly (taking 4-5 seconds to apply pressure). Then I did it by guillotining the blade down on the filament and recorded a score of 15g. 😂

kknives_Switzerland is working on a next-gen edge tester that should provide some interesting results:
 
Khromo said:
I tried to buy a roll of receipt paper online, but I found I had to buy forty or so rolls! It is cheap and effective for testing the whole length of the blade. Having so much ensures that my great-grandchildren will always have a consistent supply of receipt paper.
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I posted a message on your profile.
 
Apparently I'm an idiot. I wanted to start using receipt paper, to get more of a feel of what it can and cannot do, but I despaired, because I don't often have receipts hanging around. Somehow it never occurred to me that I could just buy the stuff, until I read this thread. It's cheap! 5 rolls of about 200 feet each for around 11 bucks.

In the meantime, paper towel is my go to. It's really nice for distinguishing a sharp clean edge from not quite there yet. It's great for notifying you that you still have a burr problem, because the cut is not clean in spots.

Disadvantages are that, as mentioned above, it gives undue advantage to toothy edges (factory powered-grinder edges cut paper towel really really well). Also until you reach a threshold of sharpness, it tells you nothing at all. It's not like with paper, where you can cut badly, then well. Nope, you don't cut at all until you get a genuinely sharp edge.
 
Grasshopperglock said:
I find myself cutting convenience store bags. No bite and it won't cut. Thin enough to find any micro chips.
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Paper, right? You should specify. The first thing that popped into my head was a plastic bag. I know those are less common these days but it's what I thought of. I can't imagine those would be very good for testing with.
 
Grasshopperglock said:
The thin plastic. Free hanging plastic bag. The edge cutting against the physical weight of the bag. Light touch drag across it.

No tearing allowed.
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Wow. That's a new one to me. I'd like to try it but I don't have any plastic bags. All of the stores stopped using them ages ago. I used to have a big ball of them under the kitchen sink, but it ran out eventually.
 
100g tensioned BESS media with a slow drop is what I use most. I'll also do the free standing folded phone book paper push cut on occasion. For really fine edges, for fun I'll play around with cutting free hanging hair and cutting thin slices off the top of cherry tomatoes sitting on a cutting board.
 
I use those printed advertisements for products in different stores in my area. My mail box is full of them every day I got home from work.
I use reciept paper occasionally but this paper has more or less uniform and finer structure; something like printer paper. On the other hand this advertisements paper is very bad quality (worse then news paper) and it has some sorts of fibers going in the direction of the long side of the paper.
If the sharpness of the knife is not quite there it will cut in one direction (if I start cutting at the long side of the paper and it won't cut (it will tear) if I start cutting at short side of the paper (cross those fibers).

UncleBoots said:
it gives undue advantage to toothy edges (factory powered-grinder edges cut paper towel really really well)
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I discovered exactly the same. I would not say this is ''undue'' advantage but my toothy edges go through paper towel and toilet paper without a problem as through zip ties, rope and all those plastic bags (chips potato and similar).
Only one of my knives has highly polished edge but it won't bite; it just slides across.
 
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