Food Release: Stiction and the Grind

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Looking bloody amazing!

Can you see the hardening line in person? I'm guessing probably not given that 52100 is deeper hardening.
 
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I'm back baby! :D

I've been in timeout for a few weeks, working hard to improve the quality of my fit and finish.

Blade aesthetics are becoming a higher learning priority in my skill tree now that I have confidence in my knife grinds.
Here is the third food release knife I've made (all of them shown in this thread):


You guys have been highly influential to my 'look', and I think it's turned out great! Thanks heaps everyone, I'm really happy with where I am right now and can focus on other things, for at least a little while.

By now I've got to be at least a level 40 blacksmith or something...


Whoa! Crazy! At first I thought it was just a simple looking Stamped steel but then I saw how it tapered in then came back out for the large bevel (whatever it’s called?), this knife is sick! How much are you letting this go for?! If it’s a knife passaround is there ANY WAY I could get on the list!?!
 
Thanks Jville, HRC_64 and Ragustoriches!

Quick update:
I've recently sold this knife to ashy2classy. I've tidied it up a bit, made a dedicated handle for it etc...

i0mRYsB.jpg


He preferred the choil to lean forward towards the tip, rather than curving back, so I changed it slightly:

q9KSHJ4.jpg


One thing I've realized; As of yet I've never done a straight-up comparison with another knife. I have access to a factory grind Masamoto KS 250mm (shout-out to Marek07 for lending it to me), and I've recorded a quick video with them both in action with the hope it gives a better demonstration of just how much of a difference the 'hook' can make:

KlmjfpP.jpg


[video=youtube;0HGHpgg5HBs]

I gotta admit, when I go back to re-watch the video it looks like I'm using different techniques on each knife to encourage food to stick to the KS... I promise that's not the case at all. What's really happening is the food sticking to the KS changes the balance of the long and light knife with every cut. It throws the center of mass far forward making it harder to control and keep consistent rhythm, slowing me down (that's part of the appeal of the heavier workhorses, it's easier to ignore the changing weight of a heavier knife if food sticks to it). I also hate it when food falls backwards into the path of the knife again, and gets randomly re-cut. I try to stop it from happening with the KS and it slows me right down.
When none of this is a problem I can really get into the groove and, instead of slowing down, I begin to speed up.

I love using this hook grind! It's a lot of fun to use and I should really should look into copying/repeating the results. It took many hours of back and forth testing between the grinder and the chopping board to get it to this stage. It's taught me a huge amount about grinds in the process and there are probably a few people out there that wouldn't mind owning a knife like this for themselves.

I should also mention, when I said this earlier (in a different thread):



Some people have referred to this, believing I've been working on another project, but in fact I was talking about the development of the knife in this thread. This grind is enough work as it is haha!


That is awesome brother! Keep up the amazing work! As marek said, you Need to patent this before shun or wustof steal it from you! Again, if you’re looking to sell any of your prototypes or at least doing passarounds PLEASE keep me in mind!
 
I doubt you can patent a knife grind!

This one is going to Nemo. No hardening line sorry, I chickened out of trying to do it that way. The stock was getting thinner after all the thermo-cycling and I didn't want to risk putting it through a water quench.

Yeah Craig, at the recent Melbourne Blade Show I bought some 52100 and Takefu Shirogami Damascus to try. It's been interesting, but there's a demand for the water hardening steels after the passaround thread, so I'm going back to that soon.

I've finally worked out how to polish the hamon too, so it should be good to revisit.
 
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Damn kipp that's looking nice, I'm jelly. That's more the finish I was imaging on the hook grind
 
Yeah sorry Jville, I had no idea how to polish the knife when I made the first one. It turns out I needed to construct the blade in a different order to make it possible.

Yours will always be the first!
 
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I'm back baby! :D

I've been in timeout for a few weeks, working hard to improve the quality of my fit and finish.

Blade aesthetics are becoming a higher learning priority in my skill tree now that I have confidence in my knife grinds.
Here is the third food release knife I've made (all of them shown in this thread):


You guys have been highly influential to my 'look', and I think it's turned out great! Thanks heaps everyone, I'm really happy with where I am right now and can focus on other things, for at least a little while.

By now I've got to be at least a level 40 blacksmith or something...

Looking really good there Mr K! You've always made very nice cutters, now they're lookers as well.
Put me down for a couple please. :) :rolleyes:
 
I doubt you can patent a knife grind!

This one is going to Nemo. No hardening line sorry, I chickened out of trying to do it that way. The stock was getting thinner after all the thermo-cycling and I didn't want to risk putting it through a water quench.

Yeah Craig, at the recent Melbourne Blade Show I bought some 52100 and Takefu Shirogami Damascus to try. It's been interesting, but there's a demand for the water hardening steels after the passaround thread, so I'm going back to that soon.

I've finally worked out how to polish the hamon too, so it should be good to revisit.

Why not? It is unique design of something, people patent the dumbest **** that’s just a minor difference in something else. I’m sure you could do it. It’d cost a Lot of money though (I believe)
 
I have been using and comparing the 52100 240 (plus a bit) mm hook grind knife for a couple of weeks now.

