I always find this interesting but would like to see what the longevity is after sharpening. It's fine fir slicing tomatoes 🍅 but how long will that edge hold up with every day use?
I fully agree - edge durability is what really counts, but a hard thing to demonstrate on camera. The best technique I know of for demonstrating that is the rope-cutting test of Pete on the CedricAda channel.
A super thin edge will do well on that Bess test, but it usually will not stay sharp for very long. And I prefer the paper and hanging hair test… the BESS machine only checks one tiny spot on the blade.
I am a knife geek, I have proven a sharp knife is not a safe knife, a urban legend a dull knife is unsafe, i also have a Bess tester, everytime I sharpen hy kitchen knives I have to buy a box of bandaids, so whaaaa?
It’s not about the minor cuts that can be healed with a Bandaid… working with a sharp knife means you can work at lower pressure, so you are far less likely to slip while pushing hard and cause a serious injury. Thanks for tuning in 🙏
I noticed in one of your earlier videos that you have another grinder in the background. Is it setup with either felt/paper/wool etc for polishing? Curious if you’ve based your setup on Knife Grinders?
Well spotted - I still have that grinder - at the end of this video you can just see part of the wooden base right at the top of the frame. I have two rock hard felt wheels on there for honing super steels. But I find the gains only marginal in using it, so it’s not often featured in my protocols. My methods are definitely influenced by Knife Grinders as most of gear is from him. I tried a few suppliers but find KG materials the highest quality. Thank you for tuning in!
I immediately noticed your fluid movement when demonstrating the T8 especially the lift at the point of the knife. Usually it’s only done well by the Tormek educators or Vadim from Knife Grinders. The kangaroo strop was another give away. At present I am in the process of setting up the same business in Australia. I have a nice kit of Naniwa whetstones for myself but there is no way I’d try manually sharpening on a commercial scale with that method, it would take around 15 minutes per knife. The Tormek allows you to sharpen more accurately than a Japanese bladesmith with 50 years experience in 5-6 mins per item. My main concerns were sharpening serrated knives as they can be very laborious with often mediocre long term results. I have watched Knife Grinders score outstanding results on the BESS after following a couple passes on the Tormek then utilising the rock hard felt wheels to de-burr. Have you tested those wheels with serrated knives yourself?
@@markandrews1219 Thanks so much. - very kind. About serrated, that technique with the bevelled felt wheel does work. But believe it or not the vast majority of my serrated knives brought to me are to grind off the serrations and put a standard edge on it. So I’ve only done that sharpening technique a few times, as proof of principle I guess. I do agree with you that serrated are laborious - TBH it’s hard to charge enough to make it worthwhile. Good luck with your sharpening business. If Knife Grinders is your reference then you’re off to a great start (but did you hear the sad news about Vadim’s passing?).
@@greatedgeltd Yes, I heard about Vadim passing away. I went to contact him to get some advice and noticed the condolences online. On the serrated knife topic, you raise a very interesting concept to simply reshape and repurposed the blade. I might give it a go in a little while to test out the concept on a cheaper knife. Thanks for the chat.
Good idea - I will try that. It’s tricky to ‘create’ a specific BESS sharpness (for example to aim for 200, 300 etc),, but I will work on that. Certainly you can still slice paper well above the BESS sharpness shown here.
bess = meaningless gimmick only either someone dishonest and trying to sell something or someone too low iq to understand why it's a gimmick would have any weight in. practical tests of edge keenness and knife/blade sharpness are much much more useful, valuable. but hey those don't come with a cute score that's easy to show everyone on medium like a youtube video. side note, i you want better bess results, make a big old burr and leave it on the edge, you''ll cut the wire more easily, also, use a blade with radius rather than flat. can easily get scores like 10 or less. it's a meaningless gimmick. even a hht test from the razor world has more value. I'm going to get a knife and dull it, so it won't even break skin and leave a tiny little 2 mm section that's keen and it's going to score 10 on the bess and then the knife itself won't cut a damn thing.
I certainly agree that BESS can be abused in the wrong hands (see my video on how to use a BESS tester). But I strongly disagree that the scores are not as useful as practical edge tests. The latter are far less sensitive - good enough for revealing basic information about edge performance but not sensitive enough to discriminate between sharpness levels in a repeatable way. i would never recommend comparing BESS scores between sharpeners because there are so many operator variables. But ‘intra -workshop’ comparisons are valuable for benchmarking and performance monitoring. I’m not sure about radius vs flat edge, but leaving a burr certainly doesn’t work for boosting BESS because it folds over very quickly. If I wanted to achieve BESS of 10 or below I would crank up the tension and chop down (as per my other video). Thanks for watching and for the passionate arguments!
I always find this interesting but would like to see what the longevity is after sharpening. It's fine fir slicing tomatoes 🍅 but how long will that edge hold up with every day use?
