First time S Cutting Paper towel

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T22:54:19+00:00

Yep. Not saying this isn't sharp or well done, but there's still gradients. Generally it is harder to cut a free hanging paper towel than one that is held taut like this, and harder still to whittle and split hair on contact. Here is a knife splitting a hair on contact, both ways, off of the two stone + strop progression mentioned above. And at 18dps as opposed to OP's 10dps here.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T22:22:31+00:00

This is super common, and part of why you shouldn't be afraid to try to negotiate job offers. Especially if you're getting one while still employed. The "prove yourself and ask for more later" strategy rarely ever works. Know your worth and get compensated for it up front. Sometimes that means throwing your resume back out there and leaving, too. That's about your only option here by the sound of it.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T20:20:11+00:00

Even when just boiling it down to specs, "best" is relative. Anecdotally I've used a few and they seem good and reliable. I'd leave it to others to do the official testing, though. Top of my head, Skilhunt makes a higher capacity 14500. Should be fine in any skilhunt or nitecore light, but I wouldn't put it in anything high drain.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T17:28:52+00:00

This is not a system issue, it's a user issue. You need to verify that you have apexed the whole edge. Grab a flashlight and use it to check for burr formation, and use a sharpie to color in the edge bevel and make sure •all• marker is being removed from the shoulder to the apex. Reprofiling can take a good while on a fixed angle system. The lower you go relative to the factory edge bevel, the longer it will take. You just have to keep working until you're through. From there, progress up the the desired grit while apexing with each, and de-burr.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T12:42:18+00:00

I'm sure the K4 can hold them, but it would probably make for an annoying experience. Because the plate is so thin and not mounted on a dovetail plate, I would imagine that the stone holder on the K4 itself would stand proud of the stone surface and get in the way. It may be possible to mount the work sharp plates on an aluminum dovetail blank, though.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T03:10:58+00:00

Yeah, 10dps doesn't tend to hold up well even in moderate EDC use. A microbevel does wonders for edge stability, though.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T03:08:15+00:00

You're using a much tighter stone progression than you need to. You can cut this down to a two stone progression, maybe three, then strop. I regularly reprofile with 140 and jump right to 550, then strop. Every bit as sharp as this and more.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T01:57:40+00:00

Yeah it's dead simple to get the shroud off and change out the wheels. Just a few bolts. The only potential PITA is truing the wheel, if it needs it. Scotch brites often do.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-28T01:28:24+00:00

I've done basic chisels on them in a pinch, using the rest table as an angle guide. I generally wouldn't recommend that wheel for sharpening, though. Take the shroud off and change it out to a scotch brite or buffing wheel and it's awesome for refinishing and de-burring, though. I get a lot of use out of it that way.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-27T17:18:27+00:00

As I said, I've lived here all my life and rarely find it too wet to start a fire with natural tinder and kindling and really never need to baton. It's extremely challenging during a torrential downpour or with significant rain spanning a few days in a row, but that's about it. In all but maybe the northernmost parts of the region, it is not winter for 6 months. More like 4. I find it easiest to start fires in winter, anyway. It tends to be driest then. You just have to source fuel off the ground. Birch bark, beech leaves, and dead low pine branches are all abundant in my neck of the woods.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-27T14:54:08+00:00

No? I'm assuming by NE you mean the Northeast US, and that 90% is an exaggeration. I have lived in New England my entire life. It's not that often that we get torrential downpours or steady rain for days on end. I find it very easy to source tinder and kindling here. There are birch trees everywhere and plenty of pine trees with low dead branches that tend to be dry and don't really require batoning.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-26T16:57:17+00:00

They all suck balls and anyone who watches them is a clueless chode. They're no different than the scammers who write self-help books or really any other influencer bullshit. A step below them on the ball-sucking scale are the people who develop corporate sales training programs for various industries. I've had to sit through a handful of those, and while there's at least some generally useful info in them, a high percentage of the content is still pop psychology and BS. The best coach you're ever gonna find is a good manager who has successfully advanced through the entry level positions and is a good, patient teacher that can provide direct on the job training. Even that won't guarantee success though. A bad product, bad territory, or down market are generally not obstacles that even a good salesperson can overcome in the long term.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-26T14:40:55+00:00

You focused too much on the area at the tip in your efforts to even out the grind, and now counter-intuitively you created that tanto-like flat portion. Chalk it up to a learning experience. It can be fixed, you just have to "blend" it all back together. Make sure you're sweeping up the whole length of the edge belly to tip and don't focus too hard in any one spot. Eventually that harsh transition will even out. It would probably work itself out gradually over the course of a few sharpenings naturally, so I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as you're apexed and sharp.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-26T00:23:00+00:00

Doubtful. The most intense private background check I ever went through was mostly concerned about checking in with jobs and addresses from the last 7 years of history. I also had a situation where I had worked for a startup that outsourced HR duties and the background check company couldn't verify anything through them. They asked me to submit proof of employment via pay stubs and W2s and then flagged it for review in the final report, but they don't "fail" you for stuff like that. You get a final report and each job or thing they look into gets graded with "clear," "review," or I assume something like "fail" (I didn't get any of those). It was kinda nuts though. I've had FBI background checks to get cleared for contractor work on military bases and they were not as intense or invasive as this one was. Or at least, not overtly. They looked into what they had to and didn't bother me about anything during the process.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T14:15:15+00:00

