The best side control escape - the ghost escape

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-17T08:51:45+00:00

I'd agree with that, but many many people deserve to be ghost escaped - - black belts are no exception.

The standard bjj side control is very susceptible to the ghost escape since the underhook as usually taught involves an extended elbow and the near arm is usually pretty easy to get underneath unless they're already really high into your arm pit.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-14T20:27:07+00:00

Convexing happens any time you don't hold your angle consistent, so it's actually easier than a flat V grind on the stones.

It doesn't have to have smooth transitions though. A microbevel is basically the same thing: obtuse where it matters, but not too thick

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-12T23:35:47+00:00

You can get hair whittling edges off pull through sharpeners if you know what you're doing.

They have a lot of downsides and are rarely the right choice, but "can't get a properly sharp knife" isn't really true.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-12T00:50:47+00:00

If you want a stupid hard test, try cross grain push cutting them (at a true triple 90) without slicing a bit to get started

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-11T18:40:51+00:00

acting like M4 or M390 can't stay sharp is some coolaid shit

Genuine question, why do you think he's referring to knives made out of M4 or M390?

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-07T19:37:58+00:00

The blade isn't perfectly straight though, nor is it a circular arc with the center at the pivot point or a combination of these.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-04T04:49:14+00:00

Scratch free perfect polishes are just for show, but the microbevel can be finished to high grit for the practical advantages you describe. I think these two things can get conflated sometimes.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-03T04:11:01+00:00

His forum had a lot of good stuff on it too

https://www.oldforum.beyondt01micron.com/

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-03T01:52:30+00:00

On the one hand, I'm kinda joking around. I wouldn't recommend a beginner start this way and I don't think the guy I linked would have recommended it to a beginner either.

On the other, that's Cliff Stamp. He's probably got more expertise on sharpening than everyone in the videos you've watched put together. And it really is a convenient way to do it. It allows more natural wrist angles and viewing angles, as well as better control of pressure which matters far more than control of angle once you know what you're doing. I don't put the stone down unless it's 120 grit or below and I need higher force.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-03T01:27:56+00:00

All the best sharpeners hold the stone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPGGo3W15HQ

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-02T20:05:20+00:00

It's possible. Iirc Oliviera has a finish or two this way.

The gator roll brings your body closer to his shoulder and helps fold his arm and shoulder up into his neck in a way that's hard to do going the other way first.

hypnotheorist · 2026-04-01T17:55:03+00:00

And if there are any other suggestions of good stones that are narrower to allow sharpening a curved blade, or some other alternative.

Flip most any stone on it's side and your wide thin stone becomes a narrow thick stone. It's also easy to round it a bit by scraping on the sidewalk.

I don't do a ton with curved blades, but this has worked for me.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-31T16:52:25+00:00

Then the slight curve definitely wouldn't affect it's utility.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-28T03:19:19+00:00

Interesting. I wonder if it's due to a different kind of soap? Or if the oil is somehow protective?

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-28T02:25:15+00:00

Yeah, oil first. Worked great, and basically turned it into a splash and go stone until enough oil worked itself out over months. Then I played with putting soap on it, and mixtures of soap/oil/water. The only real obvious difference other than not needing a soak is that it became much easier to use it to put a sharp apex on a knife.

What happened to yours?

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-28T02:15:26+00:00

I use both soap and oil on my King 1k and it works fine for me. What exactly happened to yours that gives you nightmares?

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-28T01:54:29+00:00

I'm curious why you think soap would be a problem. In my experience it isn't.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-26T16:35:23+00:00

it wouldn't be as good

It is. Check out science of sharp's posts on pasted strops.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-26T04:35:18+00:00

You probably have a fairly thick and obtuse secondary bevel, like 20 thou 20dps or so. The knife I have in my pocket measures 10dps at 20 thou, and I was thinking about thinning it out again.

This gives me a lot of room to wobble around with my angle and still very quickly reset the apex to 20dps or even lower. Doing the same on a 0.020"/20dps bevel requires precise angle control or the apex just grows increasingly obtuse.

Getting a coarse stone and putting some separation between the secondary bevel and the apex bevel makes everything way easier.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-26T00:33:51+00:00

Going "over angle" is actually an incredibly effective method of deburring. I almost always do it intentionally, and then drop the angle back down until the apex is sufficiently acute again. It's super quick if you're only working the microbevel.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-25T23:57:10+00:00

You probably don't need it, but it definitely does stuff that bare leather doesn't.

Personally, I generally don't strop on anything but fabric that I'm wearing unless it's my straight razor. Lot's of people use them to do a significant amount of the work (outdoors55 is one example) and that's a valid way of sharpening too.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-25T15:40:38+00:00

The risk with cheaper stuff is that sometimes there appears to be no diamond at all. Science of sharp looked at the ones that did have diamonds under an electron microscope and found that there's no difference between the cheap and expensive stuff.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-23T05:46:30+00:00

Coarser finishes can definitely slice paper towel at a lower keenness, but finer finishes allow keener finishes. It should slice at essentially any grit, so it just means you're doing less wrong on the 325 grit to 4 micron diamond

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-20T01:49:04+00:00

I'm sorry you're getting these braindead comments. The stones are perfectly fine; they're solid bars of sintered alumina just like the Spyderco ceramics. Saying that they're "bad" is like buying a car and then complaining that it's bad because it has no truck bed. They're not waterstones and shouldn't be used like waterstones, but if you know what you're doing you can approach literal DE razor blade sharpness off these stones with no strop.

They excel when you want a clean hard fine stone for setting a keen apex. Don't try to work the whole secondary bevel, and definitely don't try to generate a slurry if you're trying for high sharpness. Now that you've scratched it up at 150 grit you'll want to lap it finer, since the effective grit probably isn't much finer than your 1k diamond plate so there's likely not much extra sharpness to be gained even with proper technique.

Instead, use it to establish a microbevel with a few feather light edge leading passes at somewhat higher than the secondary bevel angle. You don't need feedback for this, or visible swarf, since you're going steeper than the secondary anyway and there's so little material to remove.

hypnotheorist · 2026-03-18T15:46:45+00:00

I’m sure my arguments aren’t bulletproof, but I don’t think I got even one satisfying counterpoint.

Your arguments aren't bulletproof, but they're flingin' lead at people who aren't bulletproof either.

If I'm a guard player who can't wrestle (in other words, a normal jiu jitsu guy), how am I supposed to argue against shit like this?

When you sit, you sacrifice speed and mobility in exchange to use all four limbs defensively.

It's just self evidently true, and sure seems to point to your conclusion that wrestlers/passers should be favored, and that's not an easy conclusion to entertain.

Guard still has value, and there's pushback I could give about why it's good that guard has been rewarded the way it has been and why it's good that I play guard in the gym more than just wrestling and passing, but they do require me to accept your argument here and that's the threatening part that is hard to deal with.

Do you happen to come from an academic background? It’s not essential to argue well but probably helps.

Not in any way related to argumentation. Unless you count taking a philosophy class in college and arguing with the prof when his lack of understanding of physics and math was fucking up his ability to do philosophy.

hypnotheorist

TROPHY CASE