Wire Edge Prevention

[SteveG]

Hi Steve,

BEFORE - both knives 70 BESS

AFTER:
VINCTORINOX NSF 5.6603.15 = 595 BESS
SWIBO 5.8405.16 = 465 BESS

I am really curious about your brass plate test for the high-Carbon knives - so if deburred OK you see little or no change in the BESS score.
Could you give an example of the blade steel please?
And how did you arrive at this test, what made you think of it?

This may be the missing test I am looking for for the high-end blades, as even with the wire edge they keep scoring excellent sharpness on the tester, unlike low-end knives.

It will be easy for me to modify the SET edge rolling tester into the wire edge tester by replacing the steel linear bearing with a section of a copper pipe and changing the impact angle to perpendicular - standard impact weight is 150 g, and I can keep loading and checking the score to find out the safe load that can show the presence of the wire edge but still not damage the apex.

Just could you tell us more of your experiences with this brass testing?

Thanks for the BESS scores, that's informative.

Yes, if ok little or no change.  I haven't seen a significant change yet, but need to test when I know I've left a burr, so it's far from conclusive at this point - I only started doing this a few days ago.

What made me think of it is your results with soft steel on just the BESS media, which is something I've seen myself.  I just wanted a similar test for harder steels, since sometimes I get hair-whittling edges that don't seem to last very long, so I figured it was the burr doing the whittling.  I think I'll try it on S90V tomorrow, and intentionally leave a burr on one try, and then do a second test where I think I've removed the burr.  I replied to grepper's question with the details of today's test.  I did one yesterday on M390, but it wasn't freshly sharpened, just freshly stropped (I wanted to see if stropping was creating a burr), and the before/after were the same (I forget what they were, but in the 80~90 range).

I didn't realize that the SET had a steel roller, that's interesting.  That's a much more precise and repeatable method than what I do.  You'd know much better than I whether a soft metal would be better for burr detection than the steel, so I'll be very interested in hearing what you discover.  I'm really just looking to find out whether I've left a burr that I can't see with a microscope, since my sharpening results are inconsistent.  If there's anything specific you'd like me to try or report, let me know - I have a lot of different steels, and some decent sharpening equipment - since you provided the idea I'd be happy to provide some labor.