cKc -- Cutting Ability of Victorinox Paring Knife @ 6° DPS 56HRC

Part 1

• Victorinox 3.25" paring knife
• Sharpened at 6° DPS
• Edge angle using calipers and calculated angle
• Knife barely lifted off sharpening stone for sharpening
• Slices paper towel
• Tree Tops arm hair
• Cuts plastic soda bottles
• Try and reprofile one of your knives to a lower angle for things you usually cut

Part 2

• One inch round piece of pine cut through with minimal damage
• The immense power of a chest lever pull cut

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2022 11:37PM by jasonstone20.

Amazing,
I should try that with my own, maybe it was thinned out to much to resist such loading without damagev, cuts beautifully though.
I need to find a way to estimate my freehand edge angles, I profile the edge with the primary almost touching the stone, but when the bevels get tiny and difficult to see even a rough estimate becomes difficult.
Edit
Missed the first part, definitely doing math this evening



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2022 12:17PM by Millscale.

Millscale,
There is a thread on the old forum where we all discuss different ways to measure the edge angle. Kyley showed one in the video he just made. Here is a search I did that shows the threads were we were discussing edge angles, and there is always the thread that has the V-Stick Angle finder and also will calculate the edge angle of any edge. It is written in JavaScritp, so all you have to do is run it in any modern web browser.

Video Summary: Demonstrating the Victorinox at 6-7dps cutting through pork ribs cartilige and bone without much damage at all if any when using good technique to not torque the blade. comparing to a thinned out factory edge still too thick, which could not even attempt the bone without risk of injury

Quote
cKc (Kyley Harris)
… comparing to a thinned out factory edge still too thick, which could not even attempt the bone without risk of injury

Risk of injury meaning the force required was so high that it would be dangerous to do the cuts, right?

cKc/Kyley,
Because of your videos, I decided to carry my Victorinox Sentinel:





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2022 10:46PM by jasonstone20.

I really like Victorinox stainless, they do a very good heat treatment in my opinion, get a very crisp and aggressive edge quickly, grinds easily, doesn't get stubborn burrs which in my experience is common with moderate hardness stainless, almost never rust, I have an 8""Rosewood chef knife, a 5" Rosewood utility knife a couple of small paring knives like Kyley's one and an alox pioneer, nothing i don't really like about any of them, except maybe the thickness of the Pioneer's blade, and the crooked asymmetrical grind it has, nothing serious though, what do you think of the Sentinel,
Jasonstone20?
About to impulse buying it a couple month ago, looks like a good, relatively cheap and rugged tool to my eyes, I especially like the fact it is one handed opening, I really hate the nail nick and the stiff spring of my Pioneer when outside is freezing and my hands are aching

the sentinel is a great knife. i like that one when it is thinned down too.

Same knife. maybe the edge angle is a little thicker.. we are talking micro bevel angle imperceptible to the eye taking it up to 7-10dps

Summary: Demonstrating the benefit and safety of a fine geometry over a thick geometry for working knives. the principal point being that typical factory edges are so thick and so high angled that they cannot be safely utilized for work without thinning.





Spyderco has many knives that have much thinner better performance than others, but im not sure if they advertise BTE and edge angles on specific models to help make choices in this regard. it would be great if they could, but perhaps its too limiting in terms of adjustments.

i dont fault makers for doing thicker knives, but this is an educational point on trying to make them thinner and safer and less "work" to use.

i've reprofiled the sebenza after this video, so its the last video that can show it in a poor perspective.

Quote
Ryan Nafe

… comparing to a thinned out factory edge still too thick, which could not even attempt the bone without risk of injury

Risk of injury meaning the force required was so high that it would be dangerous to do the cuts, right?

