Messages

Thank you, very much, for the kind welcome. Music, sharpening, and grandchildren. Life can be odd and wonderful. Nice to find someone else with three of my interests - plus, you also seem a thoughtful person and a kind man, concerned with others - very nice indeed. I appreciate you not calling me out on being succinctness impaired 

Ken S, thank you for your thoughtful topic.

My first classical guitar lesson, I'd already learned the first few lines of Asturias (Op. 47 No. 5) by Albeniz, heh. I know where you're coming from! I loved it so much, my common sense vanished entirely. Someday, I'd love to PM you about music for awhile

That said, as a sharpener who's been "messing around a bit" for some years and was looking, rather desperately, for some extremely solid data, Vadim's (wootz/knifegrinders.au) book, "Knife Deburring: Science Behind the Lasting Razor Edge" was precisely what I needed. And reading, and following his methods, is giving me the guidance I need to meet my sharpening goals - not all at once, it takes practice. But it's put me on the path I wanted to be on.

I like having a BESS edge tester that can give me numerically precise feedback to go along with other testing techniques - and I found the money well-spent. Some, many? most? perhaps would not. I'm grateful to have not made mistakes in the equipment I did choose to purchase for the direction I'm taking with my sharpening due to Vadim's excellent advice. But no, you don't need it all at once, unless you can afford it and decide you do  I won't take the music metaphor here because it's too obvious!

I've always expected this to be a slow process until I ever take a customer, but when I do, I'm confident I'll be getting repeatable, excellent results. I already am, with the couple dozen knives I keep brutalizing to clean up again. And the way I've done it is to be careful, to follow advice from Vadim, and things I've found on various forums - like this one. I've used movies of myself sharpening with both hands when I got less exact results from one hand than the other. I've measured my measurements until I'm sure they're absolutely within spec - and they weren't, quite, at first. (Ah hah! The Sharpie doesn't lie!)

With music, practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect, even if it's slow, careful, and initially full of mistakes. One has to have good teachers - but most of all a commitment to, and love of one's craft, at the level to which one wishes to take it, of course - along with realistic expectations.

I now can consistently get my personal Maxamet Native 5 significantly sharper than a feather double-edged razor with improving consistency. The first time I scored a "20" with it at multiple test points (a "feather" double edged razor scores about 50), I did my own little happy dance. I'm also having fun shaving with a cutthroat razor I sharpen myself - usually to around 40 at multiple points on the edge when going to my wheels (yes, wheels). (Still want to get that number a LITTLE lower.)

Sharpening appeals to me because it's such a precise, focused craft that still has more than enough to keep me learning for a lifetime.

My advice would be to find those teachers and techniques that appeal to you, don't expect to not have to work at it, but do expect good, and increasingly more reliably good, results when you're precise, and you're following the advice and work of someone who really knows what they're doing. (Since you're here, you've chosen your main technique - a Tormek, rather than flat stones or guided systems, at least as a primary method. And I've found many very bright people on here to learn from).

And for a Tormek owner, no, you don't have to buy every wheel around, sharpen every type of edged instrument made, of every material in existence, or buy some of the more expensive scientific tools. It all depends on what your goals are. I personally focused on my Maxamet Spyderco (I couldn't resist), and a cheap set of Chinese kitchen knives I bought as beaters from Amazon. I expanded, carefully, to a Shun I'd given my wife (great results!), and some more difficult folders of various steels (some results were better than others - I'm not ready for prime time yet) - plus my straight razor, which worked out very well.

Love what you do, pick an instrument, find good teachers, then work at it carefully and regularly. And since you're on this forum, might I say that starting with a Tormek for an instrument was an excellent choice. Have fun! (I am.)

Just wanted to add my general experience dealing with Vadim/Wootz/Knifegrinders.au: He's a wonderful human being who does his very best to be prompt, answer his email, etc. I know right now, as someone else mentioned, he's very behind simply due to his being a small business owner with an unusually big load at the moment. Give him time, and he'll catch up. I'd trust him to make any deal simply on his word. And know if he doesn't answer a mail from you, he most certainly will as soon as he possibly can.

I have no association with him at all - he's half a world away - except as a very satisfied customer and devoted reader of his materials and posts (and the appreciative recipient of some very gracious emails). He's a master craftsman who shares the results of his painstaking testing with the community - as well as having some indispensable tools for purchase.

The only other thing I'd add, is especially if shipping is an issue, you're going to get 300+ tests out of a single roll of their test material (this is from memory, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - if I recall, 300 is on the conservative side). Judge what you think you'll need in an appropriate amount of time and order enough to get you by. Shipping could be more than the reasonably priced spools.

Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your sharing your work on this. I look forward to "checking my work" with your spreadsheet using the marker method, as well as many other fine features. This was not an easy task to put together - thank you again for this. Haven't used it yet (though I have your earlier version, along with some modifications I've made myself - but here's everything I was thinking of and a whole lot more). I'm already excited about it. I do many things well, but trigonometry and spreadsheets are not two of them!