New Edges and Observations

Speaking of sharpening….

I picked up an Eze-Lap diamond hone for work.  I use a rubber mill knife to cut rubber hoses and belts at work.  Many of these products have Kevlar fabric which can be cut but ruins the knife edge.  My co-worker has been using a cheap ceramic pocket sharpener in which he has ground a flat spot.  The diamond hone works better, but I noticed a “thunk” at the end of the sharpening stroke.  Of course, when you work with microscopes it’s easy to take a look. 

 

I found a small bump at the edge of the hone.  I don’t think it will affect the sharpening, but it gives me the shivers every time I make a stroke.

Eze-Lap coarse with bump at the edge

A new Spyderco has arrived.  It’s the Balance.  The closed knife resembles an equal arm balance, the favorite of classical analytical chemists.  That’s not me, but still it speaks to me.   

Spyderco Balance

Open, it’s a mini- gurkha knife or khukuri.  The knife is less than 3 inches closed and weighs 1.4 ozs.  That’s less than two first class pieces of mail!

 

The handle is carbon fiber and the steel VG-10.  The small clip can be moved to any of the four positions: tip up, tip down and right or left.  

If you look at it and ask what’s it’s for, well sorry, but you’re not a knife person.  Sometimes they are just for the heck of it.  Other times you have a specific need that a knife fills in a specific way.

I had a knife on sale on eBay, a byrd Meadowlark from Santa Fe Stoneworks in spiny oyster.  

byrd knife with Santa Fe Stoneworks spiny oyster grip

 
Somebody got a very good deal, but that’s beside the point.  It didn’t want to sell here so it sold somewhere else.  The thing is, the winning bid came in the last 12 seconds.  Was it sniping software, fast reflexes, or just good timing to get the bid in so late that nobody could counter bid?  

As a seller or buyer, I’m not sure I approve of sniping software.  But if you really want something, bid your maximum in the last 15 minutes.  eBay will auto bid to your max against incoming bids.  You’ll either get it or not at some price including your maximum.  But you will not fall victim to a sniper while trying to get a deal.

Sharp Conversation

After dinner she put down her glass and looked over to me, “How often should I sharpen my knife?”

I looked at her and then over to my wife.  We had just finished dinner and I was sharpening our guest’s pocket knife at the dinner table.  Clearly some sign was needed before I carried on.  I got it.

“If you wait until it’s dull, you’ve waited too long.  It’s always easier to touch up an edge than to bring a dead edge back to life.”  

“What about electric sharpeners?”  She asked a good question and I had half an answer.

“Depends.  Some people press too hard, leave it in contact with the rotating stones too long and heat the blade up too much.  That will damage it.”

There’re really only a few things to remember about tempering and steel.  Tempering is actually a softening step.  The martensite that forms from austenite can make steel so hard as to be unusable.  Tempering allows other softer structures to form and make the steel usable.   Too much tempering, too soft to hold a good edge.  Too hard and the blade snaps too easy.

Almost all the structures that give steel its incredible properties are diffusion based.  Diffusion is driven by time, temperature and moderated by distance.  Heating a knife blade at the thin edge will affect the steel more than heating the spine the same amount.  And the effects of heat cycles are cumulative. 

So how often should you sharpen and how?

I believe you should sharpen when the edge seems to be getting dull.  If you’re butchering a deer you may want to touch the blade up often.  If all you do is cut string and open paper envelopes, you can go a long time.

In the kitchen you should touch up the blade of your chef’s knife before you use it.  The sharpening steel doesn’t sharpen the edge, it draws the wire edge out.  That’s a good thing, as the wire edge is the really the source of sharpness.

You’ll find it easier to keep a sharp knife sharper than resharpen a dull knife.  And I learned that the hard way.

Last summer was a time for “trench warfare.”  I was running underground cable to my soon-to-be-built garage.  After it was up I got a lot of help from my friend Rick with wiring the garage.  With all the cutting and trimming my favorite work knife, a CRKT Crawford Kasper folder, became very dull.

How dull?

So dull it refused to cut anything.

I could have taken it to a professional sharpener and had it re-edged, but as penance and hard luck lesson, I resharpened it myself with my Spyderco sharpener. 

Spyderco Sharpmaker

 I’m still working on it.  I get it sharp, but as soon as I need it for some job it slides toward dull.  I haven’t been able to spend enough time to push it from sharp to very sharp, which is where I prefer my knives.

I also use the Lansky system.  The ability to hold each progressively finer grit stones at the same angle is a gift from the knife gods.   

Lansky system

The downside: it’s a lot of work to set up properly just for a little touch up.

Benchstones. I’ve got more than a few.  The key to good benchstone sharpening is reproducibility and cleanliness.

Gunk up the natural pores in the stone and it will not sharpen.  So use a good oil and clean it off when you’re done.

Holding the knife edge to the same angle through each stroke is critical for a sharp edge.  We can all get better at it, but some people are gifted at it.  I’m not one of them.

Years ago I bought a Buck Honemaster to help me sharpen my knives.  

Buck Honemaster  

You can see a dull strip of metal towards the edge sitting on the wood.  That's metal wear from sharpening blades.

 It clamps on your blade and holds it at the angle you select.  The angle isn’t very reproducible between sharpenings, but you can get a fine edge with it.  Of course, as you wear metal from the knife edge, you wear metal from the Honemaster.   It’s a strange sensation knowing you’re destroying the means of making a great edge while you’re making a great edge. 

Buck Honemaster holding my Commando Cutlery on the fine side of a benchstone

On the whole, sharpen your knives before they get dull.  They’ll work better, faster and easier.  A sharp knife reflects well on its owner.

Christmas Knives

Christmas knives are often new, exciting slivers of steel and polymer (yes, Virginia, unless you have stone or bone handles, it’s a polymer) that catch our attention for a few moments around the tree. 

“Oh! Helen,” he said, over the sound of wrapping paper being shredded.  “It’s a hand-made tactical friction folder from Frantic Forge!  It’s just what I wanted.”

Her comeback was not entirely unexpected.

“Oh, John!” She managed to be heard over the kitchen timer and the sound of bubbling pots.  “It’s just what I wanted!  A hand-made bread knife combination turnip carver from Kitchen Dungeon Forge.”

This scene is played out in front of Hanukkah candles and Christmas trees all around the world.  Trust me, I’ve had a few of these moments myself.

While we’re lost in admiration of our newest knives, there’s a few knives from Christmas past still hanging around.  If, like Marley, I’m forced to drag a chain of knives with me through the next world, I hope these are attached.

Electric carving knives, one of mankind's most enduring inventions

That’s my brother-in-law carving a turkey.  He’s mastered the art of carving a bird.  When I try that my results look like I used a hammer.  I always enjoy watching him make short work of a bird.

If I had one knife to symbolize family and friends it would be a knife like this.

What would a holiday be without family and friends?  I’m sure countless men and women in our armed forces could tell us from past experience.  It makes my eyes water when I think of all of them overseas, so far from family and friends with only their comrades near.  It’s an imperfect world, but I believe the Man Upstairs has a special mark by each of their names in His Book of Life. 

God bless and keep ‘em safe.

The Cold Steel bread knife:  good for cutting bread and fighting ninjas

My wife loves to bake bread.  Could there be anything more fundamental to the human condition than bread?  We break bread with friends.  We welcome new members to communities with bread, and we give bread to loved ones departing on long trips.  “I packed you an extra sandwich,” mothers used to say to sons, daughters and husbands when they departed on a journey.  It’s something I miss.

Christmas spirit – the short version

Whether or not you believe in Christ as Redeemer, can there be any question that his message of peace, love, harmony and forgiveness has value for men and women then and now?

Everyday we hear the Siren song of the modern world.  For a few days at Christmas be like Odysseus’ sailors and pour wax in your ears and ignore the material world just a little.  Enjoy the real Christmas values: Peace, Home, Family, Friends, Harmony, Love and Forgiveness.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!