First toothy edge

[grepper]

Mr Grepper, have you experimented rolling your toothy edges compared to the very same edge, just taken to higher refinement?

Most people think refined edges are more stable than toothy edges. It makes sense, but I'd really like to know if that holds water.

The toothy thing started for me years ago before I got an edge tester.  I had a freshly sharpened blade with a sharp polished edge.  My wife wanted to cut through some plastic mesh.  Confidently I gave her the knife, and much to my horror it could barely cut through the stuff.  It just rode back and forth on the surface.  The only way to get it cut was by brute force pulling it through the plastic threads.  My friend was observing this and immediately availed himself of the opportunity to blurt out something to the effect that I was not able to even sharpen a knife!  Very embarrassing.  

That was the impetus for and when I first started experimenting with toothy edges.  I found that all it took was a bit of tooth on the edge to cut through the plastic stuff.  That little bit of bite grabbed just enough to break the slippery plastic surface.  I never looked back.

One year was very bad for growing tomatoes.  It wasn’t just me, many folks around MI complained of the same thing.  Tomatoes would not ripen correctly.  They’d turn red, but only on the surface leaving the center green and unripe.  Very strange.  Left on the vine or brought inside to ripen the outer layers would just rot and they would not ripen normally.  The skins were thick and tough, the next layers gooshy, mushy and rotten and centers green rotten crap.  Tasty, eh?

I gathered a bunch of nice mushy ones off the ground, and sharpened two blades, one polished and the other toothy.  At first both blades were able to cut the tough skins without mashing the tomato rot underneath.  But soon the polished edge started riding on the surface of the skins but the toothy edge just kept cutting.  

I have taken images of polished vs toothy rolled edges, but at the moment I have no idea where they are.  What I saw, and this makes sense, is that polished edges roll into a perfectly smooth long roll while toothy edges roll irregularly.  That irregularity apparently maintains some “bite” whereas the polished edges just ride on the surface of stuff.

I did find this image of a rolled polished edge.  You can imagine how that long, smooth roll just rides on the surface of stuff like tomato skin, etc.

   

That image is part of this thread:
http://bessex.com/forum/showthread.php?t...10#pid1310

I've done the same type of experiment by putting onion and garlic skins flat on a cutting board.  While the polished edge is super sharp it does fine, but does not keep cutting like a toothy edge does.  At least from what I've seen, a super sharp freshly sharpened polished edge is great but a toothy edge maintains "bite" and is more useful longer.  Of course other folks may get different results, but that's what happened for me.

So, to answer your question Mr. Mark, no.  I have not done extensive testing with with sharpness readings, etc., but in actual use I've found toothy is better, useful longer and that bit of "bite" does great for initially breaking the surface of broccoli and tomato skins and stuff like plastic rope allowing the cut to begin. 

It's like when the blade is riding on a tomato skin all it takes a a poke from the tip of the blade to start the cut.  After that even a lowly polished edge will finish the cut without smashing the tomato.  Like trying to slice through a branch with a knife compared to a saw.  A knife just doesn't cut it but a saw breaks the fibers and cuts through.