When is a Traditional Knife "Sharp Enough"?

How come the bald left arm only looks weird in the shower. Sorry. As you were. :)
 
I use a dmt with medium on one side and fine on the other, and then follow up with ceramic rods at a 25 degree angle. I too am the 43rd poster who has no hair on his left arm and I also test with newsprint. Very interesting thread. Oh and I don't wear shorts in the summer. Way to many people whistle at my legs.;):D
 
If it push cuts through college rule paper im ready to go. I have found that when you sharpen to hair popping sharp, I cant even feel any advantage over cleanly cutting college rule paper.
 
Arm hair shaving is good enough for a working knife. Since I learned sharpening from my Father, who spent some time as a meat cutter, I stil like to use a carborumdum stone and a butcher steel on my Case knives with the CV steel.
 
I usually stop at slicing/push cutting paper. I don't like walking around with a bald left arm. I've been using DMT course, fine, extra fine, and extra extra fine benchstones (or a F/EF diafold if only a light touch up is needed), a lansky ceramic stick and a strop with green compound. I recently got a work sharp knife and tool sharpener. It works pretty good but I still need more practice with it.
 
Clean slice through a page from the "Yellow Pages" is good enough ( a couple knives I take to Hair whittling) just for fun.
 
DMT for me, and if it catches on my nail and shaves hair I'm usually happy. I'm pretty new to sharpening and still learning as I go but I want to learn how to free hand sharpen.
 
Blade crazy,

IMO free hand sharpening is easier then using jigs or contraptions. I only say that after learning on jigs and contraptions :).

With that said I learned the most using my Kalamazoo 1sm. What I found is no matter what you use to sharpen, the most important thing is to raise a burr from both sides the entire length and then remove the burr. This is all it is :)

All the rest is just how fine you want it and on and on for preferences and uses. This is of course my opinion.

Removing a burr can be done in a lot of fashions. Check the maintenance forum out :)
 
Thanks, I only have one free stone and have a couple of knives I practice on it with. But till i get the free hand down ill use the DMT on my nicer knives.

Oh and i will check out the maintenance forums. :thumbup:
 
For me, it makes a big difference what that knifes intended use will be. For whittling and carving, I like a shaving sharp polished edge to do push cuts with. I also put this same edge on nearly all my EDC pocked knives. I would not say that I am a hard user, most of the time,(opening packages and boxes). When I go to help Dad on the farm I find this fine edge is lost very quickly and it's a waste of time polishing an edge for cutting wrap ups off a combine, or cutting weeds or a vine or two. On my hunting knifes I start out with a polished edge on my carbon blades. This is quickly replaced with a rather toothy edge from a folding diamond hone I cary in my pack to touch up blades durring butchering deer. So you can see different levels for different task at hand.

I use a 1x30 belt sander with various belts and a leather belt loaded with green compound to take off the burr and pollish the edge. I keep 3 folding DMT diamond paddles in the side table by my chair, along with a strope loaded with green rouge. These are for when I don't want to go to my shed and use the power tools, or for a light touch up. Most of the time when I use a knife for light food prep and the packaging dutys, all it takes is a few strokes on the strope to bring the edge back to shaving sharp and it is ready for the pocket again. ;)
 
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