Let's Explore The Evidence And How To Avoid It Happening It is common knowledge among knife enthusiasts that factory knives often have subpar edges. Their sharpness and keenness are often lacking and do not maintain their edge well. As a result, many knife owners opt to sharpen their new knives right away. Many even suggest that a factory knife needs to be sharpened several times before it can be accurately assessed. Worth noting is that factory knives may have uneven edges due to being ground with either belts or wheels and quite often by hand. I have observed factory knives with up to a ten ..read more

Keith Nix Knives FREE Learning!! Stainless steel chefs knives have gained a reputation through the years, particularly perhaps the 50's and 60's, as not being very tough, or hard, or great at holding an edge. This probably has to do with a flood of factory knives made from 420 series stainless. With .3% carbon it was never going to get hard enough for a quality knife. But it blanked well(making knife blanks with a press and dies), machined well, it was very stain resistant, and polished well. So there was that. About 100 years ago Uddeholm in Sweden began tinkering with a stainless steel for ..read more

Keith Nix Knives FREE Learning!! A2 is traditionally a tool and diemaker's steel, and has been used to make custom knives for several decades. The "A" in its designation denotes it is from the family of "air hardening" steels. After heating to austenitizing temperature(1725 to 1775), A2 can be cooled in still air and attain full hardness. Other steels like D2 and most all stainless steels possess the same characteristic, being that additions of chromium increase "hardenability" of steels. A2 has around 5% chromium, not enough to be "stainless", but plenty enough to make A2 air hardening. A2 h ..read more

Keith Nix Knives FREE Learning!! 52100 Bearing Steel for Knifemaking 52100 is a "fast oil" hardening steel developed and still used for ball bearings and races, capable of high hardness and excellent toughness. Capable of taking an extremely fine edge, 52100 is my choice for high carbon, low alloy steels for its high working hardness, great toughness, and overall balance of properties. Developed in the early 1900s, 52100 has about 1% carbon for high hardness. 1.5% chromium makes this steel more deeply hardenable, and the chromium also decreases grain size within the steel and slightly increase ..read more

I've gathered some information from testing my knife sharpening routine with the Edge On Up BESS sharpness tester. A few of the findings were a bit unnerving at first. The good news is when you have a way to quantify and measure your work, you can control your process! Here's what I came up with in a completely unscientific presentation. Y'all may remember a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Edge On Up edge sharpness tester I purchased to measure the sharpness of sharpened edges. (If not you can catch up HERE!) I was both curious to know if my edges were as sharp as I THOUGHT they were ..read more

I've gathered some information from testing my knife sharpening routine with the Edge On Up BESS sharpness tester. A few of the findings were a bit unnerving at first. The good news is when you have a way to quantify and measure your work, you can control your process! Here's what I came up with in a completely unscientific presentation. Y'all may remember a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Edge On Up edge sharpness tester I purchased to measure the sharpness of sharpened edges. (If not you can catch up HERE!) I was both curious to know if my edges were as sharp as I THOUGHT they were ..read more

Why Use Liquid Nitrogen? What Is Liquid Nitrogen? What Does It Do? How Do You Know It Does That? Will LN2 Fix a Bad Heat Treatment? People ask questions! And we're going to try and provide some answers today about one of the most misunderstood parts of heat treating knives- the cryogenic quench! WHAT IS LIQUID NITROGEN? The air we breathe is 78% gaseous nitrogen. It is all around us as you read this. So there's plenty of this element, but we need it to be liquid, and we need it in a container! This involves a process called "air liquification", which compresses and chills air or gaseous eleme ..read more

Knife Sharpening Should Be a Measurable Process! You Can't Improve What You Don't Measure! Since I began making and sharpening knives, one of the things I'm most satisfied with is the final edge I put on blades. My system and tools give precise, repeatable results and very sharp edges.BUT, these edges have to this point been tested using anecdotal measurements. For example, "does it shave hair? How easily?" or "Will it slice phonebook paper? How smoothly?" This type of opinionated quality control doesn't sit well with me, a machinist who is accustomed to measuring features with instruments th ..read more

FREE Learning!! So what is heat treating steel all about? How does it happen? WHY does it happen? We'll explore these and other questions in this post as I try to give you a lay person's understanding of some common heat treating terms and the various phases of steel. So dive in and let's get going! Annealing-- Annealing is the opposite of hardening, as it softens steel, making it easier to grind, drill, saw, or perform other operations required to make a knife. This happens by heating the steel to slightly above its critical temperature and holding it there for a period of time. After this ..read more

FREE Learning!! Proper Use, Materials, and Safety Tips for Cutting Boards Cutting boards are far more important than we think, as they are THE object most in contact with your knife, they are in contact with your food, and they are supposed to provide a safe, secure place to perform your prep work. Just these tasks alone make the cutting board worth looking into! There are a number of materials to consider, the sanitation of each material, and how they interact with your knife. So let's get started. Materials-- Cutting boards can be made from most anything from lumber to plastics to stone or ..read more