anyone have a BESS tester??

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I was thinking about getting one, only for a "number" that I could pass on to customers after sharpening (they do a sharpening accreditation course and the general public like stuff like that, "accreditations/numbers"). I looked into another sharpness tester that is used in the meat processing industry, it tests the whole blade for sharpness but that was 30K+, a bit too expensive for my little shop.

And l think it would be fun to play with
 
The physical test media comes in two formats: a spool of wire and pre-calibrated test clips. I observed quite some delta between them, and variable at that. So my suggestion would be to go with the A model for 1g resolution and then load up on test clips. You can save the spool for when you’re feeling really really bored and are willing to do a whole dangly-weight setup protocol for each measurement.

Go team gravimetrics!

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whats the lowest reading you have gotten mengwong?

would you say this is a fun and rewarding toy?

i'm into razors and such and have all the pastes and stones so i guess i can get a a really low number if i really wanted.

also i wonder if it any of this really matters? i guess it wont. but hey. :)
 
i also read something somewhere a few years ago that there was some fishing wire that gave identical results to the factory wire. does anyone know anything about this?
 
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inferno said:
whats the lowest reading you have gotten mengwong?
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I’m out of clips, so I used the spool, which registers 20–50g more than clips for me.

MSicard Apex Ultra 230mm Gyuto
SG16k approx 18dps: 138g.
Stropped on leather with some old 1micron paste: 73g

Sakai Kikumori SK 210mm Gyuto
SG16k approx 14dps: 133g
Stropped on leather with some old 1micron paste: 79g.

Conclusion: sharpness is a matter of degree, and stropping helps, but we knew that already. Or it’s user error and I suck at sharpening.

Videos: Microscopes for edge inspection

inferno said:
would you say this is a fun and rewarding toy?
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I would say this is a fun and rewarding toy, if we imagine Sisyphus happy.

I think it would be worth doing a passaround but you wouldn’t want it around your neck like an albatross. They say about sailing: the two happiest days in a man’s life are when he buys a boat, and when he sells it. A passaround would let us likewise bid this devil machine good riddance.
 
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so let's stick to the real world tests ;-) Who needs someone or a device to tell you what is sharp enough for your purpose?
 
MarcelNL said:
so let's stick to the real world tests ;-) Who needs someone or a device to tell you what is sharp enough for your purpose?
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No one. It's not about that.

It's about chasing your own sharpening goals and/or having a repeatable standard for edge experiments such as BTE and angel combo's.
 
HumbleHomeCook said:
No one. It's not about that.

It's about chasing your own sharpening goals and/or having a repeatable standard for edge experiments such as BTE and angel combo's.
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I get that part, to some extent.. to me it's similar to folks getting a refractometer for espresso...in order to increase extraction...which not necessarily has much to do with taste.
 
MarcelNL said:
I get that part, to some extent.. to me it's similar to folks getting a refractometer for espresso...in order to increase extraction...which not necessarily has much to do with taste.
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You don't see it as much in the kitchen cutlery world but in the EDC/Outdoor knife world where there's a huge emphasis on steels lots of folks get really into this stuff. Outside of actual testing and really fine tuning your setup for your situation, even there these aren't necessary but necessary has never been a popular world in any type of knife community.

:)
 
My impression about the EDC / outdoor knife community is that they'd always spent an obsessive amount of time and effort on aspects irrelevant to performance of knives they'd rarely if ever use. It's like celibate monks argueing over the impact of condom thickness on female satisfaction during copulation.
 
Jovidah said:
My impression about the EDC / outdoor knife community is that they'd always spent an obsessive amount of time and effort on aspects irrelevant to performance of knives they'd rarely if ever use. It's like celibate monks argueing over the impact of condom thickness on female satisfaction during copulation.
Click to expand...
another forum I'm part of has a section for 'quotable quotes' .....this is one IMO...
 
I've got one. It's somewhat interesting. I am testing pretty much all of my own grinds so the BTE geometry is pretty similar but I think it is an extremely limited test method. I don't think that you can really compare numbers between different people at all given how much the user can affect the results. Overall I would say it's mostly a way to compete against yourself to improve your sharpening a bit. Maybe with some clever jigs, someone maybe is able to rig an HRC tester to smoothly apply the load which could perhaps lead to a bit more objective and repeatable test.
 
