The Sharpest Knife Contest in Sydney 2018

[EOU]

We're still laughing here concerning your medical assistance advice to KG Bud but your point is well taken. While we don't claim to be experts in the "standards" world we are very familiar with it having dealt with it from both the scientific and engineering point of view extensively during our careers.  Scientific and engineering test standards are a good thing, not bad, but like most things where some people spend their working lives in a very small world, they seem to often lose sight of the forest for the trees. Most new measurement methodologies spend years and years in general use before they catch the eye of an ISO or NIST committee. A good example would be the Rockwell Hardness Test. While it was invented in the early teens and sold in the thousands during the twenties it didn't receive standards recognition until the mid-thirties and even then the "standard" was little more than an operating manual. What drove standardization and acceptance of the Rockwell? The fact that thousands of users had been using it successfully for many years. Your assertion that the BESS is "your standard" is well taken. It's also well taken by many others and they are supported by definition as well. Here is something we lifted from the BESSU website that speaks to the common  definition of "standard".
 
Merriam Webster Dictionary - "something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example."
 
Oxford Dictionary - "an idea or thing used as a measure, norm, or measure in comparative evaluations." 
 
Most standards are driven by the industry associations and guilds that they emanate out of. These sorts of associations are very scattered in the knife industry at this time and this is why BESS, is very much a grassroots sort of effort. If the sharpened edge world, at some future point, demands formal standardization then we imagine they shall have it.