work hardening

[grepper]

You remove burrs with stones? Please explain.
Wouldn't that create a burr?
What grit compared to the grit you sharpened with?
At the same angle the blade was sharpened at?

To me that sounds fundamentally different than burr removal by breaking or tearing it off.

I'm in a serious search for a better way to remove burrs, so this sounds very interesting. Thanks for post that!

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That only pertains to steel that isn't already heat treated and tempered.
For example use 2 nails.
A common nail and a concrete nail.
A common nail is mild steel normally around 30 Rockwell Hardness and not tempered.
A concrete or cutting nail is very hard, fully heat treated and tempered.
Try and bend both.
The common nail will be easy to bend and will eventually break.
The concrete nail will snap right away.
A knife blade is more like the concrete nail as they are fully heat treated and tempered.
As it pertains to knife blades and the burr:
The burr is hardened steel already, the reason why it cracks off, it's already very thin, hard and brittle.
...
Not sure how the confusion started with this or even were it came from pertaining to knife blades.

Hmmm.... Great post there Jim.  That actually makes a lot of sense.  

We need a metallurgist in this forum.  Nonetheless, that makes sense.