Why are peope so scared of sharp knives?

I think the fear that a lot of people have with sharp (as well as large) knives comes from ignorance, ineptness of literally never having seen or used a sharp knife. I would wager the majority of home cooks learn how to use a knife / cook from watching cooking shows on TV. They see Food Network celebrities with atrocious knife skills using nothing more than a can opener (Sarah Lee), a really dull knife (Rachel Ray, etc.), and others like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJRlpEfPnU&feature=related.

They’re able to get away with using a short, dull knife by only doing certain types of cutting techniques and cuisines. Most never do cuisines (French, Japanese) that require fine, precise cutting. Everything is a rustic, rough cut done by “rock-chopping” (rocking against the belly of the knife), heel cuts, and cleaving. The knife need only be as long as the food their cutting and by pressing straight down with enough force to split the food, the can compensate for not having a sharper, longer knife.

My friends and family like helping out with big meals. Some see the sharp knife as a good thing and take the necessary precautions to pay more attention to safety (going a little slower, keeping their fingers out of the way, etc.) Others just don’t get it; they’re likely to hurt themselves or the knife, and more comfortable with one my older, shorter, knives that I keep duller. A sharp knife is more efficient, but for many is less safe than a dull one.
 
So what level of sharpness do I like?

That's a good question. In thinking about it, I have decided that for everyday humdrum cutting jobs, I am satisfied with all the sharpness that the brown stones on my Triangle Sharpmaker can produce. This is a little sharper than any factory knife I've ever held.

This goes for my Gransfors Bruks SFA, my Sebbie, Schrade stockman and various SAKs.

This policy could just be the product of laziness, though. If I had a paper wheel on a bench grinder, all my stuff might be scarey sharp.

So, what're you guys using/doing to achieve the final n'th degree of sharpness?
 
This reminds me of one day at my old job (as a programmer) when someone needed to open a box and couldn't find the scissors.

Trying to be helpful, I got out my trusty EDC Buck Juno 443 (which happens to be in my pocket as I type this - still only sharpened a couple of times ever!), and promptly opened the box as a favor, never flourishing the knife or being showy or threatening with it.

Later on that day my boss called me into her office and asked that I didn't bring a knife to work anymore. Apparently it scared one of the girls I worked with... (sigh)

I asked her nicely if I could demonstrate how silly that request was... and with a confused look on her face she said 'sure'.

I picked up the scissors out of the coffee cup on her desk she used to store such tools, and demonstrated both the scissors and my knife on a piece of paper, easily cutting the paper in half with just one pass of one of the scissor blades as well (they were very sharp scissors!).

I then asked "Not really any different, is it?"

I then demonstrated that if I for some reason wanted to use an object as a deadly weapon in the office, it would probably be more effective to remove one of the 3 or 4 foot aluminum posts that support the office cubicles to use as a club (and I did just that in a second or two - removed it, that is - not use it!).

I then asked her "Isn't this a much scarier weapon? And they are all over the building and very easily accessible even to a stranger that walks in the front door unarmed!"

She conceded the point and I was permitted to bring my knife to work the rest of the time I worked there (another 4 years), as long as I was careful not to frighten anyone... lol.

Later on I found out a bunch of other people including the president of the company also had EDC knives.

Sometimes people can just be silly... :)
 
tsiloics said:
After many years of using, carrying, sharpening and collecting knives, I've come around to the idea that they can, in fact, be too sharp - at least for me.

What I like in an EDC blade is something that shaves pretty aggressively, but nothing more. To give that some context, take my S30V Sebenza in a dull state. I would regrind it up to 320 and finish on my 10K strop to the point where it would shave well, and move easily through paper. No hair whittling, no push-cutting cigarette papers. That level of sharpness is not practical for me to maintain, and I have to admit, I am likely to cut myself with that sort of blade.

Now... I haven't cut myself problematically in over 30 years, and I have never cut myself in a manner that required stitches. What does happen with a scary-sharp blade though, is that it will give you these little incipient cuts... little kisses part way through the skin, if you get too intimate with it. If you work with your hands, those cuts become splits, and they can create significant problems. In my mind that is a safety... a performance hazard.

Also, I don't really want an edge that's so fine it can't be maintained on a daily basis. I can maintain a good shaving edge on my 10K leather for a few weeks, then maybe have to fall back to the ceramic rod... then back to the strop. Don't generally have to go to the stone more than every few months, unless I start cutting into dirty media. That is with a relatively refined pocket knife. With a larger knife, I use a more obtuse, less keen edge - a rough shaving edge.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way as you do, I keep them as sharp as they need to be to get the job done at hand.

Scary sharp edges... Well I have no use for them, as long as they will shave some and cut paper they are fine.

My field knives have a nice what I call a utility edge on them, they will cut paper no problem and they might shave too, but for chopping wood and other field tasks a scary Sharp edge isn't really needed IMO.
 
as a gift to my mother i took the old santoku she has beaten to the point where i have sharpies that are sharper and i took it to my good friend alan at Ross Cutlery in downtown LA and had him put a brand spankin new edge on it, my mother absolutely loves that knife now, when i brought it home to prove how sharp it was i shaved a tomato so thin it was barely even there, now she cant put the thing down :)
 
People who are irresponsible, know that they are irresponsible.

Perhaps this is why they avoid any tool that has the potential to injure the user.
 
I'm being careful, because I wouldn't want to be responsible for making irresponsible responses to the respective respondents.
 
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