Edge Retention/Rolling Test Stand

[Bubby]

I have to admit that I'm just sitting here shaking my head. This isn't the first time that I've seen something like this but you don't see it very often. You go along forever thinking that this is just the way it is and then you get bounced out of your buggy. Then you look at all the information and think "why didn't I put all this together before?". If you stop and think about it burrs and edges don't act anything like hardened steel and we all know it. If they act like anything they act closer to aluminum foil than hardened steel. I mean, how strong could an edge be if you can bend it with whiskers and straighten it back up with a piece of leather? 150 grams is nothing but apparently its bending the crap out of these high dollar edges.  So what's supposed to be harder bone and meat or steel but every good butcher I've ever seen is never more than a foot away from his steel. Guess what? He's using hard steel to straighten softer steel. If that steel on the edge was resistant to rolling it wouldn't bend 90 degrees it would just break off. I've been through meat processing plants where they use hundreds of knives every day and I've never seen a Shun or anything like it. Outfits like IBP and Cargill. They use a bunch of twenty dollar knives. I think they figured out where their best bang for the buck is a long time ago. Hardened steel cracks like an egg if you stress it enough and I've busted enough bearing races with a drift punch to know that.  I think that all these clues have been right in front of us for as long as we used and sharpened knives and we just never put it all together. I'm not threatened one little bit by this information. When the testing is done I'm going to use this information and start building better edges with it. That's no big deal for me because I don't make a living with knives but I would think it would be a big deal for people who do and want to make a better product.