I just love your comment "Unless you're a hard determinist, and basically believe that we're essentially complicated toasters, everything is personal preference." I know you are being serious, I fully see the point, but damn that is a funny way to put it. Miss you Cliff, wish I could have met you. Still taking us to school a decade after putting these videos up.
Excellent explanation of the knife grind!!! Can you or anyone please tell me how can I get one of the Japanese garden nata hatchet??? Any links or websites would be appreciated!!! Thanks so much, Barry
This is the worst-named Cold Steel tool. This is a cane knife. Collins Legitimus has made them for a century and you're spot on: they're for limbs and brush and stalks/thin wood. The Collins I have is pre-war and has the square head bevel and extended handle you mention would be improvements. It also has a blunt bill hook for dragging a bale, turning a log, upending a stone something might be living under. I dig the review. I'm only looking at this "heavy machete" to find a sheath for my old Collins.
My ZT 0561 had average edge retention until i sharpened it 5 to 6 times. Although mine is in the 9500 seriel range, and should have the revised sharpening protocol, mine obviously still had a burned edge. Once through it and into good steel, edge retention improved considerably. Once into good steel and after a good reprofiling and sharpening at 18° with a 21° micro bevel i cut 13 large outdoor furniture boxes into approximately 6" × 12" strips, what i estimated to be over 800 linear feet of heavy cardboard and still had a decent working edge afterwards. It would scrape arm hair and cut notebook paper well but would tear phonebook paper occasionally. Very good performance imo. A noticeable improvement over S30V in my experience. RIP Cliff.
I personally flatten my stones religiously. Try sharpening a scandi knife or any knife with a flat surface on several stones that all have different flatness levels and shape. It's incredibly frustrating. If you simply flatten your stone after every use you remove very little material. And I'm not too worried about flushing a little bit of slurry down the sink, especially from a 20$ King or something. It's not worth the hassle of trying to "use the high spots" when you can simply flatten the stone
It's almost as if they didn't consider kitchen duties when designing the knife exclusively for carving softwoods in the northern woodlands, bushcraft, and whittling.
There are way too many assertions made by folks whose views are set in stone [forgive me that one, no more, I promise]. It has always been the case that suppliers of stone have a vested interest in making bold statements that cannot be scientifically backed up, and with developing an aura of 'mystique' around the products they strive to sell. This tends to get magnified by the buyers of their stones. That is just how marketing and business works All that really matters in the end is how an individual can achieve his goals in terms of ease of use, cutting speed and end results such as surface finish and sharpness of edge etc. by using the particular unique stones he has on his bench. To that I suppose you could add 'pleasure' or satisfaction he derives from using particular stones for their own allotted tasks. All the above include variables stacked up to the rafters, many of which can't be defined, measured or classified..... and that is before even looking at how different steels react to being cut by different stones at the micro level and another biggy, the experience and skill set of the fella using them As well as the obligatory forum 'know it alls', some folks feel obliged to get up on their hind legs making spurious claims, desperately defending their decision to lay out big money on their stones they have bought, or been lucky enough to find in sales. while attempting to rubbish stones that others have acquired. All too often it turns into a bit of an abrasive pissing contest. Way late to this party, but your video is like a breath of fresh air - thank you
I'm not ready for plateau sharpening yet, maybe soon. Does anyone know how he recommends to burr based sharpen? Form a burr on both sides, micro bevel then polish on higher stones? Or form burr on both sides, polish and then micro bevel on the last stone? Any help would really be appreciated. Also, does he micro bevel and then sharpen the micro bevel back? Thank you for any help
Rip man i hope you can still see this in some way, but i have watched your videos since i was a child, sharpening my shitty gerber knives. I just learned you passed a few years ago. The way you teach needs to be studied you make such a muddled subject easy to grasp. Thank you for your contribution for the last 20 years, and i hope youre at peace now.
Considering the classic scandi grind is about 11 degrees per side it makes good sense it's a perfect wood slicer like a chisel. Mora also uses 12c27 which ain't far off from this.
This is something I'd love to see a good spreadsheet made up about. Comparing steels for the actual capability of thin edges without breaking or bending. Optimal hardness to toughness ratio, and any carbides are a bonus. Steels like 52100, 5160, 20c15.. they all have incredible toughness for their hardness, carbides be damned. 52100 with a Rockwell of 65 and a toughness 3x over D2's best case scenario, that edge can get a whole lot thinner and stay competitive.
