Messages

A friend of mine regularly carries this Chinese made Bastinelli Piccolomako clone in well hardened D2 steel with G10 grip panels, both upside down vertically or horizontally using a very simple electrical wire constuction.
He also owns the real Bastinelli model, but considers it too expensive to actually carry & use.
Very useful & unobtrusive small SD knives (certainly for the omoney: ~25 Euro), but the factory edges on these clones can be quite bad, so i recently resharpened this one on the Tormek using the small knife rest.

Also did this user Benchmade Mini-Griptilian in 20CV steel the same way on the small knife rest, and the new edge also measures ~30 degrees inclusive.

A while ago i did this user Spyderco PM2 in S30V steel on the Tormek SB-250 Blackstone using the small knife rest, then deburred on my homemade MDF wheel (actually a rim over the leather wheel), which is coated with 1.0 micron diamond paste.
The new edge measures ~30 degrees inclusive.

This user Spyderco Resilience was sharpened a while ago on the small knife rest.
In the pics there is still a bit of burring at the heel, which is also the tricky part to sharpen on this model with the small platform jig, because of the non-existing ricasso at that point in combination with the slightly protruding handle.
I had to use the edge of the stone (an SB-250 Blackstone) to get there at all, and as you can see it's not visually perfect.
After sharpening the edge was deburred freehand on the Tormek leather wheel.
The new edge measured an almost exact 30 degrees inclusive and the apex was keen enough to whittle one of my chest hairs from root-to-tip at 3 centimeters from the point of holding.

I later heard that the owner of the knife had to go to the hospital emergency room twice (!) for cutting himself rather badly with it.

In this YouTube clip inventor Herman Trivilino showcases his original small knife rest/jig/platform.
As you can see Herman uses half of the Tormek scissor jig SVX-150 as a base to attach a steel plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWAkQmoU8c&t=4s

Several years ago i made this small knife rest, a variant based on the original design by Tormek forum member Herman Trivilino.
Mine is being used for reprofiling/sharpening various blade shapes & sizes (flat ground is ideal, but saber ground is also possible), from the small blades in Victorinox knives up to expensive professional gyuto's with 210 mm blades.

A possible problem is that you would have to make such a knife rest yourself, as Tormek still doesn't offer something comparable.
I used a piece of Torlock cut from a Tormek SVD-110 tool rest (which remains functional afterwards btw), a few pieces of scrap aluminium & some metal screws.
A very important aspect is getting that piece of Torlock as square as possible, for which i used files and a micrometer.
With access to a precision milling machine it would be a piece of cake.

On top is a piece of 0.3 mm thin fiber-reinforced PTFE tape, which works very well for moving the blade across the platform and also to avoid scratches while doing that (up to a point)
For more blade protection i use plastic packing tape on the blade surface as well.

When used in conjunction with just enough water in the trough so that it doesn't splash the platform the tape lasts quite a while before i have to replace it with a new piece.
The lowest angle i can grind to is ~20 degrees inclusive.









Tormek SVD110 Tool Rest:

First resharpened the old edge with a Paper Wheel coated with 15 micron diamond compound to get rid of the damaged sections in the apex, then refined it just one step with a second Paper Wheel coated with 6 micron diamond compound.
The new apex can whittle a chest hair towards the hair root (this is noticeably easier than towards the point of the hair), and it also has a little more bite.
Will see how this edge finish holds up in our kitchen, as the knife is already in use again:

Before i completely finished the edge to 15 micron i decided to use it just once, cutting up a box of mushrooms, some bell peppers, and some onions on my end grain wooden cutting board.
The 3 pics below show the result: not only microchips, but larger sections of the apex measuring several millimeters have completely broken off.
I think it's safe to say that a 15 micron edge finish is a bit too coarse for this ceramic material.

Currently busy removing the microchips from the apex with a Paper Wheel coated with 15 micron diamond compound.
The idea is to finish the new apex with only this compound and then find out how the knife will do with the resulting rather coarse edge (for a ceramic knife)

Although it remains quite difficult to capture the scratch pattern in pictures, the USB-microscope proves to be very useful in showing a sharpening fault (picture 1) and an extremely small chip remnant (picture 2).
Picture 5 also shows that the apex is already becoming translucent with this finish at 25 degrees inclusive.

