Good Scientific Resource?

[Tea_Hills]

Pretty new to the forums and first post on the sharpening board so hello everyone!

I've been sharpening for a few years now and I can often get an arm hair shaving edge on my good knives freehand but have struggled getting shaving edges on anything from Germany. Also perfect consistency is not easy. Now I know none of this really matters for most kitchen applications but it started me on a journey to understanding what is actually going on during the sharpening process. This led me to discovering Vadim Kraichuk. He seems quite well regarded and has published a number of 'scientific' white papers on sharpening. He also believes that a lot of commonly held community beliefs are false. I was hoping to see if anyone has any trial and observation type of information that runs counter to his findings. Mainly these points:

1. Apex creation on a diamond surface instead of the traditional whetstone compound of Silicon/aluminum oxide allows a properly finished' edge to reach smaller apex edge thickness and consequently a sharper blade.

2. 'Toothy' edges are not preferable to a properly polished edge in terms of edge retention in any way.

3. Burr creation falls into 2 rough camps in the way they are created. Primarily harder steels create a 'negative' burr upon grinding and softer steels create 'positive' burrs. These need to be deburred in different ways.

4. Deburring by cutting cork or felt leads to a wider apex width and less sharp edge.

5. 'Wear resistant' steels that contain large Vanadium and Chromium carbides (such as D2, R2, etc) absolutely require edge setting and finishing on diamond or CBN based abrasives. This a result of traditional whetstones lacking the required hardness to grind the carbides into a sub micron width. He postulates that a sharp edge can be created with traditional whetstones but as the steel matrix at the edge wears away you have unground large carbides that remain at the edge (with a risk of tear-out) and this results in an edge that loses sharpness much faster than it should.

I gathered a lot of this from his published literature and his book. I don't want to link any of it directly as to not plug his site (and store). I will say that he runs Knife Grinders of Australia if anyone is curious.

Now I am going to adapt some of his procedures to a home setting (that doesn't have a grinding or felt wheel) and try to post my findings. I can't seem to find much in the way of peer review on any of his findings so really I guess I'm asking if anyone has read his work and seen any counterpoints.



Thanks!

 

[big_adventure]

You can also check out Science of Sharp and Knife Steel Nerds (callout to @Larrin ) for great information on steels and sharpening them.

Nothing said above is too controversial.

Notably, however, SEM shots of edges shows that the idea that "normal" stones can't cut the carbides in very hard steels is false. They can and do. That said, it'll probably take longer to sharpen and extremely hard-carbide-rich steel on softer stones than harder stones.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Welcome and good for you to jump into the sharpening journey.

Now, my day-in and day-out life is immersed in science and while it is no doubt interesting in the sharpening world, I would also readily caution not to get too overly concerned with it all early on. It can seem overwhelming and confusing.

There are some widely held and accepted claims in your post but just about all of them are debated as well. And some things you've presented as absolutes when they aren't.

For example, chromium carbides, in general, are not that hard to cut and most synthetics can handle them just fine. Vanadium carbides are hard to cut but widely accepted as not a big deal until above 4% and at higher grits.

I sharpened my Aogami Super gyuto last night. It is near silently cross-cutting paper towels. That edge has never seen a diamond stone and hopefully never will.

And so on.

Form a burr. Flip the knife. Form a burr. De-burr.

That's the basics of sharpening and it doesn't matter what the steel is. Relax and let the knife tell you what you're doing (right and wrong) and how it is reacting to those inputs.

What are your German knives? You're struggling with them as they are softer stainless and at rather high angles. It isn't uncommon for folks to have the same issues.

Are you using a marker on your edge bevels?

 

[ian]

Pretty new to the forums and first post on the sharpening board so hello everyone!

I've been sharpening for a few years now and I can often get an arm hair shaving edge on my good knives freehand but have struggled getting shaving edges on anything from Germany. Also perfect consistency is not easy. Now I know none of this really matters for most kitchen applications but it started me on a journey to understanding what is actually going on during the sharpening process. This led me to discovering Vadim Kraichuk. He seems quite well regarded and has published a number of 'scientific' white papers on sharpening. He also believes that a lot of commonly held community beliefs are false. I was hoping to see if anyone has any trial and observation type of information that runs counter to his findings. Mainly these points:

1. Apex creation on a diamond surface instead of the traditional whetstone compound of Silicon/aluminum oxide allows a properly finished' edge to reach smaller apex edge thickness and consequently a sharper blade.

2. 'Toothy' edges are not preferable to a properly polished edge in terms of edge retention in any way.

3. Burr creation falls into 2 rough camps in the way they are created. Primarily harder steels create a 'negative' burr upon grinding and softer steels create 'positive' burrs. These need to be deburred in different ways.

4. Deburring by cutting cork or felt leads to a wider apex width and less sharp edge.

5. 'Wear resistant' steels that contain large Vanadium and Chromium carbides (such as D2, R2, etc) absolutely require edge setting and finishing on diamond or CBN based abrasives. This a result of traditional whetstones lacking the required hardness to grind the carbides into a sub micron width. He postulates that a sharp edge can be created with traditional whetstones but as the steel matrix at the edge wears away you have unground large carbides that remain at the edge (with a risk of tear-out) and this results in an edge that loses sharpness much faster than it should.

I gathered a lot of this from his published literature and his book. I don't want to link any of it directly as to not plug his site (and store). I will say that he runs Knife Grinders of Australia if anyone is curious.

Now I am going to adapt some of his procedures to a home setting (that doesn't have a grinding or felt wheel) and try to post my findings. I can't seem to find much in the way of peer review on any of his findings so really I guess I'm asking if anyone has read his work and seen any counterpoints.



Thanks!

You could totally link to his stuff, imo. Would help us understand which articles you're citing.

 

[Tea_Hills]

Welcome and good for you to jump into the sharpening journey.

Now, my day-in and day-out life is immersed in science and while it is no doubt interesting in the sharpening world, I would also readily caution not to get too overly concerned with it all early on. It can seem overwhelming and confusing.

There are some widely held and accepted claims in your post but just about all of them are debated as well. And some things you've presented as absolutes when they aren't.

For example, chromium carbides, in general, are not that hard to cut and most synthetics can handle them just fine. Vanadium carbides are hard to cut but widely accepted as not a big deal until above 4% and at higher grits.

I sharpened my Aogami Super gyuto last night. It is near silently cross-cutting paper towels. That edge has never seen a diamond stone and hopefully never will.

And so on.

Form a burr. Flip the knife. Form a burr. De-burr.

That's the basics of sharpening and it doesn't matter what the steel is. Relax and let the knife tell you what you're doing (right and wrong) and how it is reacting to those inputs.

What are your German knives? You're struggling with them as they are softer stainless and at rather high angles. It isn't uncommon for folks to have the same issues.

Are you using a marker on your edge bevels?

The 4% Vanadium or so making a difference is interesting. It does make sense that there would be a threshold on Vanadium composition where higher hardness abrasives actually don't make a practical difference.

I would consider myself an average freehand sharpener in the sense of being able to hold a consistent angle across stones and side flips (certainly used a fair bit of sharpie learning), even pressure, minimizing the burr with decreasing pressure, etc. I get regularly consistent hair shaving results (on harder steels). I like to sharpen for friends and family and found that their $20 knives, maybe not German haha, certainly behaved differently when deburring and required a different technique to get to equal sharpness.

Now I'm more curious than anything about the techniques people use to get XYZ level of sharpness and different steel types and what is happening at the micron level during the process. I love my loupe but its no SEM!

 

[Tea_Hills]

You could totally link to his stuff, imo. Would help us understand which articles you're citing.

Gotcha, so a lot of the assumptions I mentioned are more clearly outlined in his book but some of the research can be found here Knife Grinders

 

[SilverSwarfer]

Form a burr. Flip the knife. Form a burr. De-burr.

+1

The best resource I can recommend is an open mind. There are many interpretations and opinions, and enough disagreements over fundamentals to prove to me that the only 'correct' way to sharpen is the way that improves the edge of the tool in your hand to best suit some task(s) at hand.

Sharpening is an ancient, simple maintenance chore that we can make as complicated, involved, expensive, esoteric as we like ('good enough' vs 'good enough for me'). IME the best path to improvement is practice. Study becomes much more relevant/useful after repeated trial-failure. It is easy to become confused and frustrated; especially so if more time is spent with a book/mouse in your hand, rather than with a knife/stone in your hand. Focusing on one thing at a time is important. Isolated variables = easier troubleshooting. It is an ongoing journey: no matter how well-developed our skills, there is always some room for improvement.

Practice + Persistence + Patience = Progress

 

[ian]

Gotcha, so a lot of the assumptions I mentioned are more clearly outlined in his book but some of the research can be found here Knife Grinders

Just ordered the book. Love the technical stuff, even if it's not what you should focus on when you're starting out.

 

[Vesteroid]

I just binge watched all his videos over the holidays. So much so that I bought a torment t8.

I completely buy into the process he outlines in his book and subsequent videos/ articles on his page.

I bought his front stand for the tormek and the jstone To go with the t8. I will hold off on his stones till I see how well I can transition from hand sharpening to the t8. I even got the tester to have some objectivity to my results.
I am going to try and hand sharpen a few of my knives, test them, then do the profile he suggest, then test again.
We will see

 

[Barmoley]

You can also check out Science of Sharp and Knife Steel Nerds (callout to @Larrin ) for great information on steels and sharpening them.

Nothing said above is too controversial.

Notably, however, SEM shots of edges shows that the idea that "normal" stones can't cut the carbides in very hard steels is false. They can and do. That said, it'll probably take longer to sharpen and extremely hard-carbide-rich steel on softer stones than harder stones.

Science of sharp photos confused me when I saw them as it doesn't make sense to me that softer abrasive can cut harder carbide. It is hard to argue with empirical evidence, but I don't understand the mechanism of how it happens. I saw him show this on lower grid stones, have you seen him also show this with higher grit? I also get much better results with diamond stones on high wear resistant steels, but this could just be lack of technique, not enough skill on my part. Since diamond stones cut these steels faster for me, I have less time to screw up the edge.

If we step away from steel for a second and take extreme substances such as tungsten carbide or flexible ceramic blades. These are hard to sharpen even with diamond stones and are just impossible with regular synthetic stones. These are not steels, so I don't know if it is at all relevant, but with these too, harder abrasives are needed to have any success at all.

 

[Mr.Wizard]

2. 'Toothy' edges are not preferable to a properly polished edge in terms of edge retention in any way.

Where does he describe this? Other experiments have found that toothy edges last longer in slicing while polished edges last longer in push cutting.

 

[spaceconvoy]

Glass is harder than iron. And jets of water can cut through steel plate. Hardness is not the only issue at play.

 

[Luftmensch]

Now, my day-in and day-out life is immersed in science and while it is no doubt interesting in the sharpening world, I would also readily caution not to get too overly concerned with it all early on. It can seem overwhelming and confusing.

+1

The best resource I can recommend is an open mind. There are many interpretations and opinions, and enough disagreements over fundamentals to prove to me that the only 'correct' way to sharpen is the way that improves the edge of the tool in your hand to best suit some task(s) at hand.

Sharpening is an ancient, simple maintenance chore that we can make as complicated, involved, expensive, esoteric as we like ('good enough' vs 'good enough for me'). IME the best path to improvement is practice. Study becomes much more relevant/useful after repeated trial-failure. It is easy to become confused and frustrated; especially so if more time is spent with a book/mouse in your hand, rather than with a knife/stone in your hand. Focusing on one thing at a time is important. Isolated variables = easier troubleshooting. It is an ongoing journey: no matter how well-developed our skills, there is always some room for improvement.

Practice + Persistence + Patience = Progress

Such great advice!!

I guess I'm asking if anyone has read his work and seen any counterpoints.

I am vaguely aware of his work. I would spend some time reading the articles on Knife Steel Nerds - they may validate or invalidate Kraichuk's work.

I am wary of treating this as a science. Sure... you can be really methodical about your approach... Understanding the material science behind it can help with your progress and understanding... but the act is really a craft.

I am super wary of lionising particular people in the community. There are experts in the community who have a huge amount of experience. You should take these people seriously. But I find it frustrating when their advice is viewed as immutable truths that should end a conversation. You may find a different method or perspective works better for *you*.

The other thing I might encourage, is that obsessing over this stuff is somewhat academic. It is fun. But ultimately it is unlikely to be practical. A knife is sharp or it isnt. You need to sharpen it or you dont. Whether you have attained that 3% better performance by removing stress concentrators on a microscopic level is not going to have a profound practical effect on carrots. I want to stress that it is very fun to dive deep... but ultimately that is out of curiosity. You'll likely find more use out of setting yourself higher goals: can i make a sharper edge than last time; can I sharpen quicker than last time; can I produce a longer lasting edge than last time... Certainly, better knowledge will help you do that.

 

[ian]

And jets of water can cut through steel plate.

Aren’t these jets typically loaded with abrasives? Or am I confused? I fully believe water can “cut” iron at high enough velocity though.

 

[spaceconvoy]

Aren’t these jets typically loaded with abrasives? Or am I confused. I fully believe water can “cut” iron at high enough velocity though.

Both! Abrasive speeds up the process and reduces the amount of pressure needed, but it isn't strictly necessary.

 

[daveb]

There are experts in the community who have a huge amount of experience. You should take these people seriously. But I find it frustrating when their advice is viewed as immutable truths that should end a conversation. You may find a different method or perspective works better for *you*.

I thought we had found some common ground, then I realized I was in the wrong thread.....

 

[daveb]

Something unique about learning sharpening as a skill is the solitary nature of it. If you want to learn to fish you go fishing with a friend. If you want to learn to bake, you find a friend that bakes. And so on.

If you want to learn to rub steel on rocks, you'll likely be the only one in your social circle that does so. You can watch the utubers but there are so many, some good, some bad, some that contradict each other. It's seems more intimidating than it should - though within a short time you should be able to make a knife sharper than it was when you started.

As you develop proficiency, it's not uncommon to develop bad habits. There's no one to guide you or tell you don't do that. Keep practicing, keep watching utubers, be self-critical.

And then there's the finer points. Removing chips, repairing tips, maintaining the profile, thinning, sharpening tips, polishing out the scuff marks. It's easy to plateau on "proficient". Getting to "good" takes awhile. Jon, from JKI is my mentor of choice (he had no say in the matter), he still goes to Japan to study and he's widely regarded as "expert" in the field.

Do the best you can - and no Cliff.

 

[Tea_Hills]

Where does he describe this? Other experiments have found that toothy edges last longer in slicing while polished edges last longer in push cutting.

Unfortunately it is in his book but the quoted text is:

The “micro-serrations” concept contributes to the confusion as people tend to mistakenly generalize properties of the serrated edge onto the microscopic level of a ragged coarse edge. The saw teeth and the edge ragged by a coarse abrasive are not the same. This myth about blades having "teeth" formed by the "scratches" on the bevel just won't die. Coarse scratches do not create "teeth" on the apex. In the edge sharpened coarse, the high spots are mostly burrs and the low spots are mostly chips far wider than any given scratch; after deburring you get an irregular apex riddled with flaws. A knife edge sharpened to rougher finishes will have larger scratches than a finely honed edge, and these scratches can be thought of as pre-existing flaws; the sub-surface damage is also more pronounced and extended. A coarser edge does “bite” initially, however the knife dulls faster as the “teeth” get broken off, and as the edge chipping develops along those flaws.

Thoroughly done studies have shown that the coarse finish is associated with increased grip force, cutting effort and cutting time, and worse edge retention. In precise cutting and carving unpolished bevels cause traction in cuts and lower accuracy and quality of cut.

There are some supporting SEM photos but no link to the studies he mentioned.

Could you point me in the direction of the experiments you were mentioning? I'd love to take a look. Thanks!

 

[Tea_Hills]

I just binge watched all his videos over the holidays. So much so that I bought a torment t8.

I completely buy into the process he outlines in his book and subsequent videos/ articles on his page.

I bought his front stand for the tormek and the jstone To go with the t8. I will hold off on his stones till I see how well I can transition from hand sharpening to the t8. I even got the tester to have some objectivity to my results.
I am going to try and hand sharpen a few of my knives, test them, then do the profile he suggest, then test again.
We will see

I'm interested if you can replicate it at home. Please share!

 

[Luftmensch]

I thought we had found some common ground, then I realized I was in the wrong thread.....

Guy! We were making great progress! We were about to agree that Ryky is the definitive source of knowledge!



Isnt that the mark of civilised adults? We can have a reasonably polite disagreement on somethings and share common ground on others

 

[Luftmensch]

Something unique about learning sharpening as a skill is the solitary nature of it.

Thats true isnt it!

I dont think I have ever just happened to bump into somebody that was keen on sharpening. Either that tells you something about how social I am.... or something about how common the hobby/skill is!

Jon, from JKI is my mentor of choice

Hard to beat for practical knowledge. Korin is good. As is Naoto from Knifewear. The discussion on KKF is great if you are willing to read through the 'back-catalogue'.

I hesitated to mention these because they are more to do with the practice and craft of sharpening... (which I think it more useful/relevant). But since @Tea_Hills wanted 'science'... Larrin is the most obvious recommendation that has leveraged new media to share knowledge.... There are decades of publications and text books on material science and solid mechanics. These arent particularly accessible or geared towards knife use... or as 'fun'.

