Luong La testing video

So Luong La, which many of you will recognise as a member of Cliff's forum (not sure if he's made an account here) just posted this video experiment on wear resistance of his M2 Superquenched knife. I'm curious, do y'all think this is a suitable home replacement for something like a CATRA machine? It seems to me like that's mostly the sort of testing he's replicating here:

No

I don’t think that’s anywhere near the consistency of a machine, no. For one thing, he didn’t even start with a measured and quantified sharpness. For another, it’s still all being done by hand.

And I’m not really sure what the value of cutting abrasive pads is, either. I’d think they’re just so abrasive that it would make it difficult to actually distinguish between the different steels, even with multiple runs for each knife, because the blunting would happen so quickly.

I'd want to see the repeatability data, preferably blinded. Taking good data is always way more difficult than it seems like it should be, but I'd think you'd be able to come up with something repeatable enough if you put some work into it.

The other big problem which applies equally to CATRA is coming up with a test medium that is a good proxy for what you really want to measure. The hardness and size of abrasives probably make a big difference in the relative ranking of steels with different size and hardness of carbides.

If you're making custom blades for the test anyway, I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to make a circular ("mini deli slicer") type blade, and just rotate it with a stack of cards pressed into it with a fixed weight.

those pads definitely dull a knife fast. they are very abrasive.. so much so that im not sure what you could test well with them.

i think they'd strip the apex off almost as well as a stone and leave you with a case of geometry cuts.

perhaps high carbide stuff will fair better with them as they are more ragged and tear cutting.

he is testing thin hard steels. perhaps he is trying to speed up the testing process with a more aggressive medium..


but nothing like catra.. most knives would prob reach failure point in a few cuts.