I fully agree - edge durability is what really counts, but a hard thing to demonstrate on camera. The best technique I know of for demonstrating that is the rope-cutting test of Pete on the CedricAda channel.
check out Outdoors55 - the sharper the knife, the longer the edge will hold up.
A super thin edge will do well on that Bess test, but it usually will not stay sharp for very long. And I prefer the paper and hanging hair test… the BESS machine only checks one tiny spot on the blade.
I am a knife geek, I have proven a sharp knife is not a safe knife, a urban legend a dull knife is unsafe, i also have a Bess tester, everytime I sharpen hy kitchen knives I have to buy a box of bandaids, so whaaaa?
It’s not about the minor cuts that can be healed with a Bandaid… working with a sharp knife means you can work at lower pressure, so you are far less likely to slip while pushing hard and cause a serious injury.
Thanks for tuning in 🙏
I noticed in one of your earlier videos that you have another grinder in the background. Is it setup with either felt/paper/wool etc for polishing?
Curious if you’ve based your setup on Knife Grinders?
Well spotted - I still have that grinder - at the end of this video you can just see part of the wooden base right at the top of the frame. I have two rock hard felt wheels on there for honing super steels. But I find the gains only marginal in using it, so it’s not often featured in my protocols. My methods are definitely influenced by Knife Grinders as most of gear is from him. I tried a few suppliers but find KG materials the highest quality. Thank you for tuning in!
I immediately noticed your fluid movement when demonstrating the T8 especially the lift at the point of the knife. Usually it’s only done well by the Tormek educators or Vadim from Knife Grinders. The kangaroo strop was another give away.
At present I am in the process of setting up the same business in Australia. I have a nice kit of Naniwa whetstones for myself but there is no way I’d try manually sharpening on a commercial scale with that method, it would take around 15 minutes per knife. The Tormek allows you to sharpen more accurately than a Japanese bladesmith with 50 years experience in 5-6 mins per item.
My main concerns were sharpening serrated knives as they can be very laborious with often mediocre long term results. I have watched Knife Grinders score outstanding results on the BESS after following a couple passes on the Tormek then utilising the rock hard felt wheels to de-burr. Have you tested those wheels with serrated knives yourself?
@@markandrews1219 Thanks so much. - very kind. About serrated, that technique with the bevelled felt wheel does work. But believe it or not the vast majority of my serrated knives brought to me are to grind off the serrations and put a standard edge on it. So I’ve only done that sharpening technique a few times, as proof of principle I guess. I do agree with you that serrated are laborious - TBH it’s hard to charge enough to make it worthwhile.
Good luck with your sharpening business. If Knife Grinders is your reference then you’re off to a great start (but did you hear the sad news about Vadim’s passing?).
@@greatedgeltd
Yes, I heard about Vadim passing away. I went to contact him to get some advice and noticed the condolences online.
On the serrated knife topic, you raise a very interesting concept to simply reshape and repurposed the blade. I might give it a go in a little while to test out the concept on a cheaper knife. Thanks for the chat.
Please also do this with papercutting!
Good idea - I will try that. It’s tricky to ‘create’ a specific BESS sharpness (for example to aim for 200, 300 etc),, but I will work on that. Certainly you can still slice paper well above the BESS sharpness shown here.
@@greatedgeltd Different bess scores with 200, 300 and up sounds really good! Would be awesome if you could do it!
Most people don't cut pape,r with a chef's knife, but they do cut tomatoes.
wtf was that
😂
bess = meaningless gimmick only either someone dishonest and trying to sell something or someone too low iq to understand why it's a gimmick would have any weight in. practical tests of edge keenness and knife/blade sharpness are much much more useful, valuable. but hey those don't come with a cute score that's easy to show everyone on medium like a youtube video. side note, i you want better bess results, make a big old burr and leave it on the edge, you''ll cut the wire more easily, also, use a blade with radius rather than flat. can easily get scores like 10 or less. it's a meaningless gimmick. even a hht test from the razor world has more value. I'm going to get a knife and dull it, so it won't even break skin and leave a tiny little 2 mm section that's keen and it's going to score 10 on the bess and then the knife itself won't cut a damn thing.
I certainly agree that BESS can be abused in the wrong hands (see my video on how to use a BESS tester). But I strongly disagree that the scores are not as useful as practical edge tests. The latter are far less sensitive - good enough for revealing basic information about edge performance but not sensitive enough to discriminate between sharpness levels in a repeatable way.
i would never recommend comparing BESS scores between sharpeners because there are so many operator variables. But ‘intra -workshop’ comparisons are valuable for benchmarking and performance monitoring.
I’m not sure about radius vs flat edge, but leaving a burr certainly doesn’t work for boosting BESS because it folds over very quickly. If I wanted to achieve BESS of 10 or below I would crank up the tension and chop down (as per my other video).
Thanks for watching and for the passionate arguments!