I guess it might be worth pointing out the obvious.... Larrin probably doesnt sharpen as well as Jon.... And Jon doesnt know metallurgy or material science as well as Larrin. Neither is 'better'... they are just different!

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Pretty new to the forums and first post on the sharpening board so hello everyone!

I've been sharpening for a few years now and I can often get an arm hair shaving edge on my good knives freehand but have struggled getting shaving edges on anything from Germany.

Sorry that I skipped most of your questions, cause I'm not sure if any of them has anything to do with sharpening
You don't need science in order to get German knives shaving sharp. By German knives I mean something from Zwilling/Wusthof and similar (so I'm not referencing to any of those awesome custom knife makers from Germany).

raise burr on one side. Flip and raise burr on the other side. Move to a finer stone and repeat. Once you hit 2-3k gritnes and debur — knife should shave arm hairs easily. Yes deburring on cork isn't perfect cause you are actually tearing burr away (and it will cause micro damage to the edge) — but that shouldn't really affect arm hair shaving.

And once you master sharpening your german knives and shave all your arms —return to the books and learn dark depths of sharpening

 

[kayman67]

From my perspective, most people want some validation that they are doing the best, not because it's the best, but since that's the best they can do, it must be the best [.]
We, here, are much more prone to develop sideways, but we are a small variety.
It happens that my experience is somewhat similar to his. Well, to some extent anyway.

Wear resistant structures can be grinded by regular coarse stones, but it's more of a "smash and grab" affair. At higher grits, this won't work and, imho, the true potential of those structures, is wasted. On the other hand, some ways are still better than others, even if not making everything as good as possible. Finding such methods is a good thing.

 

[ian]

I notice you haven't gotten a ton of responses to your actual questions, except for 5. I'll try to respond. Hopefully I can get partial credit for saying "I don't know" on some of them.

Pretty new to the forums and first post on the sharpening board so hello everyone!

I've been sharpening for a few years now and I can often get an arm hair shaving edge on my good knives freehand but have struggled getting shaving edges on anything from Germany. Also perfect consistency is not easy. Now I know none of this really matters for most kitchen applications but it started me on a journey to understanding what is actually going on during the sharpening process. This led me to discovering Vadim Kraichuk. He seems quite well regarded and has published a number of 'scientific' white papers on sharpening. He also believes that a lot of commonly held community beliefs are false. I was hoping to see if anyone has any trial and observation type of information that runs counter to his findings. Mainly these points:

1. Apex creation on a diamond surface instead of the traditional whetstone compound of Silicon/aluminum oxide allows a properly finished' edge to reach smaller apex edge thickness and consequently a sharper blade.

Never used diamonds. I'd believe this, although I'm not sure if it will be a truly noticeable difference on most steels. Maybe, tho.

2. 'Toothy' edges are not preferable to a properly polished edge in terms of edge retention in any way.

Perhaps true to some extent. I do find that a fresh off the stones high grit edge stops cutting tomatoes and peppers sooner than a lower grit edge, though. So maybe there's a distinction between however he's measuring edge retention (e.g. with his Bess or whatever) and perceived edge retention in the kitchen.

3. Burr creation falls into 2 rough camps in the way they are created. Primarily harder steels create a 'negative' burr upon grinding and softer steels create 'positive' burrs. These need to be deburred in different ways.

I guess that's true. Mostly we just think of soft steels as giving more stubborn burrs, so you adopt more aggressive measures to get rid of them, like incrementing your angle a bit. "Need to be deburred in different ways" is a bit strong, though. Pretty much everything will deburr with a slightly higher edge leading stroke. Maybe the distinction is that with brittle steels you can get away with edge trailing, same-angle deburring.

4. Deburring by cutting cork or felt leads to a wider apex width and less sharp edge.

I fully believe that deburring aggressively like this leaves a ragged non-crisp edge. Whenever I use cork to rip off a horrible burr I follow it up with additional sharpening afterwards.

5. 'Wear resistant' steels that contain large Vanadium and Chromium carbides (such as D2, R2, etc) absolutely require edge setting and finishing on diamond or CBN based abrasives. This a result of traditional whetstones lacking the required hardness to grind the carbides into a sub micron width. He postulates that a sharp edge can be created with traditional whetstones but as the steel matrix at the edge wears away you have unground large carbides that remain at the edge (with a risk of tear-out) and this results in an edge that loses sharpness much faster than it should.

Yea, dunno. Never sharpened a fancy steel like that. I'll join everyone in pointing to that Science of Sharp article, but I've been underwhelmed with some of the conclusions drawn on that site from time to time, so I dunno.

