Does cutting paper towel dull knives? - How about tissue?

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Michi said:
Yes, that definitely dulls knives. Last time I cut 20,000 sheets of paper towel, the knife was quite dull afterwards and I had to re-sharpen it.
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I could only go 8,000 sheets with dried blood in it. Dulls faster.

Now I'm starting to wonder though: just how much the three fingers test itself dulls the knife? I could probably buy two factory made Gyuto from some brand, sharpen them equally, cut myself with one, and test the other with blood impregnated paper sheets. If I yield a higher amount of sheets we know it does dull the knife. If it actually yield even worse results, would I have to conclude that the finger test actually hones the edge?

Hey btw I didn't show you guys my latest knife buy:

71TdK7BlgwL._AC_SL1500_.jpg



Thanks to all for helping me in pinpointing the perfect blade for me when I posted my questionnaire.
 
Reminds me of early ipad owners who would lock themselves into a completely dark closet and display a black screen-sized rectangle and complain the screen was not perfectly black. :)
 
You always bring things to the next level, man! So impressive!

Now I just wish I had a dark room with pure argon atmosphere.
 
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mmiinngg said:
W*f is the problem with you guys, dulling the edge by sccoping/ scrapping on the board, and now dulling the edge with tissue test...

I now realise I'm new to this forum, and that this kind of question seems to be the pinnacle of knives non users / collectionner... But then again I don't get it. If you don't use your knives who cares about them being dull as long as you had fun cutting tissue?
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There are a lot of very fragile finicky knives discussed on this board, ones that will chip just from looking at them sideways. As long as they're in fashion, stuff like that is going to matter. What you're really saying is that your Dexter-Russell is a better knife because you don't need to worry about that stuff. But until the "laser" fad goes away, people are going to run into problems, and naturally they're going to want to solve them. But if you want them to not worry about the cutting board, you have to get them a reasonable non-brittle knife first.
 
Duukt said:
Reminds me of early ipad owners who would lock themselves into a completely dark closet and display a black screen-sized rectangle and complain the screen was not perfectly black. :)
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It's not that though. It's just that his chosen sharpness test came up with a grade of "Fail" and he wanted to know why. (And he didn't know that was the problem, he thought it must be something else.) There's nothing wrong with that.
 
ian said:
When I sharpen for customers, I make sure to do it in a completely dark room with a pure argon atmosphere, so the edge isn’t damaged by photons or oxygen.
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Philistine. I use a particle accelerator to bombard the knife with directed quarks, and measure my edge in Planck units. My knives get so sharp that they send paper towels back into superposition.
 
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DavidPF said:
But until the "laser" fad goes away, people are going to run into problems, and naturally they're going to want to solve them. But if you want them to not worry about the cutting board, you have to get them a reasonable non-brittle knife first.
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Is the problem really lasers?? Never once had chipping issues with my gesshin ginga w#2.
 
chiffonodd said:
Is the problem really lasers?? Never once had chipping issues with my gesshin ginga w#2.
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Yea, laser has nothing to do with it. Chipping is about knives that are stupid thin behind the edge, not necessarily at the spine, and with super hard steel. Gingas are comparatively soft. Although dulling isn't just chipping.
 
chiffonodd said:
Is the problem really lasers?? Never once had chipping issues with my gesshin ginga w#2.
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More like a combination of lasers and brittle steel, then? Nobody makes an X50CrMoV15 laser though. :)

(But if they did, I expect it would bend out of shape if you vigorously scraped it across a cutting board)
 
ian said:
Yea, laser has nothing to do with it. Chipping is about knives that are stupid thin behind the edge, not necessarily at the spine, and with super hard steel. Gingas are comparatively soft. Although dulling isn't just chipping.
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I'm certainly willing to admit my use of "laser" was wrong, just put "thin" instead where I wrote it.

My point is that people are justifiably nervous about damaging their fragile knives, and that I think outside of a few very special applications that most people won't encounter, they're more trouble than they're worth. At the same time, I get that pushing the boundaries of thin/hard/sharp blades is satisfying.
 
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DavidPF said:
I'm certainly willing to admit my use of "laser" was wrong, just put "thin" instead where I wrote it.

My point is that people are justifiably nervous about damaging their fragile knives, and that I think outside of a few very special applications that most people won't encounter, they're more trouble than they're worth. At the same time, I get that pushing the boundaries of thin/hard/sharp blades is satisfying.
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Yea, no worries. Usually around here a “laser” is something that has a thin spine, but that’s irrelevant to how brittle the edge is. What matters (in terms of geometry) is how thick the knife is like in the 1mm next to the edge, which is different. This is just a stupid KKF specific terminology quibble.
 
ecchef said:
Not quick to recognize tongue in cheek humor, are we?
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His particular post may have been tongue in cheek, but some others were definitely taking themselves very seriously. I apologize if I confused the two.
 
anyone tried wiping their butt with an 80 grit paper? i do this all the time. it then "technically" becomes toilet paper. 🧐
 
probably OT, still:

I'm noticing a trend lately...it may be that I seem to pick hobbies/interests where the forums are almost exclusively frequented by males worrying over details in an OCD like manner, or it could be that males tend to develop OCD traits over details nobody ever dreamt of before....or both, or I am secretly suffering from OCD and have not discovered it yet...with three hits the latter is more likely, yikes

Knives, check
Espresso, check
Audio, check
 
MarcelNL said:
probably OT, still:

I'm noticing a trend lately...it may be that I seem to pick hobbies/interests where the forums are almost exclusively frequented by males worrying over details in an OCD like manner, or it could be that males tend to develop OCD traits over details nobody ever dreamt of before....or both, or I am secretly suffering from OCD and have not discovered it yet...with three hits the latter is more likely, yikes

Knives, check
Espresso, check
Audio, check
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We need something to obsess over:). And when it’s something we can control at least a part of, it’s fun.
 
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