I'm new to kitchen knives, and I'm quickly realizing that how a knife cuts is determined not only by the secondary bevel, but by what's behind it. Different knives have varying thickness behind the edge, but also varying levels of convexity at different distances from the edge. And then there's asymmetric knives. When you cut with a new knife and say "wow that's awesome" it's a combination of all of those things working together.
And yet you hear very little talk about this when it comes to sharpening. Some videos talk about thinning your knife, but it's often described as "lay the primary bevel flat on the stone and rub until it's thinner." Ugh, no! A perfect V shape is not a particulary great cutter and you probably don't want to turn your knife into one. Thinning should be because either (a) my knife has changed and I want to recreate what it was previously (not a V), or (b) I know better than the knife maker and I want to create a new profile that I like better (still not a V!).
So I would like to learn more about knife cross-sectional thickness, and do experiments on how they impact cutting.
1. Is there any good reading material on this topic?
2. Is there an easy way to measure the cross-sectional thickness of a knife? I'd like to measure all the knives I have now to see how the compare. Is the only way to use calipers and measure at 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, etc? This seems pretty tedius. Is there a cool device that you run along the knife and it shows you the cross section in your computer? :-D
3. Are there any known techniques for creating creating these varying-radius convex primary bevels? Is it all done by hand and up to the skill of the sharpener? It seems a little tedius to perfectly recreate the same convexity by hand in one spot on a blade, let alone along the entire length of the blade. I see the videos of Japanese knife makers lying over a large sharpening wheel and periodically glancing at the blade, but I don't see how they can know when it's the perfect thickness by glancing at it.
Looking to learn... pointers to resources welcome. So far searching hasn't turned up much.
And yet you hear very little talk about this when it comes to sharpening. Some videos talk about thinning your knife, but it's often described as "lay the primary bevel flat on the stone and rub until it's thinner." Ugh, no! A perfect V shape is not a particulary great cutter and you probably don't want to turn your knife into one. Thinning should be because either (a) my knife has changed and I want to recreate what it was previously (not a V), or (b) I know better than the knife maker and I want to create a new profile that I like better (still not a V!).
So I would like to learn more about knife cross-sectional thickness, and do experiments on how they impact cutting.
1. Is there any good reading material on this topic?
2. Is there an easy way to measure the cross-sectional thickness of a knife? I'd like to measure all the knives I have now to see how the compare. Is the only way to use calipers and measure at 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, etc? This seems pretty tedius. Is there a cool device that you run along the knife and it shows you the cross section in your computer? :-D
3. Are there any known techniques for creating creating these varying-radius convex primary bevels? Is it all done by hand and up to the skill of the sharpener? It seems a little tedius to perfectly recreate the same convexity by hand in one spot on a blade, let alone along the entire length of the blade. I see the videos of Japanese knife makers lying over a large sharpening wheel and periodically glancing at the blade, but I don't see how they can know when it's the perfect thickness by glancing at it.
Looking to learn... pointers to resources welcome. So far searching hasn't turned up much.
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Or a bright preteen doing science fair.
this.
