Do you remove small chips ASAP?

I get lots of chips… on my cheap knives. And yes, they bother me and go right to the WE vise. More often, I get dents or dings or whatever you want to call them; plastic deformation of the edge.

You may be asking the wrong demographic here. We’re all nuts about making stuff really sharp and won’t tolerate a knife that’s not really sharp. Until I graduated to the WE system, I’d wait until the damage was affecting the usability of the knife. That usually meant that the knife was used until it was dull. Hell, I didn’t even know that my knives were getting chips and dings. All I knew was that they wouldn’t cut worth a darn.

I’ve never heard anyone suggest that letting a chip go unattended might propagate more chips. That’s not what you’re asking, is it?

I find that there are just some blades which chip, period. First time it happened I worked hard to remove a chip or two, and more chips formed. I’ve seen this with several knives over the last couple years. Now if I get a chip, I generally won’t try too hard to remove it. Of course there are chips and there are CHIPS and like others say, it’s your choice whether to leave a chip in the edge or not.