05-19-2019, 01:00 PM
My first guess as to why edge sharpness increased with edge friendly boards was, as others have mentioned, due to deburring. I thought this especially likely as the testing was with factory edges. At that time, I also thought that if the knives were sharpened and deburred at KG that the increasing sharpness effect would be either reversed or at least not as pronounced as I'm sure the KG deburring process is quite effective.
So then I visited the site and reviewed the the data. As I read, I was pleased to see that testing was performed on resharpened edges. Surprise! The resharpened edge percent sharpness increase was greater than factory edges. Most gobsmacking is the percent sharpness increase is not trivial as I would have expected, but actually up to ~50% sharper in some cases.
I find this difficult to explain as resulting from burnishing of hardened stainless steel by slowly rubbing against soft plastic by hand. Deburring seems more likely to me, but even so, considering that the edges were most likely well deburred at the start of the test, the percent sharpness increase is a head-scratcher. Edge straightening seems even more unlikely, but at this point I'd believe almost anything.
It would be interesting to see before/after microscopy of the edges.
So then I visited the site and reviewed the the data. As I read, I was pleased to see that testing was performed on resharpened edges. Surprise! The resharpened edge percent sharpness increase was greater than factory edges. Most gobsmacking is the percent sharpness increase is not trivial as I would have expected, but actually up to ~50% sharper in some cases.
I find this difficult to explain as resulting from burnishing of hardened stainless steel by slowly rubbing against soft plastic by hand. Deburring seems more likely to me, but even so, considering that the edges were most likely well deburred at the start of the test, the percent sharpness increase is a head-scratcher. Edge straightening seems even more unlikely, but at this point I'd believe almost anything.
It would be interesting to see before/after microscopy of the edges.