keith
@zipper
active 4 years, 3 months agoForum Replies Created
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I think my strop stroke is very much like yours, Marc. My Forschner blade is 12″ long, so I have to break up the stropping procedure into three smaller segments. I start at the heal of the blade and work toward the tip. I made a test polish to double check myself. I think, therefore, that my left hand gets lazy, and the away movement isn’t quite up to par. I need more vigilance and concentration in that spot. This happens somewhere in the forward half of the blade, as the leather shavings collect forward of the clamp.
It’s a very subtle thing. The blade is so sharp that I can’t even feel it shaving the leather. It gives me new found respect for ballet dancers and competition swimmers who must master every muscle to craft refined movement.
Thanks for the tips, Keith.
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It’s an interesting point to note, that with each increase in grit, the distance between the rod center and the face of the stone is slightly reduced. At least after being fully broken in. With each step, the average diameter of the diamond particles is smaller, hence the distance is less. The result is that the angle is reduced accordingly, assuming that you don’t change the micro-adjust settings. The total change is quite small, but it means that with each progression step, the stone will tend to cut closer to the apex. Clay called it a “happy accident,” and it really does work to our advantage. Check your stones with a micrometer or a good digital caliper and you’ll see the differences. If memory serves me, (as I age, it’s less reliable) each 0.010″ works out to be about 0.1 degrees over the 6″ from the knife edge to the ball joint. While you’re at it, check the difference from one end of the stone to the other. Occasionally, we see cases where a stone is not fully seated into its pocket. This causes angle variation on the side with the mal-positioned stone. The platen thickness and tape thickness are pretty fixed, so the differences in the face-to-face dimensions would be attributed to the height of the diamond substrates.
I checked all my stones for parallel, which was very good. However, there is variability in the distance from stone face to stone face among the stones. So, when I switch grits, I must check/reset the angle before cutting. This factors out the gradual o.10 degree angle change provided by grit progression. I could adjust my reset angle that 0.10 degree so I can enjoy that happy accident, assuming my angle finder is accurate enough. I didn’t realize that natural angle change happened. That’s really cool. Thanks for that tip.
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meyer:
I love the chef idea. You’re right, we’d need a few different designs, based on one’s occupation. Another could be of an executioner’s axe. Or Lizzy Borden’s. (joke) A Halloween specific shirt can show a vampire sharpening his fangs with a WE.
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I dunno, guys. My two cents here probably isn’t worth two cents. A cheetah and a lion: which is the better cat? There is no better cat. Both are fine products of fine engineering. The observer may favor the lion’s power over the cheetah’s speed, and vice versa. So it is with knives, it seems to me. If we assume two knives are of the finest steels, then I think a Japanese knife is equally as good the German’s. Granted, they have different characteristics. Any knife edge is going to wear/chip/roll when used. All that pressure applied to the knife gets concentrated into that micron sized edge when chopping, cutting, etc. But the Wusthoff edge will roll, and the Japanese edge will chip despite the users best habits. WE has solved that problem, I think. It quickly restores any rolled/chipped edge. I simply drop back to 1000 grit, sometimes to 800, and have my edge back to lethal in less than 20 minutes. I pound a 12″ Forschener, a lower tiered quality blade, stamped steel, cheap as a newspaper on a maple cross grained board. It takes a marvelous edge and holds it just fine, all things considered. Because I have my WE, I no longer worry about my Forschner. I’m free to make feta basil marinara and flood it over tortellini. Or carve up a fine buffalo sirloin, dice up some mushrooms and asparagus, and flambe’ it all in cream sherry. Don’t worry about your knives, boys, get in here, and eat! mmmmm.
Oh, uh, I do prefer the “power” of the European steel over the “speed” of Japanese steel. I like having some balanced mass in my hand. I want my blade to be tough enough to tolerate bumps and bone during handling, which comes at the price of blade hardness. But this recalls my heritage in food service. It got into my kitchen DNA very early and never bleached out. I don’t know what to say about that Wusthoff bolster. 🙂 Keith
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Gadzooks! How could I forget this source of error? When switching grits of stones, the stone/edge angle can change, corrupting your sharpening effort. Therefore, I check my angles with each grit change. I noticed that moving from stone pair to stone pair makes the biggest angle change. That tells me there is variability in the stone dimensions. This is no big deal. In a perfect world, changing stone pairs will perfectly keep the stone/edge angle. But nothing is perfect.
I did once run my calipers along the stone blocks to see if the two stone surfaces were indeed parallel. I was pleased to learn they were. This might explain why the stone/edge angle changed little when flipping the stone from 100 grit to 200 grit, for example.
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