Edge for butcher

It depends. 🙂
For hacking through big heavy bones you want a wider angle 28-30 or more degrees per side on a thick cleaver. My uncle was a butcher for most of his post military life and his 13″ dexter russell butcher knife which was high carbon steel (chef knife shape) he put a 20-25 degree per side for general use such as breaking down meat after quartered with less cutting through heavy bone. If the mrs. Has a thin slicer i wouldnt go less than 20 degrees per side unless she has a super hard Japanese supersteel type knife. If it is a standard saber style industrial steel goto 25 per side.

Try an angle and if it doesnt last make it wider. If it lasts and you want it to slice smoother narrow the angle. From my experience in kitchens, most run of the mill restaurant and industrial knives are cheap. You will have to hone on a steel often anyways. Hone until honing doesnt work then sharpen. With high hardness knives now you can get into actual sharp edge retention because they hold it well.

You could also go thinner and if it doesnt last you can increase the angle a couple of degrees and just put a micro bevel on the knife. That way it cuts like a thinner knife but has the edge retention of a wider angle.

this is good advice` I bought a Kershaw skyline after watching the crazy swede shave with one and put a 15 degree bevel on mine and down to .5 diamond spray on a strop. Man did that thing come out sharp. but while field dressing a deer with it I rolled the edge. The cutting part went great but when I split the ribs that is when the edge rolled a little. So instead of resharpeneing to the original 15 degrees I put a 20 degree micro bevel on. It still seems very sharp. Now all I need is another volunteer deer that needs the ribcage split to see if this edge will roll or not.

Lucky

I also agree with micro bevelling. I too am a butcher, but not the shop kind, i started off boning beef quarters on the table(block boning)in one of the biggest meat and lamb processing plants in ireland boning on average 110 plus quarters a day. We now work on a line system that me and another colleague developed and implemented making the flow of product more efficient and less risk of injury to the workforce. I have found that a basic v edge is good in the beef boning business if you just need your knives sharp,but when boning you also need the edge to be strong and this is where micro bevelling comes in. I run my victronox knives at a 17 or 18 degree angle depending on the thickness of the blade with a primary bevel 21 degrees. Now just to prove how effective this was i took one of the lads old knives and i mean it was old,like a needle and as sharp as a spoon, if you were to run it across your arm you would more than likely get a bad friction burn. I sharpened it up on the wicked edge exactly as i explained and boned all day every day for too weeks without touching it up on the wicked edge. No joke it was still super sharp at the end of the second week. Steeling is still required to maintain the edge. Knife steeling is an art in its own,can take years to master and can destroy a knife if wrongly used but this is a whole different topic. Hope this helped.

Ronan

Almost forgot the stones and the strops that you are getting should be fine as this is the combination that i use for all of my knives.

I’ve only dressed out whitetail-sized critters and found that the usual 20 dps job seemed to work fine, until I got to splitting the pelvic bone or the sternum, after which the edge near the heel would be rolled or chipped.  I sharpen skinning knives at 18-20 dps to a good polish, with a very light 20 dps micro-bevel at 1000 grit.

Has anyone thought about installing a more obtuse bevel angle near the heel to protect against the abuse of splitting born or cartilage at extreme pressure?  I’m imagining something like a Buck General (#120) where the blade is long enough to support two profiles.  You wouldn’t use the forward half of the blade unless you were batoning it.  I’ve come to use 20 dps for working knives belonging to others, but use 17 for my own, as it cuts much better and I’ve always have access to sharpening.

The dual-bevel arrangement seems even more workable for butchers who have much longer blades than the rest of us.  Or do they keep a separate knife for boning work?