Round 3 of cutting tests - repeat of round 1:

• Shave arm hair easily - Pass
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (still cutting easily, fraying slightly increased)
• 10 cuts through heavy duty cardboard - Pass, last cut began to fray (cardboard is 44 lbs/in edge tested, 10" cuts)
• 10 cuts through plastic straps - Pass (plastic straps from Uline order)
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (more fraying with some snagging)
• Shave arm hair easily - Pass (still shaving nicely)

510x - Micro-bevel after cutting test 3

Round 4 of cutting tests - repeat of round 1 - interesting results!

• Shave arm hair easily - Pass
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (more fraying with some snagging)
• 10 cuts through heavy duty cardboard - Pass. No fraying, improved cutting after 4th cut (cardboard is 44 lbs/in edge tested, 10" cuts)
• 10 cuts through plastic straps - Pass (plastic straps from Uline order)
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (cut easily and cleanly)
• Shave arm hair easily - Pass (still shaving nicely)

510x - Micro-bevel after cutting test 4

The edge actually seemed to clean up a little more through the process. Just after the 4th cut into the cardboard, the cutting got much easier and the paper cut much more easily after the cardboard and plastic straps. I'm guess that the edge got some honing effect from the cardboard. I'm running out of time to do experiments today, so I'll execute a lot more reps on the next one to see what happens to the edge.

Round 5 of cutting tests - repeat of round 1 with 4x repetitions:

• Shave arm hair easily - Pass
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (cut easily and cleanly)
• 50 cuts through heavy duty cardboard - Pass. No fraying, performance dropping off after 12th cut. All cuts completed but force required to make cuts increased throughout. Nearly a fail at #50 (cardboard is 44 lbs/in edge tested, 10" cuts)
• 50 cuts through plastic straps - Pass (plastic straps from Uline order)
• 10 slices through copy paper - Pass (some fraying but still cut easily)
• Shave arm hair easily - Pass (barely shaving, nearly a fail)

510x - Micro-bevel after cutting test 4

Overall, I'm very impressed both performance and durability of the edge. The cardboard I chose is extremely tough stuff and to still be able to shave and slice paper easily after 90 10" cuts through the cardboard along with all the other cuts is impressive.

I'd like to hear from people about how much they use their pocket knife in a week and what they're cutting with it. If you can keep loose track of your usage, we could design a test to see if a specific geometry and finish will give you the performance you want throughout the week.

One of things that's very exciting about this little test is that to restore the knife to pre-test condition, I'll only need about 5-10 quick strokes per side, just hitting the micro bevel.

Here are images after all 5 tests together:

Larger images of the edge are available on my blog: Sharpening Techniques

After testing round 5, I remounted the knife in the sharpener and did 10 strokes per side to restore the micro-bevel:



It took about 30 seconds from start to finish to mount the knife, set the angle and do the strokes. The edge isn't perfect, so I'll go back for another 10 strokes per side.

another 10 strokes per side with the 1600 grit stones: