Why I Do It

You may wonder why I sharpen so many of my knives so soon after receiving them.

Some of you may also put your own edge on a knife as soon as you receive it.

I finally ran out to Home Depot this morning and picked up a few supplies to speed up and finish the sharpening job on my Edmondson chopper and I'm about to head out the door to go test this new edge.

I only took it to 320 grit and then polished on a loaded strop. If the geometry is good then I'll polish it up to 600, 1500, and 2000 grit to really make it sing.

Now, WHY do I sharpen a new knife?

Because my body mechanics and muscle memory are set. I know how I sharpen a knife both at home and in the field. I can make minute adjustments to thicken an edge if needed but for the most part all my knives are sharpened to the same edge. Thicker ones will inherently be thicker because of the blade stock and the inability to lay it down as far as I'd like and thinner knives are more acute because of the thin blade.

Once I have my edge on a knife then it's easy for me to maintain going forward without too much extra effort.

Are my edges better than those of the maker? Probably not. I don't buy my knives based on which makers can sharpen the best. I'm not going to send the knife back every time I need the edge touched up (except maybe the Fehrman 3V which has yet to need anything but a stropping) so I might as well set them up the way I'm going to be able to maintain them.

When I buy a knife I'm looking at materials, design, geometry, and heat treat. A maker who can make a good design with good heat treat and good geometry is going to make a knife that will perform at a higher level. The maker's ability to sharpen just isn't that important to me.

There might be a bit of OCD involved in my desire to sharpen a brand new knife too but I'm going to go with the biomechanical argument. :)

Thanks for reading,


B