The "Why did you think that was ok" Sharpening Video Collection

Thanks to Cliff, I've been perusing youtube for sharpening videos, and some stand out as real winners. I'll start by offering this one. It's not enough to offer a video, so I'll point out the parts I consider...questionable.

First, the video:





Then, a few issues.

What are you using the knife for that 16 passes per side will resharpen it? 8 passes per side followed by 8 more alternating on each stone? If that restored the edge, it couldn't have been really dull, unless you were sharpening a microbevel, which is clearly not the intention.

Polished edge off a 6k stone, ok. Stropping on a belt, common enough, though I disagree about it having any real effect. The final step of using a car window really puzzles me though. I've tried it, and it worked, but I'd never try it on a freshly honed and polished edge.

As a final disclaimer, inciting rants like this is why I rarely watch youtube for knife content anymore.

I thought we were friends. Now you go and dis RAY MEARS hoe dare you.

He uses it mostly for wood though. So overall sharpness needed is low, and actual abrasion of the edge is low so its not worn much either. It shouldn't take much to get his knife sharp enough for his tastes. So his hodge podge method of sharpening isn't that suprising.

What Ray presents in those video's are just things he has heard, a lot of them make no sense when you put them together. A window edge serves as a smooth steel, why would you possibly due that after you have just finished sharpening, it is something you do after the knife is used, a little dull and you don't have a stone to sharpen it.





The problem I have with this is that they do not say what they are doing and why it works. The reason why it works (if it does) is because the angle is higher than the edge so it sets a micro-bevel immediately. Of course if you keep doing this in a short period of time you will have a fairly steep edge angle on your knife as yo have to increase it every time you sharpen.

If you don't know anything then it looks like magic, a few passes and your knife is sharp, however if you start trying it then you are very likely to have problems and if you complain this is when you will likely get hit with "there is an art to it" or similar.

I believe Fisk was the guy who first started using this method and then thing to realize with Fisk is that he does it after he has brought a knife to an apex already on a belt sander, all he is doing on the stone is just setting the apex. Even in that case though, there is no need to put high force on the stone, it never is productive to put more force on the stone than what is required to cut.

To be fair though, a lot of people have hidden assumptions in their method which they use to sharpen and they don't disclose them.

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Old Spice
He uses it mostly for wood though. So overall sharpness needed is low, and actual abrasion of the edge is low so its not worn much either. It shouldn't take much to get his knife sharp enough for his tastes. So his hodge podge method of sharpening isn't that suprising.

I think what you are calling a "overall sharpness" is at best a misnomer and at worst an assumption. It takes a different sharpness to work wood than it does to cut fibrous material. A clean cut in wood needs a very refined apex with no/minuscule "tooth" . I would also suggest that if you would consider cutting wood non abrasive you are again wrong, wood has silica, some more some less but it will take a shaving edge and round it quite quickly as compared to say a tomato.

Considering his main use for the knife is wood is it a big issue for him to want a smooth cut? Weather or not I agree with the method, there is hundreds of years of study that shows a smooth cut is optimal in wood. Both for ease of cut and aesthetics. I will also put forth this, when I am finishing a piece of wood with a smoothing plane I will sharpen it as often as every ten passes. And I will only need a few passes per grit to attain a smooth finish. Yes 16 passes can be enough if your intention is to maintain a pristine finish.

Mark, I can see what you are saying, but working on wood bought for cabinetry is very different than working on a dirty stick you pick up off the ground.

First he isn't doing fine carpentry. He is cutting up sticks and tieing them together for various purposes in his camp. You can do thousands of cuts into wood before the edge degrades to the point that it can't cut through wood anymore. I have cut wood for hours and sure the knife doesn't shave anymore but it can still cut the wood. If you don't need to meet some esthetic value. We are obviously considering this from a different scale of what abrassive is too. Yours beginning with a tomato, mine being something past wood.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2014 08:46PM by Old Spice.

Here is another gem. I have no argument that sharpening with a belt sander will produce a sharp edge. It will make a scary, treetopping sharp edge in short order. That edge will work well until you cut something that pushes back a little bit. Then it will fold. I've sharpened the Barong and seen no sparks (320 belt followed by leather) yet had it fold on the first few cuts in the yard. Light vegetation, briars, etc, no problem. Wood, problem.

However, the insistence that his thermometer tells the whole story is very off putting. Also, he'll need more than just a short video to prove his edges are better than what a WEPS is capable of doing.

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CliffStamp
Mark, I can see what you are saying, but working on wood bought for cabinetry is very different than working on a dirty stick you pick up off the ground.

Aside from the fact that he usually cuts green wood it isn't really any different than cutting wood for cabinetry. If you look at it with the mindset that this stick will be the most perfect stick ever cut then the notch in the deadfall will be perfect. I am not making judgments about a craftsman just based on the notion that a less than perfect edge will cut wood, we know it will. What I am saying is that to him(Ray Mears) the knife needs to be perfect to do the work he expects of it.

With that out of the way, yes it is a strange sharpening technique, he is a bit odd over all. In another sharpening video he shows a dc4 sharpener he carries along with three small nails to mount it to a fallen log.

Really if toothpaste can cut steel it would wear our teeth down to nubs by the time we hit puberty.

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Mark a
I think what you are calling a "overall sharpness" is at best a misnomer and at worst an assumption. It takes a different sharpness to work wood than it does to cut fibrous material. A clean cut in wood needs a very refined apex with no/minuscule "tooth" .

Important for dead seasoned wood, less important for green wood (more like fibrous), also varies a lot depending on wood type.

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Mark a
I would also suggest that if you would consider cutting wood non abrasive you are again wrong, wood has silica, some more some less

Yes, very dependant, some are pretty low, some so high the local sawmill wouldn't take the timbers.

