How sharp could it be?

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J

Jim

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A funny story about the uninitiated-

My bride and I had dinner plans with some friends and they stopped by the house so we could jump in one car, we were chatting in the kitchen and Ro says to her husband Tom, " hey look at all these pretty knives screwed to the wall" we had a laugh and I explained my Martel magnetic block and how it worked. Ro pulls my Ino off the block and I cautioned her, "hey be careful it's really sharp" Tom then says " how sharp could it be?"

So I took the Ino and said" let me see your arm", I shaved a 6"x2" monkey patch on his forearm in one pass. His face was priceless.

He kept looking at that arm the whole night at dinner and saying,"I did not even feel it". hahaha.:lol2:
 
heh, i've done that same thing before, and it's awfully fun. :)
 
Yeah, I love doing that. This reminds me of one guy that came by and decided it was okay to run his fingers lightly up and down the edge on one of the knives I was using after I told him to be careful. A little while later, he was shocked to find his fingers were sticky from the blood.
 
:) love those stories. I did that with two people who I work with, same priceless look.
 
Can't do the mag block, got visions of coming home from work only to see cats impaled. I had my Betteys all hung up for at one time but they have no sharp tips and I waxed the edges of them.
 
i agree with colin here. they look fantastic all shiny and sharp up on a magnet block but i always feel like either the magnets will fail and my precious cutlery will fall or that in grabbing one, ill really take out a chunk of my finger (it already happened with the heel of a crappy shun serrated knife a few years ago)

i also have two nephews that come over often and although they are only 5 and 3, they are like little mountain-climbers
 
FWIW I have my block hung on the side of a cabinet with the handles at eye level, much more secure from small fingers than a draw, I would have to lift my hand over my head to grab a blade..
 
I grew up with a set of Sabs my dad would occasionally beat up on a honing steel, and contine doing so until they would cut a hair or two with considerable convincing and pressure(my dad has thick skin and coarse hair). I sharpened his Buck skinner for him, and he went to do his go-to test, rubbing it on his ultra-hairy arm. A swath of hair came off like a Recruit's locks at boot camp. He later said "I never would have guessed it could even get that sharp".

Forget impressed, forget shocked, forget scared. We go for the confused look here. What the hell just happened?
 
johndoughy said:
I grew up with a set of Sabs my dad would occasionally beat up on a honing steel, and contine doing so until they would cut a hair or two with considerable convincing and pressure(my dad has thick skin and coarse hair). I sharpened his Buck skinner for him, and he went to do his go-to test, rubbing it on his ultra-hairy arm. A swath of hair came off like a Recruit's locks at boot camp. He later said "I never would have guessed it could even get that sharp".

Forget impressed, forget shocked, forget scared. We go for the confused look here. What the hell just happened?
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ah man, that's great! i wish my dad were still alive: he used to do something similar with his Wusthofs (he used to sharpen his carbon Randall hunting knives properly on Arkansas stones, but he was just convinced, for whatever reason, that scraping his kitchen knives on the hone over and over was the right way to do it), and i would love to show him what a truly sharp chef's knife is like. oh well. the man was a top notch aerospace engineer and super smart, but he was really stubborn with some things, so he might have accidentally skinned his arm with my Shig and still have argued that his way was better, while we rode in the ambulance to the hospital.
 
Sometimes waiting staff where I work look at my knives and it is funny to see their faces when I shred paper with no effort. It is funny because I am so used to sharp edges that I can feel even tiny differences in how easy a knife cuts paper and sometimes it disappoints me when I try paper
 
stevenStefano said:
Sometimes waiting staff where I work look at my knives and it is funny to see their faces when I shred paper with no effort.
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I gave a few of my cooks a lesson in sharpening last week at work, they're jaw dropped when they used their knives at work during service. By their knives, I mean the house dexter russell's and columbia cutlery with the poly handles... To my surprise, those knives held their edges for about three days with just minor honing. Makes me wonder how far wusthof and henckels have fallen from grace.

On a side note, paper isn't a true determination of an edge's sharpness IMHO. I think it's a useful test when combined with other methods just not a tell all method.
 
A recent utube vid of a bozo demo'ing his gizmos showed him cutting paper, I could see how small changes in his approach made a knife tear or cut. His show was quite deceptive, butt looked legit if you didn't know what he was up to.
 
I know cutting paper is a rather unrealistic way of testing a knife's sharpness, but what I meant was that I am so used to sharp edges now that I can notice tiny differences in how the knife cuts paper when I do it to show off
 
Another chef at my work usually use crappy knifes with almost no edge. One day I saw him shaking his head and I asked what was wrong. He had picked up one of my knifes and were chocked when cutting some veggies ... my knife almost stuck to our huge wooden table. I'm not a pro sharpener but my edges are a 100 times sharper than any knife he uses. I really don't understand how anybody can work in a pro-kitchen using dull knifes. I ended up giving him one of my knifes ... now he can enjoy prep work instead of fighting his way thru a cucumber lol
 
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