Why shave with your folder?

[HoB]

I don't quite understand your question. 40 deg include is more than acute enough to shave armhair?!!!! I wouldn't shave my face with it though.

 

[fulloflead]

This is true, and believe me, I've tried. I shave with straight razors which have a much thinner edge on them than a knife. If the straight razors aren't just right they pull and don't shave that comfortably. It isn't until you acheive a finely stropped edge on a straight razor that you can comfortably shave, and that's after you properly prep your beard with good shaving soaps, pre-shave gels, oils, etc. Oh and lots of hot water.

Yeah, I did it too. HERE

.

 

[MSCantrell]

A shaving sharp knife in your pocket, is that really necessary? For what purpose can I possibly need such a sharp knife?

This morning I missed a spot shaving and didn't see it till I got to work. Scraped it off with my Opinel (plenty sharp to shave arms, not comfortable for more than a square cm of face).

Mike

 

[edb]

Seems to me that the problem here is that you guys *shave*. Grow a beard - I haven't shaved in 20 years

Seriously, though, I agree that sharper is safer, so I try to get them at least to the point where they'll slice through paper with no tearing.

 

[Jeff Clark]

A knife that you can't shave with is just a tool, if it's particularly dull it's a "dull tool". A knife that you can shave with is an instrument on a par with a surgical instrument. You can do fine work with such an instrument without mashing, stretching or ripping things apart. While walking back from lunch today I had one of the three fine wires break within the cable to my Walkman headset. With my razor sharp knife I skinned the outer jacket off the cable and stripped back insulation from the broken wire. I didn't cut a single strand of the 48 gauge fibers within the wire. I could twist the broken wire back together and continue my walk. All I needed was solder and tape to finish my repair when I got back to the lab. I guess that it can be a self image thing. I see myself as more of a surgeon than lumberjack. When I dissected frogs in high school I used my pocket knife rather than a scalpel.

 

[holst035]

cut n run:

I own a titan for 2 months now and i'm not sorry at all. The sharpening is more work then 440C orso because its harder, thats why i bought the titan. I tried to reprofile to 15 degrees on the sharpmaker, that's very much work, then you see the hardness of zdp. What WH do you have, do you like it? I have a Titan bf 15 and carry it every day sice I got it. I love it, for me its a user! I hope it will serve me well for years.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

"Conable said … the ZDP core with the 420 stainless exterior makes it extremely easy to sharpen " [emphasis added].
-from Feb 2005 Blade

The laminate doesn't make it easier to sharpen, the arguement for this is based on the machinability of the laminate which should never be an issue. The Sharpmaker is slow if the angle of the knife doesn't match the pre-set rods, adjust the edge angles with a coarse hone instead.

-Cliff

 

[Sword and Shield]

When I dissected frogs in high school I used my pocket knife rather than a scalpel.

I did the same thing in college- cat dissection with a SAK Recruit. My scalpel was sharp enough- they didn't let you use your own- but my knife was better.

 

[rhino]

I did the same thing in college- cat dissection with a SAK Recruit. My scalpel was sharp enough- they didn't let you use your own- but my knife was better.

I did it in college biology lab too. They only let us have scissors and a razor blade that had been used ... a lot. My SAK was a much better tool for the job. The only downside was disinfecting afterward, as some of the specimens (specima?) were not preserved (like the pig hearts) in any way.

Cutting through pig cardiac muscle with a pair of dull scissors is possible, but it just feels wrong. Cutting through with a nice, sharp pocket knife is a both easier and less disgusting.

 

[DGG]

It appears to me that there are two kinds of SHARP.

One is "PUSH CUTTING" sharp. This cutting is like razor cuts when you force the blade edge directly into the material being cut. Chopping is a form of push cutting.

The other is "SLICE CUTTING" sharp where you run the blade edge along the material to be cut. Slice cutting works well with fiberous material like cutting steak, slicing turkey or bread, cutting rope or trimming carpet. "Slice cutting" is probably the most frequently used cutting method in the house.

Think for a minute. What knife/knives in the house do the most "cutting"? In mine it is the kitchen knives. They have the thinest blades. Get dumped into the dishwasher to fight it out with forks and spoons and yet still function pretty good. Some are serrated and some smooth bladed. The serrated ones are sold on TV as "WONDER KNIVES" and they show them cutting nails in half and then carving a slab of meat off the roast beef. It not the knife that is so good it the design of the knife edge, the serrations.

So shaving sharp doesn't mean much to me. I'm not bragging when I can say that I can grind a butter knife to a shaving sharp edge. It won't last worth a darn but it will be sharp for a couple of cuts.

I have a question for you. Is a pizza cutter a "pusher" or a "slicer" cutter?

 

[db]

"I have a question for you. Is a pizza cutter a "pusher" or a "slicer" cutter?
"
Pusher.

