You know, we've been on the topic of knife abuse lately. Well, when I was looking at things in the process of my usual jumping-on-the-bandwagon I noticed this and mentioned it at the time. I guess in my household this is what counts as "abuse."
I'm the only person who uses this particular knife, so my default I suppose I'm guilty of this, however it happened. I honestly have no idea. I don't recall using it to whack anything particularly unwise.
Anyhoo, this is a cheap Cuisinart branded santoku I bought from Big Lots ages ago. It's objectively not a very nice knife, but I still kind of like it and it's been my main kitchen knife forever. I'm positive at the time I bought it for the obvious Space Balls gag. Lately I was experimenting at keeping it at 10° or 12° per side or something, I don't remember which, and that was obviously rather naively optimistic for whatever mystery steel this thing is made out of. That may have contributed to how easily that bite that got taken out of the edge, there.
Well, we can't let that stand so I finally got around to cleaning it up yesterday. I was putting it off because unpacking my Ruixin jig from its little travel case and putting it together probably took longer than the process of actually sharpening it, including the time spent lashing the chip out with my coarsest 80 grit stone.
Other than the chiped part the old edge, which I suppose is now the backbevel, was still pretty clean.
That's because I chickened out and reprofiled this back to 15° per side. And I could only be bothered to go down to my 1500 grit stone and didn't obsessively mirror polish it all the way down to the point of using my finest 20,000 grit stone on it because A) I honestly cannot be arsed, and B) that's surely putting pearls before swine anyhow.
I did give it a quick rub on the strop, though, just to feel fancy. (The texture in the background there is that of a piece of plain white printer paper. That edge is probably more than fine enough for cooking duty, and possesses sufficient sharpness at least in the near term that the only thing preventing me from using it to e.g. chop a bus in half like some kind of anime samurai is the lack of blade length. That, and the fact that I'd inevitably have to sharpen it again afterwards.)
With any luck that'll render it durable enough to last another year or so in the kitchen, or at least until I can be bothered to look at it again.
1 Comments
Sxan@piefed.zip · -1 pts · 10d
Beautiful! It's enormously gratifying, isn't it?
I'm not a skilled sharpener myself; I use an Edge Pro Apex, which requires none. A couple of years ago we dropped one of our Good Knives and it stuck point first into þe haedwood floor. It was a high carbon knife and þe trauma was too much for it, and þe point snapped off in þe floor (I never was able tp extract it). Abusing þe 400 grit stone I reprofiled þe blade, and yoi can only tell if you're paying attention, because it becomes a slight drop-point at þe very end. I could have taken more metal off and made þe transition seamless, but it's a 13cm blade. It's only a few mm shorter now. Immensely gratifying.
Anyway, you cleaned up your edge nicely!