The edge can now no longer cleanly cut the skin of most tomatoes, and on some types even downright sawing motions don't work anymore.
On onions i can feel that initial resistance cutting through the top layers, but on most other foods the knife continues to work well.
It also still scrape-shaves armhair and slices copy paper just fine, so most non-knife people would still call it quite sharp.

Although focussing with my new USB-microscope is still quite the challenge i did manage to take some shots of the current edge from tip to heel, to show the edge damage in the form of microchips as well as the sharpening scratches in the bevels.
My Victorinox magnifying glass had already showed me the larger microchips, but the smaller ones and the scratches which can now be seen clearly had always remained invisible to me.
It looks like i have jumped the other diamond wheels a bit to soon before finishing with the 1 micron diamond wheel, so apparently there is some room for improvement.

The knife is still being used in our kitchen in exactly the same way as described earlier, but the edge has now lost it's ability to whittle one of my chest hairs towards the root.
I tried it multiple times on 3 different hairs, but the edge did not catch any of them even once.

The edge can however still shave the hair on both the back of my hand as well as on my leg on skinlevel, but i have to press the edge on my skin a bit or it will slide over the hairs without cutting them.
If i do that it will shave a patch clean.
It will also slice a piece of copy paper to confetti easily, so most non-knife people would still consider the edge to be very sharp.

Through my Victorinox loupe i can now spot 5 micro-chips, which can be felt on my nail as well.
However these are not visible with my naked eyes.

Will continue to use the knife to see how things develop and report back again later.

Question from a member on another knife forum:

"After all this testing would you say benefits of ceramic outweigh the attention required, compared to steel ?"

My answer:

"At this moment i wouldn't say that, as i think ceramic knives in general haven't developed as far as steel knives yet.
Most of them are still too brittle and cannot be resharpened by the end user as easily as most steel types.

This particular knife however has proven itself to me already as an advancement over many other ceramic knives, as the ceramic material certainly has a much higher grindability (fact) and also seemingly a higher toughness (assumption).
While that toughness still isn't in the realm of most steel types i do notice a difference in use by much less edge chipping overall, and the chips that i see are also noticeably smaller (i need my Victorinox loupe to spot them).

What is however even more important in my view is that the ceramic material in this knife has a grindability that is more or less comparable to S90V steel, something i discovered when resharpening the edge on my Tormek T7, which is fitted with a silicon carbide stone.
In only a few slow passes i had a completely new edge.
(as a comparison: S90V steel sharpens like annealed 420J2 when compared to a Kyocera ceramic knife on the same stone)

Now from experience with other ceramic knives i've learned that the resulting edge needs refinement before being used (toothy edges are a no no on most ceramic knives), so that is what i did with the edge on this knife as well (with various diamond compounds), but in a later stage i plan to experiment with less refined edge types a bit to see how these hold up.

All in all more testing is needed to get a better understanding of how the current generation of ceramics in knives perform to have some benchmarks, as i think we will see much more improved types of ceramic in knives (and other articles) in the near future."

The knife is still being used in our kitchen in exactly the same way as described in my previous post, and the edge is still able to whittle little curls from one of my chest hairs towards the hair root.
(click 2 x for more detail)





Through my Victorinox loupe i can now spot 3 micro-chips, which can be felt on my nail as well.
However these are not visible with my naked eyes.

Since my last post i've been using the knife in our kitchen several times a week, together with with a reground Spyderco pairing knife for detail work.
Mostly cutting up onions, paprika's, mushrooms, various meats & cheeses and an assortment of other vegetables.
All cutting was and is done on an end grain beechwood cutting board that i oiled several times before i started using it a couple of years ago.

The sharpness has degraded from whittling chest hairs towards the point to whittling the same chest hairs towards the root, and through my Victorinox loupe i can see just one extremely tiny microchip (below the letter Y in the word "density" on the blade)
The chip is not visible with my naked eyes, but i can just feel it on my nail.

Will continue to keep using the knife.

Finally found the time to finish the edge with 1 micron diamond compound, and the edge can now whittle chest hairs towards the point along the entire edge and also slice a tomato quite well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4YGGHltloU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP6fNB_obN4

Time to find out if and how this edge will hold up in our kitchen use,