Victorinox sharpening experiment

[grepper]

I have a Victorinox 5” chef’s knife, 6.8003.12.  It was not dull at all, but I wanted to sharpen it to 280 grit instead of the 400 grit that it was sharpened to.   Also, I have to resharpen my knives even if they are not dull just out of desperation for something to sharpen.  I feel strange if I don’t sharpen something every so often. 

https://www.swiss-knife.com/en/victorino...knife.html

So, I sharpened it with an A45 Trazact Gator, ~280 grit, at ~15°.  Those Gators are sort of strange belts IMHO.  They feel odd while sharpening, but they seem to work OK, so I used it.
 
Here’s an image of the blade right off of the belt.  A burr covered mess that measured 465g sharpness.

   
 
So I stropped it twenty times on the soft, well worn blue jean material on my thigh.  Just flopped the blade back and forth.  Maybe 30 seconds worth.  Here’s what it looked like after the stropping.

   
 
It went from 465g to 190g sharpness.  So I stropped 20 more times and tested again.  This time, 165g.  Just to be sure I was not still messing around with a burr, I ran the blade down the edge of a piece of hardwood, slightly angled to each side and perpendicularly.  I measured again, still 165g.
 
It’s a sharp enough and gnarly enough for the creepy 3 finger test to actually work.  I did the 3f test one last time just for grins.
 
It is my understanding that the blade uses fine grain steel, and it does in fact create very little burr.  While this might not have worked as well with more ductile steel that formed a larger, tougher burr, I find it interesting that the only burr removal/stropping I did was on soft blue jean material on my leg and it worked well.  It’s very sharp with a nice, toothy edge.  Just what I wanted.

[MaxtheKnife]

I have a Victorinox 5” chef’s knife, 6.8003.12.  It was not dull at all, but I wanted to sharpen it to 280 grit instead of the 400 grit that it was sharpened to.   Also, I have to resharpen my knives even if they are not dull just out of desperation for something to sharpen.  I feel strange if I don’t sharpen something every so often. 

https://www.swiss-knife.com/en/victorino...knife.html

So, I sharpened it with an A45 Trazact Gator, ~280 grit, at ~15°.  Those Gators are sort of strange belts IMHO.  They feel odd while sharpening, but they seem to work OK, so I used it.
 
Here’s an image of the blade right off of the belt.  A burr covered mess that measured 465g sharpness.


 
So I stropped it twenty times on the soft, well worn blue jean material on my thigh.  Just flopped the blade back and forth.  Maybe 30 seconds worth.  Here’s what it looked like after the stropping.


 
It went from 465g to 190g sharpness.  So I stropped 20 more times and tested again.  This time, 165g.  Just to be sure I was not still messing around with a burr, I ran the blade down the edge of a piece of hardwood, slightly angled to each side and perpendicularly.  I measured again, still 165g.
 
It’s a sharp enough and gnarly enough for the creepy 3 finger test to actually work.  I did the 3f test one last time just for grins.
 
It is my understanding that the blade uses fine grain steel, and it does in fact create very little burr.  While this might not have worked as well with more ductile steel that formed a larger, tougher burr, I find it interesting that the only burr removal/stropping I did was on soft blue jean material on my leg and it worked well.  It’s very sharp with a nice, toothy edge.  Just what I wanted.

Grepper very good post......I was just about to post similar and I will....ps....I have used trizacts for 5 years now after 120 by many vendors......I normally stop at a30......120 mixed......a65 to a30.

[grepper]

A30:  Depending on where you look that's from 500-700 grit.  I've found that makes for a very impressive blade right off the sharpener, but if you are looking to slice tomatoes it does not last that long.  Soon it starts riding on the skin of tomatoes, broccoli and grapefruit skin, etc.

My focus is mostly kitchen knives, and I keep looking for a good general grit.  The results of that search keep pushing me to a coarser and coarser grit.
The grit comparison charts for Trizacts are all over the place!  

I'm starting to think that A45-A65 might be about right.  I rather liked what the A45 did on the Victorinox.

Maybe I'll just bail on all this belt stuff and simply use a rasp.

[Jan]

It is my understanding that the blade uses fine grain steel, and it does in fact create very little burr.  While this might not have worked as well with more ductile steel that formed a larger, tougher burr, I find it interesting that the only burr removal/stropping I did was on soft blue jean material on my leg and it worked well.  It’s very sharp with a nice, toothy edge.  Just what I wanted.

Nice post and good explanation.

When sharpening knives made of brittle steel where raising the burr is not always easy, I follow Steve Bottorff recommendation to sharpen away of the burr. It produces larger burr which can be detected sooner and so I save some time, stone and steel.


My experience is limited to Tormek with SG stone graded fine ≈ 1000 grit.

Jan

[Soxx]

Very interesting Mr. grepper. When Bernie and I and Mike were in test media development we found that a pair of blue jeans stretched across a thigh were just about as good as anything for burr removal. One of these days I'm going to figure out if it has anything to do with the resilience of the underlying thigh or if its just the denim. I think I should be able to get a bunch of cows to help fund my research. Kind of like that "eat more chikin" ad.

[grepper]

I’ve noticed that I can actually dull an edge by excessively stropping/honing with a powered leather solution such as a wheel or belt.  I want to see it’s even possible to dull an edge with the soft denim over thigh method.  I know it is very effective for burr removal and I have yet to prove to myself that leather is in any way better.
 
Moreover, I’ve found that if compound is used whilst removing a burr, a toothy edge is somewhat compromised.
 
I have a feeling that with denim over thigh, the denim wraps around the edge just enough to assist in catching the burr and/or bending more on each pass, but it’s such a soft, forgiving environment that dulling is not likely. 
 
I need to take a sharp blade and drag it at 90° over denim/thigh and see how much it is possible to dull the blade.  But then while nobody would strop at 90°, it would be indicative of how damaging denim/thigh can be to an edge if you really try.
 
Denim over foam?  Denim over soft rubber bladder? 
 
I agree.  Cattle of the world unite!  Support this research!