Yes, exactly this. the more force you need to add to the cut to make it happen, the more chance you will slip and all that energy will go somewhere unexpected and undesirable such as a guiding hand, or your opposing arm, or just into the table. even worse when dealing with slippery materials

Quote
Millscale
what do you think of the Sentinel,


I especially like the fact it is one handed opening, I really hate the nail nick and the stiff spring of my Pioneer when outside is freezing and my hands are aching

the sentinal and their other one hand options are fantastic knives. the video is gone now, but when i was demonstrating lock strength on folders i destroyed a zero tolerance brand new frame lock by putting it in a vice and hitting the handle at high speed with a long lever.. one hit, $300 knife ruined.

the victorinox took multiple hits, and much harder hits, and while the brass pivot in the blade bent, it was still highly functional. the lock still worked and the lock never failed. the victorinox lock is "poo poo"'d by people because it has a little lock rock. that design feature is immaterial to the fact that it is an infallible lock and one of the most safe on the market.

the one i had was a multi blade, so also had the assymetric grind, but it still worked well.

i agree on the pioneer and the farmer. i love the knives, but they are very hard to deploy. worse if not maintained perfectlyu.

Millscale,
I like the Sentinal. It is light along with being ergonomic. The lock does have a little lock rock in it, but I never notice it in use. The opening hole is great, that is my favorite one hand opening option other than a Balisong. It has a toothpick and tweezers, along with a lanyard ring, which are all features I like. The clip is tip down, which a lot of people don't like. I'll take tip up or tip down, I really don't care. Being tip down probably didn't help it's sales numbers however.

Attached file, the knives I was talking about.

CkC, I believe this is because of warranty issues only, when a knife is very cheap (Opinels for example) is unlikely to be returned after it broke doing something silly like cutting nails and prying wood apart, also professional (let's say butcher, fillet knives, Vic/Swibo etc) knives of decent quality tend to have functional edge and grinds for what I've seen so far, because they are unlikely to be mistreated that much.
Most people nowadays use knives like they use hammers, so 9 times out of 10 knives are ground accordingly of the thick side.

Spyderco is not so bad compared to others, still 30 to 40 degrees inclusive and a minimum of 15/20 thousand bte is pretty much playing safe, their attempt of doing a performance driven grind with the Nilakka gone definitely bad, folks complained a lot about the lack of durability and they fattened up the geometry right away if I recall correctly.
A real pity, for is really true that thick and high angled blade are very dangerous to the user.
Axes btw are even worse, out of the box most cheaper axes and hatchets, to be tolerant of sloppy splitting of firewood, have very obtuse geometry (even on very small heads that shouldn't be used for splitting anyway) that glances off anything harder than pine and spruce, extremely dangerous tools if not reprofiled correctly imo

Very good to know about the build quality of the Sentinel, I think I will give it a shot the next month, I really like good inexpensive knives that perform well, thank you cKc and jasonstone20

About the asymmetrical grind, it is not a problem at all, it only looks ugly to me, I would have preferred the main body of the knife a tad thicker with enough space for a straight blade and the reamer (great tool to have, BTW).
Deploy however is pretty much what kills this knife for me, opening the knife sometimes feels too much like a chore to me



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2022 12:15PM by Millscale.

the nilakka was a shame. i think one of the problems there was using S30v as the steel

combining that steel, its lower stability in fine apex plus the inherant expectation of edge burn and embrittlement at the apex from production grinds especially going so thin prob led to a bad review by many.

Cliff reviewed it and after some resharpenings it was going very well. his main comment was that a more suitable steel would have been good.

personally i wasn't a fan of that design. but i think if they used a steel like aebl that is designed for fine edges and did the same thin in another design they would have a winner. but i agree that the general market for this price range of knife is likely to break it and blame the knife.

there is a lot of truth in cheaper knives being able to be ground thinner because of less loss if people mangle them.. but they dont actually get mangled and broken in truth.

what this tells me about the knifenerd audience is that they are not really as knife nerdy as they think they are, otherwise in general, rather than all being tactical, they would embrace the soul of the knife and go thin thin thin and learn to use them without breaking them.

in many ways, this is kind of like performance carbon fibre cycles for racing vs mountain bikes. everyone wants the mountain bike with full shocis, but then wonders why they are leaking energy on the normal roads they use 99% of the time.

im most certainly not advocating every knife needs to be the most ultimate thinness. but i am most certainly advocating that everyone has their angles off by double IMO..

its like at some point in time.. included angles were taken as DPS angles and run with.

im not even against all the companies building the knives thicker.. in many ways this can be considered good as the inner structure and steel is probably safer from the damage of final grinding, leaving the end user to thin to their desired requirements.

the issue is not really the sellers, but the consumers.