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Old Spice
You can do thousands of cuts into wood before the edge degrades to the point that it can't cut through wood anymore. I have cut wood for hours and sure the knife doesn't shave anymore but it can still cut the wood.

Yep, but as sharpness disappears work becomes increasingly difficult, also I'd guess damage is somewhat quadratic: once the edge gets slightly damaged, it takes slightly more load to cut, so it damages slightly more and so on...

What is the point of this :





-tactical knives don't need to be sharp
-no knife needs to be sharp
-putty knives are good for kitchen work

I think he meant to say something like :

If a knife is ground very thick, even if it is well sharpened then it can still bind in many materials and will not cut well.

It gets confusing when he uses the putty knife and this raises the obvious question as to why you would sharpen a knife at all if you just need a thin blade. The answer is of course that not all materials behave like carrots, try the experiment with leather and see which knife cuts it better, the thick tactical which is well sharpened or the thin putty knife.

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CliffStamp
I think he meant to say something like :

If a knife is ground very thick, even if it is well sharpened then it can still bind in many materials and will not cut well.

I think you are correct, that is the point he wanted to get across, it just wasn't the best way to do so, and the putty knife does confuse things.


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

Not a video : [www.wickededgeusa.com] .

Why would you do that to a mower blade?

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CliffStamp
Not a video : [www.wickededgeusa.com] .

Why would you do that to a mower blade?

I have no idea. When I do mine it goes from the bench grinder to a nail (balance check) and back on the machine. 1000 strokes! Lol

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CliffStamp
What is the point of this :

[www.youtube.com]

-tactical knives don't need to be sharp
-no knife needs to be sharp
-putty knives are good for kitchen work

I think he meant to say something like :

If a knife is ground very thick, even if it is well sharpened then it can still bind in many materials and will not cut well.

It gets confusing when he uses the putty knife and this raises the obvious question as to why you would sharpen a knife at all if you just need a thin blade. The answer is of course that not all materials behave like carrots, try the experiment with leather and see which knife cuts it better, the thick tactical which is well sharpened or the thin putty knife.

Agreed it's poor pedagogy. What it just means is that a sharp apex can't save a thick profile (and to a point, a blunt edge can be saved by thin profile). But yeah message is very blurry.

This is the first time I have seen this in a how-to video :





It is a common problem, but note how he goes from coarse to medium to fine then if that doesn't work he recommends just repeating it over until it does.

"Lather, rinse, repeat..." He doesn't know why or what he's checking for and is relying on counting passes and angle consistancy. With enough patience, this method will work. It's just nowhere near efficient.

Chefs are far from knife experts, not surprised their grasp is basic at best.

Yes, many chefs have a poor understanding of knives and a very low standard for sharpness but the influences from Japanese culture seems to be turning that around to some extent so you see more and more of this





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There is an ironic part about this video :





Note how the very nice visual demonstration of the wedge on the foam very clearly shows the exact problem that comes with stropping on soft backings which is how the deformation can cause the abrasive to roll up across the edge and round it.





I have a certain fondness for this guy, I think it is because he is just a good old boy, though we call them hillbillies. You have to admit that he gets a hell of a lot of use out of what is basically a carbide coated butchers steel. It should be obvious that a lot of times he tries to cut the paper he stops when it catches and often there is no indication of how sharp it was initially. However if you ever experimented with steels you will soon realize if you are willing to put a lot of force on the edge you can restore fairly blunt edges very quickly. This will affect edge durability and edge retention of course but for some people in some situations this isn't a practical concern.

I was impressed with the serrated sharpening by Block.


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

This is my favorite WTF sharpening video just because of who is doing the demonstration :

This is a close second :





Now this is a fairly creative method no doubt, but the way he demonstrates it is just silly.

i have a private playlist of "dumbest survival tips" on youtube and the ray mears "how to sharpen a knife at camp" is in it. i hope i don't offend but, if you have all those sharpening stones, you can sharpen it on a train or in a plane or outer space. when i clicked on the video, i was under the presumption that there would be a guy showing how to sharpen on a rock or strop on a piece of wood or something that i wasn't previously aware of but, nope, just the normal way you sharpen anywhere.

"knives save lives" on youtube
all i want for christmas is more arm hair -DK-

Bear Grylls makes me laugh. I'm no survival expert but he takes risks that are just stupid. He fights all sorts of dangerous animals, I've seen him swim across a river in below freezing temperatures (naked of course), and the man seems to spend more time in water than out of it.

I don't think you should pick a fight with a dangerous animal in any situation, much less in a situation where your alone far away from help.

Gordon's video is one of the reasons I quit looking for knife information on youtube. He's the one I'm referring to when I say "randomly smacking the edge against the steel at angles between 10 and 30 dps". I suppose you can always say the knives still work for him, but I'd say the knives work in spite of him.

Gordon would send that knife off to be sharpened, I doubt he has had to sharpen a knife himself since he was an apprentice. One of my relatives is a chef, and before I'd shown them anything about knives and sharpening, they thought they were actually already very skilled with knife maintenance. Gordon's segments like the above give people false confidence when using equipment like knife steels, and they don't even realise. It's pretty annoying. As an aside, I assumed that ignorance extended only to maintenance, but they had never even held a sharp knife before, so when I sharpened one, the unsafe knife practices they had been practicing for many years quickly removed half a finger nail and finger tip.

The same can be said for Bear as Gordon, but he probably isn't as fooled by his own advice as Gordon is; he audibly snickers when he says it's coming up a treat. It obviously was not his idea or choice to make that demonstration, but the result is the same, unfortunately: misinformation for those that don't know better.

This guy knows how to use a butchers steel :

[www.youtube.com]