 

[Jeff Clark]

When you get really serious in a kitchen you do less slice cutting and more push cutting. Slice cutting takes extra motion and tends to slide your food around. When you have a lot of food the efficient way to handle it is to stack it up and push through the stack with several parallel cuts to make multiple strips or slices and then rotate 90-degrees and do it again if you need to make cubes or short strips. That is the reason for the shape of a chef's knife and why the chef's knife is the primary knife in the kitchen. This is one of the reasons that I own very few serrated knives. This is also the reason to have a cutting board (or several) in the kitchen. A very thin edge will stay sharp an awfully long time in the kitchen if you use a good cutting board. I commonly hone 10-degrees per side on kitchen knives with no durability issues. If I want to chop bones I use a thicker edge and a tougher steel, but otherwise I use as thin an edge as possible on every type of kitchen knife.

Slicing action comes into play more when you serve already cooked food such as meat or bread. In the case of meat, a sharpened butter knife would work perfectly well for an awfully long time since cooked meat is easy to cut (table knives are often unsharpened butter knives). In the case of bread, serrations or a roughly sharpened blade are what is called for. All but a couple of my serrated knives are bread knives. A serrated blade only works when you use a slicing action. It takes extra motion to use one on a cutting board. I sometimes give one to an amateur if they are trying to bone raw chicken. If you aren't dextrous it can be a hastle to cut rubbery raw chicken without draw cutting.

 

[yoda4561]

Even the edge from a coarse diamond stone will give you shaving sharpness right off the stone, and will pop hairs easily after a light stropping. Arm hairs only mind you, though if you're really slick with hand sharpening you could prolly get it sharp enough to shave facial hair instead of pulling it out.

 

[DGG]

When you get really serious in a kitchen you do less slice cutting and more push cutting. Slice cutting takes extra motion and tends to slide your food around. When you have a lot of food the efficient way to handle it is to stack it up and push through the stack with several parallel cuts to make multiple strips or slices and then rotate 90-degrees and do it again if you need to make cubes or short strips. That is the reason for the shape of a chef's knife and why the chef's knife is the primary knife in the kitchen. This is one of the reasons that I own very few serrated knives. This is also the reason to have a cutting board (or several) in the kitchen. A very thin edge will stay sharp an awfully long time in the kitchen if you use a good cutting board. I commonly hone 10-degrees per side on kitchen knives with no durability issues. If I want to chop bones I use a thicker edge and a tougher steel, but otherwise I use as thin an edge as possible on every type of kitchen knife.

Slicing action comes into play more when you serve already cooked food such as meat or bread. In the case of meat, a sharpened butter knife would work perfectly well for an awfully long time since cooked meat is easy to cut (table knives are often unsharpened butter knives). In the case of bread, serrations or a roughly sharpened blade are what is called for. All but a couple of my serrated knives are bread knives. A serrated blade only works when you use a slicing action. It takes extra motion to use one on a cutting board. I sometimes give one to an amateur if they are trying to bone raw chicken. If you aren't dextrous it can be a hastle to cut rubbery raw chicken without draw cutting.

Yes thats true but I have found that most folks don't want to imitate Julia Childs (rest her soul!).

I belong to a couple of pot-luck clubs and I see very few push cutters in the crowd. Some can chop veggies with a chef's knife but I think that for the most part they use slicing more than pushing. Then again I haven't seen $500 worth of knives in their kitchens either.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Some can chop veggies with a chef's knife but I think that for the most part they use slicing more than pushing.

How sharp are their knives? It doesn't take a $500 dollar knife to cut well either, you can do this with a $5 stainless kitchen knife, it works better on better steels of course as you can go thinner and more acute, but most kitchen knives are *way* too thick which forces the slicing motions usually.

-Cliff

 

[Jeff Clark]

I lead about 15 average church folk preparing food for 400 people at the local soup kitchen 6 times a year. It tends to be a different group every time. We have to prepare that food from scratch in about 3 hours. This includes Lasagna, soup, green salad, and fruit salad. Some of the crew is busy buttering bread, cutting up pastry, and preparing eggs and potatoes for the next day. The primary cutting duties are done by about 8 or 10 people. I bring along about 50 knives that I have picked up at local Goodwill stores and have cleaned and sharpened (my total investment for all of these knives is about $100). I show them how to use sharp knives and cutting boards to really haul ass in food prepartion. Often this includes instructing teenagers who have never see a sharp knife in their lives.

All these knives are sharpened at 30 degrees or less. With the proper instruction the team slices and dices up a storm. I intentionally keep the boning knives and paring knives away from the team doing the slicing and dicing since it leads to bad technique. Everything I give them is a variant of the chef's knife design only usually around 6 or 7 inches long. The room they work in is crowded and 6 amateurs working around a modest sized tables with 10 inch blades would be dangerous. Since I started giving knife-handling instructions at the beginning of each shift our accidental cutting injury rate has gone down dramatically and productivity has gone up dramatically. I would estimate that we can get by with 50% fewer people if they are using high productivity techniques.

The most popular knife that we use is the MAC Original Series 6-inch utility knife. It is full ground and only a couple millimeters thick. These I hone at about 12-degrees per side.