cKc,
S30V was indeed a bad steel to begin with,
something like BD-1 or maybe even 8Cr13MoV would have been more appropriate (I'm only considering steels that Spyderco already used at the time), best would have been high hardness low carbide stainless/carbon/tool steel, but the geometry is inherently delicate regardless of the material, the customer base they have is broad and most of the people cannot figure out how to sharpen properly (many so called nerds use strops only, go figure), how to cut without twisting the knife and applying lateral forces, and so on.
I guess people like us, which know how to thin a knife and reprofile an edge to cut good, must resign to grind down any new knife to our liking, with a little power equipment or even good coarse stones is not that difficult to do, definitely something I don't appreciate much
What I hate is that many otherwise interesting new designs are rocking 4+mm thick blades with partial grinds, Lionsteel is the worst offender for me.
I have a folder by them that resembles a rock chisel at the edge, pretty sure it can be used like that. We are talking about 0.040 bte, convexed edge higher than 20/25 dps, basically a nightmare knife, never really used it for anything, it wedges horribly even on thin cardboard and it's practically impossible to thin out without power equipment, given the steel and hardness, worst purchase ever

Millscale,

i definately try to avoid any overtly thick knife to buy, now that im not a maker with equipment to reprofile the blades to my liking. i just reprofiled my sebenza to around 11dps and its a laser, sliced deep into my thumb now accidentally .. haha.. the very coarse venev diamond is the best i have used for thinning. its a powerhouse.

i took a look at the photo of the victorinox rosewood knives. from the image it appears the edges have got quite a coarse finish. i would reccomend even if you leave the edge coarse to clean up the deeper scratches to at least 200grit. the reason why is that i find this can have quite a bit of resistance in cutting. grabs like a file.

Quote
cKc (Kyley Harris)
… i would reccomend even if you leave the edge coarse to clean up the deeper scratches to at least 200grit. the reason why is that i find this can have quite a bit of resistance in cutting. grabs like a file.

That, and also it will have more corrosion problems.

The edge bevels are finished to a medium grit, Spyderco medium of fine diamond, don't remember at the moment but are not that coarse (although for very rough use work knives I sometime finish with 120 grit only
The coarse scratches are the result of a quick transition bevel applied in a few minutes with a <100 grit stone and you are right, they grab a little too much when slicing dense materials, i was definitely a bit lazy.
Guess I should even that out with a finer stone, but I usually sand the whole primary with sandpaper on leather every now and then, especially when the knives are all scratched up like that, that should take care of the scratches, that also thins the knife a little tiny bit
Usually when I'm doing this I go from 40 grit paper to about 400, spine forward and I finish with the blade laid flat on the leather loaded with green compound (the only thing I use a strop for BTW)
Image of typic result attached, note that I only do that to reduce attrition, not for aesthetics, so a few deeper scratches left do not bother me, seems enough to reduce sticking during slicing

Quote
cKc
haha.. the very coarse venev diamond is the best i have used for thinning. its a powerhouse

Saw this stones and a couple of similar kind on the net,
no idea how they feel and behave,
are they better that vitrified Sic for coarse grinding?
Dry, oil or water as a lubricant?
I usually don't do much shaping work with my plated diamond, plates seem to wear very fast when used for the heavy work

the problem i have with my norton sic-carbide coarse stone is that it dishes out fast under load and has a lot of loose particles... so while i dont mind using it on a larger knife where the finish isn't so important. i find it a pain to use on a small folder.

i like the diamond because its a fairly controlled medium that i can work at a good pace, without huge amounts of slurry and grit getting in the way.

i was using it with wd-40 or other light lubricants. water is the recommended, but i just find they don't get loaded as much up.

can't really offer any comparatives though. im not into buying a lot of stones. i just buy one or 2 that do the jobs at different grits.

Crystolon coarse is indeed a very aggressive stone, it releases full size particles and pretty much always deal some damage to the finish, works amazingly fast though if kept flat and conditioned. I find harder stones like Coarse India or Silifix Sic stones (German brand, cheap workhorse stones) almost as fast and much more gentle on the finish, not much abrasive released (they obviously tend to wear and/or clog, never had one going out of flat)
I guess I'll have to try the venev, I'll report back with comparison with my other stones