The blade finish is great. It's semi-mirror. There are a FEW barely visible short linear coarse grind marks in the depths of the hook recess (about halfway up the blade) which are really only apparent because or the overall quality of the remainder of the finish. Given that Kip was not confident about being able to polish the hook crevice at all and this one was his first attempt at polishing it, I'm super stoked with the finish. The hardening line is not visible. The spine and choil are beautifully rounded, the choil rounding formed to fit the middle finger on the right blade face. The pine handle has a darker wood ferrule and an aluminum spacer. It's well tapered and comfortable.

The profile has a decent flat spot just in front of the heel, then a curve up to a mid height tip (I was given the option of a low, mid or high tip). The spine tapers along its entire length, more pronouned at the very thin tip. The knife is moderately heavy and quite blade heavy.

This knife is very thin behind the edge but the top of the hook bevel is less thin. Overall performance in hard tall foods is like a middleweight, just a tiny bit more wedgey than my (new grind) Gengetsu 240, maybe a little less than my 270mm Shiro Kamo Syousin Suminagashi. Much less than my Mizuno Hontanren wide bevel and my Yoshikane SKD Tsuchime.

Food release is amazing. Overall stiction in wet food is less than my (quite workhorsey) Mizuno and slightly less than my (very workhorsey) Yoshikane (still need to test it vs my Watanabe). Fine diced carrot, onioin and zucchini simply falls off the blade after the hook bevel.

Edge retention is probably in between well HT examples of white and blue. Which I guess is what you'd expecet given the steel's composition. I have stropped it twice. Once to repir a very minor edge ding (edge vs faucet, visible only as a glint of light on the edge), which came out with two stropping passes on a dry 8k Kitayama. Just yesterday after 2 weeks of continuous home use, I thought that the edge could do with a refresh. Once again, 2 light stropping passes on dry Kitayama bought the edge back to life. I reckon it's gonna be super easy to sharpen.

Reactivity is mild. It formed a grey-white patina after a bit over a week.

To me, this knife performs like a middleweight with the food release of a workhorse grind. I really like it. Really like it. The grind and profile are super and the fit and finish on the blade is very good. Well done, Kip.
 
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I'm glad you're enjoying the knife!
Awesome write up, feedback is always greatly appreciated. Cheers!
 
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I note that adherence of food to the blade and stiction in wet food are two different aspects af food release which don't necessarily go together. The hook grind seems to do them both well.

There was some question as to whether the hook would catch on onioin during horizontal cuts. This hasn't been an issue so far in my use.
 
You can patent anything that [can successfully be shown] to have uniqueness/improvement of function, the law firm has a lot to do with this. Takes 3-4 years to actually get the patent, and figure at least $15K lawyer and patent office fees, and possibly double that depending on the number of patent reviews it has to go through. No money back if rejected. Think it worth it?
 
$15k and all that work for a maybe? Wow sod that, unless someone wants to spot me the cash! :D
I'm actually curious: If anyone does attempt to copy this grind, what method will they come up with to polish it? It's a pain in the ass haha!
uG99Uo0.jpg

On a separate note, I've had some interest from the German KKF for a passaround. They'd like to compare this hook style of food release against some of the other major players - Dalman, Xerxes and the like.
It got me thinking, if I make one for them I should definitely make a second passaround for this forum too. Fit and finish would be worse than above. Maybe just for fun I could call a lottery for the last spot in the rotation, whoever ends with it would get to keep it.

The thing is I get requests for custom orders faster than I make the knives (I'm a slow hobbyist maker), and I cant just ignore those. :confused:
I gotta work this out...
s0xbzbF.jpg
 
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Oh btw, it's too late for a patent anyways as you have already publicly released the design.

You can try electropolishing, minimum batch quantities are typically around $200, and that would cover a pretty large batch of knives, they will possibly do some free sample pieces for you. The EP house can tell you what sort of finish you need to rough it to, I think a 220 grit sandpaper would be OK, possibly not even that fine.
 
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Seek out a company that can drop-forge the blades and launch a kickstarter that actually rocks the whole kitchen knife world. That way the whole world can benefit.

Don't forget to include a lefty version though.
 
From my discussions with Kip about this, I think that the main issue with Ku is that it's difficult to maintain a constant width blade road when the knife tapers as much as Kip's blades do (you have to constantly adjust the angle of the blade road as you go down the length of the blade).
 
Yeah I tried it at one stage and it didn't work out with the way I taper the spine on my blades. As Nemo recalls, it has a lot to do with this shape of shinogi looking wrong... even though it's fine.
KU would look really odd on this grind:
JPGQnsL.jpg

PHphnQh.jpg

You simply can't taper a blade like this without making a KU blade look like crap.
I have similar problems with low layer pattern-welded steel and san-mai construction.
 
That wouldn't be a bad idea, but I'd need to look into the chemicals. Got any leads? :p
 
Kip's knifes do have really great taper, probably as good, if not the best, as any I've used
 
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