Do you remove small chips ASAP?

[Lukas Pop]

Hi guys, do you remove small chips on your working edges immediately, or they don’t bother you?

[Josh]

I don’t normally get chips… just wear. but yeah, I do pretty much immediately… it bothers me too much to leave em lol

[tcmeyer]

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?

[wickededge]

Some people I talk to feel that removing chips is an unnecessary waste of metal because so much has to be removed to get to the bottom of the chip so they advocate just continuing to sharpen the knife as needed. The idea is that the chip will eventually be removed by repeated sharpenings. Personally, I can’t stand having them in the blade, so I remove them.

-Clay

[Lukas Pop]

Thank you for your answers. I remove bigger chips ASAP. But sometimes I get small chip, observable only by microscope or by cutting paper, but I don’t see some perceivable deterioration of cutting abilities. So I am not decided if removing the chip is worth the work and removal of metal. I think in case of kitchen knives, their cutting abilities deteriorate with removal of metal, because they become thicker behind the edge.

[Geocyclist]

I guess the short answer is it is up to your personal tolerance. I try to avoid chipping in the first place on good knives. On cheap beaters I don’t care, so I don’t sharpen them up immediately.

What I can add is that if I do chip a good blade I think first if I should go to a more obtuse angle before just resharpening it. With the WEPS it is tempting to go as low possible, but it may not be the best angle for your application and the steel at hand.

If I feel a snag whilel slicing paper to check sharpness I try hand stropping first. This often produces good results. Which I believe is just edge deformation not a real chip.

[Allgonquin]

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.

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