Something that has been said by a metallurgist and knife steel designer (magnacut) is that edge geometry give the biggest change in cutting performance, the heat treat second, and the steel last. He also determines that actual use dulling is a combination of toughness and abrasion resistance combined. Cheap steels like 14c27n are hugely tough and only average for abrasion resistance, overall takes the cake over something with bad toughness. More toughness = thinner blade geometry = better and longer cutting performance. Heat treatment makes the biggest difference in toughness if done wrong, more than hardness or anything else.
@@lindboknifeandtool I'm just glad that others are making his knowledge more known. I don't mean to discredit super-steels, but when you get really good knife geometry and a shallow angle.. it's like a lightsaber no matter the steel. Outdoors55 has been bringing up some of his knowledge as well, thankfully
Hi, I was reading a post from you in a forum that you illustrate how to sharpen with a piece of wood and a sandpaper. Could you make a video of that ? Thanks.
I've been sharpening knives for most of my life and this information is absolutely a paradigm shift in understanding the process. Thank you for explaining it in a way that makes is click in my brain. I'll be digging through a lot more of your content to see what other nuggets I can find!
FWIW, if you want to flatten the bricks as much as you can without a machine, you need three bricks. Rub them together in other and they'll get flat. If you can get square shaped bricks, you can spin them while rubbing. This technique is similar to how they flatten surfaces for machinists.
I compliment the host for addressing this topic. Also used with "stones", straight up or as a mixture are: kerosene, gasoline, mineral spirits, turpentine, alcohol, bleach (to prevent mold), WD-40 (and other lubricants). Of course I have left out numerous liquids that help keep the swarf from clogging the stone.
I have a stone from 40 years ago I was told to use oil on it and always have . I also didn’t know there were water stones till I started watching utube videos on knife sharpening a few years ago . 😂😂😂😂
nothing is ever flat. Thats like the hardest thing to engineer. If cliff were alive we would battle. the flattening stones are not flat. The edge itself is not flat. your hand has different pressures. You would need a robot that also compensates with software for the tolerances of its own articulating parts. This flattening stuff is bonkers. its mostly for chisels and the level of tolerance in regards to dishing is gigantic, especially compared to precision engineering. you need literal lasers to even measure "FLAT". I can sharpen on anything. Now, DRESSING a stone can be important, if its not friable enough. and averting excessive dishing can help with ergonomics. But thats about it, when it comes to stone lapping. no need for loose grit. Cliff says he uses sand on concrete. the concrete is not flat and neither is the sand. Just use a cheap belt sander if the dishing is pronounced enough to bother your technique. Or some cheap diamond plates. Then clean the stone to take care of any grit contamination, if thats a concern. Those fixed angle sharpeners are mostly practical in preserving expensive factory finishes. But thats pretty much where there application ends. They are also super slow and having you hand exposed to the blade is hella dangerous. Its sharp already at that point. The fixed angle sharpeners are a jig. An expensive jig, dumb dumbs over pay on. I must be the greatest. Give me some immersed diamonds, if we are gonna talk precision. Knife people are bananas . just rub the thing on the thing. The difficult part is the metallurgy and the creation or harvesting of abrasive particles. Also the engineering of the binding materials. But true flatness is almost impossible. mic drop
and every time you pass over the stones surface. You abrade away material unevenly. The knife and the stone. Because you are human. And even machines have trouble staying true. Occam razor on this one. Cliff was trolling and rage bating everyone for attention and views before it was cool. Which is genius. Im pissed off at Cliff postmortem. God damn. RIP you Glorious bastard. The vid on plateau style sharpening is a master piece . Should be called "CLIFF" style sharpening. Create a little cliff on the edge. Plateau is too wordy. But this is rage bating before rage bating was popular. Brilliant . But im fuming here. I can sharpen a knife on the spine of another knife.
m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kTiIFzhxhq4.html&pp=ygUUc2NpZW5jZSBvZiBhYnJhc2l2ZXM%3D The science of Sand paper. also a great vid. Each abrasive particle also differs in size slightly. We are dealing with microns here people. Not Millimeters. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. The ghost of Cliff Haunts me. Imma burn some sage to appease his sharp soul. REST IN PEACE master
Keffeler 1 chop, Battlemistress 3 chops, Gavko 5 chops, Fiskars 5 chops. The Keffeler is the largest in the group and the battlemistress is the smallest. The Gavko is the best looking. Fiskars is the cheapest. Fiskars for the win as a straight chopper, as you could buy 20 fiskars for the price of the others.
