Edge Rolling in High Vanadium Knives

[grepper]

I think that what EOU was getting at is that if hard particles (carbide) are embedded in a softer substrate (steel), grinding with an abrasive hard enough to grind the carbides would cause the softer substrate around the harder particles to be removed at a faster rate than the carbide particles are ground down.  As grinding continued, the harder particles would be torn away as they are no longer supported because the substrate around them is removed.  This would in turn expose more substrate and the process would continue until the knife was reduced to a tooth pick.  

Of course I have no idea if anything like that really happens, but it makes sense and is fun to imagine.