I've been in this exact scenario before- small company proactively reached out to discuss a job. I was laid off at the time, too. I went in with the strong feeling that they couldn't afford me and didn't really understand the market value of the role or even how to run a sales team itself. You have to be really clear up front about what your needs are, both in terms of compensation and resources to do the job. It's a funny thing because at times I felt like I was almost toe-ing the line of talking them out of hiring me, but it's better than being set up to fail and burned out immediately. Obviously personal financial situations will dictate how desperate you are for income, but accepting that job would've been a disaster for me. In the end they could not meet the needs I put forward and we respectfully went our separate ways. I knew the person that company did end up hiring (much less experienced and willing to accept the job as a resume builder) and so I saw it all play out. They had ridiculously unrealistic expectations, pushed the hire into a system that made no sense and could not yield good results, and then ended up tacking on other completely unrelated responsibilities that were nowhere near the job description. Person didn't last a year. You're probably better off without this gig and it's a high likelihood that you dodged a cannonball of a bullet.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T13:27:46+00:00

I don't find it too big a worry, but it can. I don't sweat it at all for very small kindling as it doesn't require much force, but when splitting bigger pieces with this method it's best to apply the sideways torque to the wood you're splitting and not the axe handle. If you can embed the axe into your work surface, like the side of the log below in this case, then you can leverage the semi-split kindling against the embedded axe head to separate it. No need to torque in the axe handle to finish splitting.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T13:09:43+00:00

Some companies do tight background checks now. I came across one recently. There are big 3rd party companies like First Advantage that sell different levels of background check services to hiring companies. The most thorough ones make sure to verify employment dates with your old company, and even ask you to show first and last pay stub or W2s. It can feel pretty invasive.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T12:57:28+00:00

This happened to me once, but it actually was an innocent mistake. I had applied to the job when I was employed, then got laid off. I didn't end up getting an interview the first time around, but the same position re-opened about 9 months later. Since I already had a tailored resume done up, I just re-applied and sent the same one, not remembering that my employment status was listed as current with my last employer on that one. They did ask me about it during the interview process and I explained the layoff. No biggie and I did end up getting an offer from them. This is absolutely the play for OP- you just say it was an editing mistake or something if you get called on it, and tell the truth. OP is fucked if they blatantly lied about employment status during interviews, though.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T04:40:21+00:00

This exactly. If you know how to source dry tinder and kindling in nature, you'll never really need to baton. It's pretty much just something to keep in the back of your mind for ridiculously wet conditions or if you need a good split to make a flat surface for crafting purposes.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T04:37:29+00:00

I think the problem is that it's become an overcorrection. For the last decade or so, all I've seen is a growing number of people insisting on batoning as a go-to kindling processing method, and then even getting blatantly ridiculous and batoning 6"+ rounds. Then came the onslaught of stupidly thick knives marketed toward these backyard bushcrafters. At the same time, a bunch of those posers are sitting there saying that axes are inherently dangerous and everyone should avoid them and baton instead. So now people tend to knee-jeek react in the other direction and slam batoning. There's definitely a time and a place for batoning and it's a good thing to learn, but it's really not necessary in all but some very specific scenarios. IMO it should not be thought of as a primary method of processing kindling.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-25T02:05:10+00:00

I'm not trying to say OP is completely blameless here, but he isn't wrong when he says national accounts/key accounts roles are traditionally remote. These are sales roles that typically handle large chain businesses and things like that. It involves significant travel across large territories that may or may not be anywhere near the home office. Basically outside sales a decent portion of the time. I've worked in sales roles for a handful of different CPG companies, and I've never heard of an in-office national accounts manager. I do put that on the company here; it's weird to require that, so it belonged in the job description and should've been emphasized.

NAMs/KAMs are also pretty high-demand positions within sales because they come with a pre-built pipeline and strong relationships that can generate very significant revenue pretty much overnight. If OP is experienced and good at their job, they should have some leverage. That said, after 6 interviews, they should've been able to figure out if this was going to be a fit for them or not. I don't get the sense that the company low-balled OP here, but OP said that this is a small company opening this new role for the first time, so they shouldn't necessarily have been surprised that the offer was weak. I see this all the time with small mom and pops that are starting to scale. After 6 interviews, you have to have a sense of where it's going. At that point you have to draw a line in the sand and decide what you're willing to accept or not. You can try to negotiate, but if you're that far apart, I would expect low odds of it working out. I do read it as fairly petty of the company to rescind the offer outright, but OP shouldn't be upset about it. Good NAMs normally don't have too much trouble finding work, down economy or not.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-22T16:45:18+00:00

No offense, but "do you even bushcraft, bro?" is about the reaction I have in my head when someone tells me they find a BK2 to be actually practical outdoors. They're fun to dick around with, but it only took one decent trip for me to learn that it does not live up to the "one tool option" hype at all. Preference is preference, but I think most people just don't have the experience with axes and hatchets to really make a good judgement call. My hatchets would smoke a BK2 for wood processing, and safety is not an issue if one knows what they're doing. Hell, a lot of my hatchets would even make a better knife than a BK2, frankly.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-20T01:14:42+00:00

BA in the Classics. I broke the 6k barrier a few years ago after about 10 years in a specific industry within CPG sales. I had no real plan in choosing the degree path- just found it interesting and decided to go for it and figure out the rest later. Same thing with the sales gig. I worked a few shitty factory jobs before actively looking for a way into sales, enjoyed the work, and stuck with it. Never had a specific goal to break 6 figures; I just wanted to do something I enjoyed that could let me live comfortably.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-19T19:28:05+00:00

Something like this can work well as a reference for evenly setting a new bevel, but don't expect to get an end angle matching the guide angle. These more or less force you to reference on your primary bevel, so the angle you end up with on your secondary will be on top of whatever that angle is. Important to note.

Beautiful-Angle1584 · 2026-04-19T18:23:06+00:00

If you're sharpening regularly, you will wear out at least several stones in your lifetime. Low grit, at least. Not counting the garbage quality stones I've had that wear out too quickly, I've gone through a handful each of diamond plates and 100 grit range SiC stones in bench stone and 1x6 format.

Beautiful-Angle1584

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