Jovidah said:
My impression about the EDC / outdoor knife community is that they'd always spent an obsessive amount of time and effort on aspects irrelevant to performance of knives they'd rarely if ever use. It's like celibate monks argueing over the impact of condom thickness on female satisfaction during copulation.
Click to expand...

Sure, there's some of that just like there is here. But I think you'd be making a mistake dismissing the work many of those folks put in and the information it provides. There are very serious people doing all kinds of testing and studying steel that deserves a lot of respect and absolutely bleeds benefits over into the kitchen cutlery world.

Guys like Sal Glesser, Chris Reeves, Phil Wilson, and many more have opened doors to steels that are becoming more and more common in kitchen cutlery. It may even be fair to say that with the EDC/Outdoor knife community and their intense passion for steel, there wouldn't be a MagnaCut. Or maybe at least not was widely available and popular as it is. Those folks drove the demand.
 
The EDC world is indeed a driving force behind more/better steel options, and having higher expectations for heat treats. And I don't know, all my friends in the EDC world use the sh*t out of their knives.

Back to the BESS tester, I have been back and forth on getting one. I think it would be a fun way to quantify how good a sharpening job I do really is, and how different variables effect the overall score. Wish they were a little cheaper though.
 
Main Problem we can`t use sharpness like this in kitchen. Best results with bess would be gain with Lapping Film in the 100000JIS range or even finer. After cutting 1 tomato the sharpness is gone.

Don`t throw money out of the window as they say here in germany. Just use the commn SRC testing methods HHT and so on.

SirCutALot
 
Can they use sharpness like that in the EDC world?

I’m vaguely surprised by how “cheap” the testers are, in a way… I guess they aren’t that complicated a device…

Is somewhere like sharpeningsupplies the best/cheapest place to buy?
 
SirCutAlot said:
Main Problem we can`t use sharpness like this in kitchen. Best results with bess would be gain with Lapping Film in the 100000JIS range or even finer. After cutting 1 tomato the sharpness is gone.
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Yeah, the BESS number of a fresh edge isn’t going to last – between oxidation and actual use it’ll go up pretty quickly.

cotedupy said:
What's more important in a well sharpened knife (imo) is: functional longevity, or edge retention.
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But we can use the BESS method to gauge that!

So a more comprehensive test would look something like:
  1. Fresh off the stones
  2. Fresh off the strop
  3. After a couple of dry fires against a wood board
  4. After a couple of paper towels
  5. After m hours of just sitting
  6. After n hours of actual use
Then we plug the measurements into a spreadsheet and get out some number that will give the monks something new to argue about. In fact you could divide that number by the HRC to have something even more abstruse.

The research-grade version of the above would involve a Structural Edge Tester.
 
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Completely missed this topic..

I have one. Once got 250,- from work as an award and decided to spend it on a toy for my hobby. I have the B-version, so it measures in 5 grams. I use the spool, not the clips.

I've been using it for 2 years or so, so got a pretty good impression. Indeed, it's only purpose is to chase your own personal high score. Because we all know when our knives are sharp and we all kinda already know off the stones if we did a good, very good or 'one or your best results ever' job. The BESS testers just confirms this.

In my experience it is pretty accurate. A knive that feels sharper in use shows a lower bess number. I happen to reach sharper results with a higher gritt stones and the bess tester shows this.
What's interessting after stropping on leather, you can also see in the results if you increased the sharpness by refinging a bitt more, or decreased the sharpness by rounding the edge too much. Once again, you probably also know this when you do your standard finger nail, paper or hair test.

I only use it for my own, better knives. I like to keep a little record with the results. I can judge if I did a good job now, but can I really remember how I did 4 months ago, after the pre-last sharpening?
Remember, sharpening is my hobby, im not a cook.

The chart you get with it is accurate. Bess around 200 doesnt shave airm hair, and around 150-160 you can start to shave arm hair. Around 120-130 I can start filleting printing paper. Below 100 you can start slicing rolling paper a bit. The chart all shows about the same indicators.

My record is 80 (Yoshikane bunka shirogami2, after a kitayama 8000 and leather strop with red rouge) on average ( I measure at 3 points, back, middle and tip to get my final score of that knive) and that knive starting to be able to do a hht, but not cleanly all the time.

Its fun, but I can imagine you think its a silly toy with you sharpen for a living of to maintain your knives as a true cook.
 
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