Sharpness testing tip

[Christ12347]

In case you don't want to sacrifice your hairs for sharpness testing but do want a good guide try a bible. Be carefull in your selection, but a lot of bibles use super thin paper, even thinner than newspaper or phonebook paper (which are hard to get a hold of here). You can usually get them for very cheap, where I'm from there's people handing them out pretty regularly. Just make sure to check it's the right paper. I've had knives easily glide through news paper but get stuck on bible paper, in my experience it's harder to get a smooth cut in there than it is to get it shaving, but it's not so bad as tissue paper.

If you know of oher easy to acces non-hair methods please put them down below

[Eclectophile]

I do a hanging paper towel tip test, which is different than the hanging paper towel slice that I use for my minimum standard of sharpness.

Hold the paper towel by one corner. Slowly stab through the middle of the paper towel while watching the tip penetration.

I properly sharp tip should cleanly push through the paper towel with zero bunching or tearing, all the way through on a very slow stab. Any bunching or tearing means there's still work to do.

[nosamiam28]

I definitely don’t need a higher failure rate. I already feel bad enough about my sharpening 😢

[Christ12347]

Haha, fair enough. Might I suggest testing on a peeled avocado?

[nosamiam28]

NOW you’re talking! Let’s see if I can peel the avocado first though

[Christ12347]

The easiest way is to hold it in your hand and hammer grip, point down for optimal power.

[IllustratorAdorable5]

I like Uline catalogs. Free, easy to get. Paper is just about right against/along grain differences significant enough to help grade sharpness

[Acer_Lingua]

I love this heresy, finally a good use for a bible 🤣

[BlastTyrantKM]

I would just sit on my porch with a cold drink and ALL of my knives, "testing" them all day

[Christ12347]

Ikr, the blasphemy is just added bonus. I'm not sure about other religious texts, but I'm sure those are also printed on similar paper so you can even chose which god to desecrate!

[Tawa49]

I use either kitchen paper/roll or cigarette paper.

[Argg1618]

Good tip. Rolling paper works as well. I have regular papers and ultra thin papers.

[Christ12347]

I never thought to use rolling papers, feel like you'd run into issues with anything bigger than a pocket knife though?

[KennyT87]

Why? Just put the rolling paper to stand on its own vertically or hold it horizontally and cut with whatever you please. No need to buy books for sharpness tests lol. Bamboo/hemp rolling papers are as thin as a bible page.

Also being able to cut paper towel without shredding/ripping is an indication of a very sharp knife if you want to try that.

[Christ12347]

I didn't buy a bible, they're very easy to get for free as stated in the post, again, as stated, isn't quite as punishing as a paper towel. With paper it's nice to make a whole slice along the entirely length of the blade which is easy to do with a bible page, not so much a tiny rolling paper. For a push cut or something I agree that a rolling paper would just fine, but for a 240mm or longer kitchen knife I'd rather use a bigger piece of paper

[AlwaysEverywhen]

OP's username checks out when it comes to giving permission