Best finish to use??
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>Hi guys,>I’ve had the Wicked edge for a couple of years and love it. Thing is I can never really figure out what it the best edge to settle on. I love sharpening them like a mirror finish and slashing phone book paper and shavings sharp with it etc, but these edges don’t seem to last long. My main purpose is to skin rabbits, pheasants and duck etc. I have tried a really toothy finish also like a 400 grit finish. I want a very sharp knife but I want it to last and not go blunt after a couple of rabbit’s etc. And advise guys.
Hope you don’t mind me cleaning up your post…
I don’t get much heavy cutting use anymore, so I can’t testify as to which edge is best and lasts longest. But since you’re open to trying different options, I’d suggest trying a polished bevel (maybe 3 micron) at maybe 18 dps, then go to 20 dps and with only three or four very light strokes per side, create a toothy microbevel using your 800 or 1000-grit stones.
Toothy edges work best with very tough or slippery materials. The polished bevels greatly reduce friction and promote penetration. Consider that a polished edge will slide right over a nylon rope with very little penetration. A little “tooth” will dig in very nicely.
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I chopped up two pheasant breaststroke and diced then up on a site plastic chopping board.
I replaced my wife’s favorite plastic boards with softer silicone boards. Knives stay sharp much longer.
Steve: Do you have a USB microscope? It would be interesting to know if the reduction in “sharpness” is due to damage or wear.
You don’t say in your posts, but what is your bevel angle? From discussions on this forum a couple of years ago, it’s been said that skinning knives should probably be sharpened to angles somewhat higher than with other knives; maybe 25-28 dps, to help avoid accidental cut-throughs of the hide. This might also add some durability to an edge. If such an edge doesn’t meet your general needs, maybe you ought to buy an actual skinning knife.
As to kitchen knives, I think it might be pretty typical for a knife that was really sharp right after the honing process to lose that really fine “edge” rather quickly, but still have a very sharp edge for continued use. Slicing paper is fun, but is that degree of sharpness necessary?
The following comment isn’t necessarily relevant to this discussion, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to say and maybe I can tie it in…
I watched a video earlier this week, where a fellow compared the durability of a polished edge, compared to a toothy edge and the toothy edge won hands down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Nnnde3f2w
If you consider the principle of serrated edges, you’ll see that the serrations don’t just provide a “saw-like” cutting action. The tips of the serrations protect the sharp edges of the valleys from abuse. This is why so many steak knives are serrated. The tips keep the valleys from wearing against the dinner plate. We have a mindset that because serrated knives are difficult to sharpen, we hardly ever sharpen them, but the fact is that they last much longer because their sharp edges are protected so well. A toothy edge is to some degree a cousin of the serrated edge.
Which is why I think the fellow’s simple test showed his toothy edge to last longer. However, if the knife has a particularly soft edge and/or a rather acute sharpening angle, the “teeth” will soon be rolled over or broken off. A before and after photo taken with a microscope might help to tell us what’s happening.
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Another option is to use more than one knife/cutting tool.
I think this is the key. I have found that one blade to perform all cutting tasks isn’t healthy for the blade. My Grand Dad always said; “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. While a single tool will do the job, a tool designed for the problem, will usually do it better. For delicate cutting tasks skinny shiny bevels are great, but for cutting bone, however, they would fail miserably. This is the case for even the small bones found in poultry and fish.
When processing meat of all types, one needs to consider “Steeling” during the transition of your tools from one blade to another and sometimes from one piece of meat to the other. When a Knife edge contacts a hard object like cutting boards, counter-tops, or bone, the cutting edge can roll over and become dull. This rolled edge will cause dragging and tearing and will not cut smoothly.
Using a precision guided Steel like a Razor Edge Mouse Trap found HERE will greatly improve knife cutting performance between sharpening sessions. First, you must have a keen edge to begin with, then use a smooth steel not a course one or you will erase the work done during sharpening. Never steel rapidly but use slow, careful, very light studied strokes. The angle you start with at the hilt of the blade should be the same angle you end up with at the end of your stroke, when you are out at the tip of the blade-John Juranitch. Using the modern guided steels like what I have shared above makes this task easy. You will find these in meat processing plants all over the United States. Even some of the best butchers in the world had trouble perfecting a standard steeling technique with this tool the task becomes easy. Watch a second source Video HERE.
I agree with the cutting board material being a major factor as well. This is the most overlooked knife dulling mistake. Although plastic is easy to clean and prevents the transmission of bacteria, cutting surfaces like wood are still far better at protecting not only the surface of your counter but the edge of a blade too. I recommend using multiple cutting boards, one for meat (Sometimes even divided between one for poultry and beef), one for fish and one for vegetables.
Let me know if this is helpful!
Eddie Kinlen
M1rror Edge Sharpening Service, LLC
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I think there might be something else at play with your knife which is something that Cliff Stamp has been talking about for a long time – fatigued metal at the edge. When you’re sharpening, your drawing and stretching the metal to the edge and then often forming a burr. From there, the burr is folded back and forth many, many times, which causes work hardening and eventually micro-fracturing of the metal at the edge. It’s like bending a paper clip back and forth a few times. It becomes impossible to bend it multiple times in the same place and if you force it, you wind up breaking it fairly quickly. Cliff recommends “de-stressing” the metal by taking a stone laid flat, perpendicular to the actual edge and removing some of the metal to reveal structurally sound metal underneath. Once you’ve flattened the edge enough to expose new metal, then you begin rebuilding your bevels to reach an apex. If you have access to a high magnification loupe, you can create the apex without ever forming a burr. You have to color in the bevels and observe carefully, under magnification, when you are reaching the very edge. Stop when you can no longer see any marker and switch to the next higher grit and progress until you reach your desired finish.
Another thing you might try is to thin the blade a little by taking the angle down as low as you can and then add in a micro-bevel at an angle you like. A thinner blade means you need to use less force to penetrate through material. Less force will help with edge retention since force is the main enemy of sharpness.
If it were my knife, I think I’d try de-stressing the edge and then re-profiling to as low an angle as I can hit. I’d leave it there and use the knife for a while to observe how long the edge lasts. It might be interesting to keep some paper nearby where you are doing your meat prep. Every few strokes, clean the blade off and see how it does with the paper. You might learn something from it about what’s dulling the blade. Once you have a good sense of how long the edge lasted, add a very small micro-bevel only 1-2 degrees wider than the main bevel and test again. Keep adding micro-bevels every time you go to use the knife again and record your results. Eventually you’ll find the optimal edge geometry for that knife. After that, you can experiment with finishes i.e. toothy vs. polished. Doing both at once gives you too many variables to obtain any meaningful information.
-Clay
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