I can't seem to find much in the way of peer review on any of his findings

If only there were sharpening journals! I mean, there are journals for all sorts of useless sh*t, why not something useful like sharpening?

 

[kayman67]

The idea behind the sharpness thing is what late Cliff Stamp used to say. The sharper you make them, the longer they stay sharp. I don't know exactly where to find it right now, but polished edges have been proven to last longer even with softer alloys, even slicing various stuff (makes little difference what since it's not ingredients anyway). Problem is, what is a polished edge from this perspective? Would this be a super even apex, glass like mirror? Not really. It never is. It's more of like structures that are closed better, would last longer, but it also takes a more considerable amount of time, effort and skill to make them. I don't think that even here there's much of a debate over this since most of us do something similar in one way or another. Also, this works even better with very thin edges.

 

[Luftmensch]

2. 'Toothy' edges are not preferable to a properly polished edge in terms of edge retention in any way.

Perhaps true to some extent. I do find that a fresh off the stones high grit edge stops cutting tomatoes and peppers sooner than a lower grit edge, though. So maybe there's a distinction between however he's measuring edge retention (e.g. with his Bess or whatever) and perceived edge retention in the kitchen.

The sharper you make them, the longer they stay sharp. I don't know exactly where to find it right now, but polished edges have been proven to last longer even with softer alloys, even slicing various stuff (makes little difference what since it's not ingredients anyway). Problem is, what is a polished edge from this perspective?

To me, the idea of polished edges having greater edge retention is theoretically convincing. Why? Stress concentration. This is a well known concept in engineering. I can imagine a ragged edge will have many more stress risers than the theoretical dead flat edge. Failure points propagate... So from a theoretical perspective, I am comfortable with the assertion that removing stress risers (polishing) creates a more durable edge.

Yet, I havent bothered seeking empirical evidence for it... largely because I am not convinced you get much more performance for your troubles. I'll raise the caveat that I am talking about competent edges vs scifi optimal edges. For instance does the person who spends an extra 15 minutes polishing the blade gain anything meaningful over the person who has a rational but concise finishing routine? An extra week? An extra day? An extra meal? One carrot? I'd wager there are diminishing returns and at best you are buying yourself an extra shift/day.

Of course, no doubt mediocre and terrible edges finishes will have correspondingly mediocre and terrible retention.

4. Deburring by cutting cork or felt leads to a wider apex width and less sharp edge.

I fully believe that deburring aggressively like this leaves a ragged non-crisp edge. Whenever I use cork to rip off a horrible burr I follow it up with additional sharpening afterwards.

I agree with @ian... and again... pulling steel off rather than abrading it will result in stress risers...

5. 'Wear resistant' steels that contain large Vanadium and Chromium carbides (such as D2, R2, etc) absolutely require edge setting and finishing on diamond or CBN based abrasives. This a result of traditional whetstones lacking the required hardness to grind the carbides into a sub micron width. He postulates that a sharp edge can be created with traditional whetstones but as the steel matrix at the edge wears away you have unground large carbides that remain at the edge (with a risk of tear-out) and this results in an edge that loses sharpness much faster than it should.

I think the relevant Science of Sharp article people are referring to is this one. His conclusion is that tear-out is not a thing (at least for Maxamet)... He has a few diamond/carbide posts... so perhaps people are thinking of a different one?

I am not super convinced that 'large' carbides at the edge are meaningfully 'bad'. No doubt, grinding edge carbides into a sub-micron thickness will be 'sharper' than natively shaped 1-2 micron carbides (which is pretty small!). But again... we are scratching around for marginal gains. An exposed sub-micron carbide sounds brittle as hell. It might test well on a BESS tester, but I can also imagine those sub-micron carbide tips shattering early during use and settle on a larger surface area that can support cycling loads (eg hitting a cutting board).

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Knife Grinders and Todd Simpson (Science of Sharp) both post on Blade Forums. Todd's posts are often abrupt and short but can still have some good info.

I won't have anything to do with BF any more so I can't remember what screen name KG uses but their posts were often lengthy. Sometimes I found them quite interesting and informative. Other times they seemed a bit like pseudo-ads.

Anyway, just sharing that these folks are out there in the broader community to some extent or another if people want to seek out more.

 

[ian]

I won't have anything to do with BF any more

Why?

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Why?

I'm no fan of the owner.

 

[ian]

I'm no fan of the owner.

What? Who? Why?