Note to self: stop volunteering to sharpen stuff...

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Well plumies, not really cold. I lived in North Dakota when I was young. Now
*that* place is cold. Not that San Diego is considered cold by most people's standards, I just prefer it to be 70+ degrees when standing on the first tee at 7:45 AM December through February. South Florida is the only place in the contiguous US that offers that condition regularily.

Buzz


I live in Sioux Falls, SD but my folks live in North Dakota. Yeah, pretty darned cold. And summer is the shortest three weeks of the year!:ROFLMAO:
 
The coldest winter I've spent in California is a summer in San Francisco! I can't remember who said that but it's funny and true until I went to Vermont to ski one year. Brrrrrrr. That kind of cold just doesn't do well for a gal who's only lived as far East and South as Hawaii and California!
 
Guess you wouldn't care for South Dakota, then!:ROFLMAO: It got down to -18 F a couple times this winter. But it was a tad colder up where my folks live. Winter here is the longest six months of the year.:mad:
 
20 years or so ago we had a night in Wausau, WI where it got down to 50 below. I called a hunting buddy outside of Willow City ND and it was -56 there, and windy. It didn't make me feel any warmer though.

Rob - my ex is from Clark. Little rich girl. Daddy had 10,000 acres of potatoes back in the 60's. Met her at the U of Wis., and thought I'd play cowboy for a few years....

Nothing like staying on topic.... :LOL:
 
Once you hit -25 or -30, getting much colder doesn't feel any different.:LOL: Coldest I can recall in my lifetime was almost -40 back when I was in high school (sometime in the early 80's). Those temps make me think of Jack London's "To Build a Fire."
 
I'm probably gonna get a 700 Bester and maybe a Naniwa before long, but I'm starting to get desperate enough to buy a Shapton GlassStone and take it up the the school and see if the Machine Tool guys can figure out how to cut it. I keep dropping hints at KF but nothing's come of it so far!:ROFLMAO:

Rob,
I've already been in talks with Shapton about what to cut the Glass Series with.. according to them it can't be done without shattering the glass as it is tempered, which the ceramic is mounted to the glass, so it would most likely fragment as well.

The only thought I had around this was to cut them with a water jet to get a few test pieces out of them. Shapton didn't confirm if this would work. (just for note we are the UK/EU distributor for Edge Pro for about 4yrs now and will be the UK Distributor for Shapton next month)

I talked with Ben at length about this and he used to sell Shapton way back. He wasn't aware of the new glass series which are much harder wearing than the professional series or the versions he sold way back(professional series is made strickly for the US distributor by the way).

In order for us to have Shapton make the glass series to the size we need (6x1 inch) we only have to make a run of 600 units :rolleyes:.

Hence me considering taking the cheapest glass model I have here and seeing if I can get them waterjet cut as a test piece before I go any further.

Ben is to be getting a Shapton stone shortly to test it out just to see how he likes them and then we will go from there.

it's good to see I'm not the only one that came up with this idea as well.

cheers,
Joe
 
Cool! Yeah, my thought was that a high pressure water jet might do the trick without shattering the glass. 600 would be a pretty darned big run, probably too expensive unless some dealers did a group buy. If such a beast was made I'd probably buy at least five grits.

BTW, welcome to DC, Joe/Edgepro-UK!
 
If Ben did decide to go this route then they would be offered as premium stones without a doubt. 600 as you say is a large run. Shapton would have to create a new mold and stop producing the standard size for the period of time to produce the ones for the Edge Pro systems.

So before Ben or I go have something made I defiantly want to test it on the system to see the results compared to the stones Ben already offers.

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum.

cheers,
Joe
 
Well it's something that we will be looking into without a doubt. I don't think it is going to be something that will happen over night (have to work out which grits to choose and such)

The stones offered by the US distributor on their site are only a couple of the ones now available... Here is the full future list

120 (122.5), 220 (66.82), 320 (45.9), 500 (29.4), 1000 (14.7), 2000 (7.35), 3000 (4.9), 4000 (3.68 avilable in a Fine or Fine-Soft), 6000 (2.45 fine/fine-soft), 8000 (1.84 Super fine / Super fine-soft), 10,000 (1.47), 16,000 (.92), 30,000 (.49)

Some of the above are not out till Sept/Dec as their projected release dates.
The ( ) contain the Micron which some here will want to know since Shapton sorta bounce between the US standard and the Japanese Grit numbers. Also some of the same grits are offered in two different classes such as fine-soft or fine.

So with such a wide selection trying to narrow down which stones will be the best ones to have made to size is the next step.

Suggestions are always welcome :)

cheers,
Joe
 
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Suggestions are always welcome :)

Once I obtain the profile I want with rougher stones, my GS progression is 1, 2, 4, & 8k. From there I either use a Naniwa 10k if more polish is desired or go directly to stropping with chromium oxide.

The price of the super fine grit GS's has kept me from purchasing them. For me, anything beyond 8k is overkill except for the Naniwa on a few vegetable slicers or when I want my EDC to really show off. The 8k edge cuts very well and is easily supplemented by stropping when a hair splitting/push cutting edge is desired.
 
Back to the original topic:

I see another true artist/professional has joined us. Welcome, Chico.

I, a lowly supplicant to the art of sharpening a blade, am the resident knife guru at the country club I work at. The past several weeks, some of the other cooks have been approaching me, giving me the usual schpeel, "Can you take a look at my knife, please?"

I'll look at the tool in question, then my prep-checklist, ending with the clock, and determine if I have enough time to do any good. Usually, the answer is "The Doctor is in. Please take a seat and wait a few minutes."

As previously mentioned, there is one cook that has a Shun that's been really abused. He was the third person to wheedle me of some time. I had to recondition the edge. He had a 20 degree bevel! I took it down to somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees. It's holding up very well. He couldn't believe the difference. Now, if I can just give him a sense of proper respect for a finely honed edge. Maybe then he won't leave such an expensive knife laying around for anyone to use/abuse/swipe.

My Executive Chef keeps telling me he's going to have me work on his knives a bit.
 
Allen, I had a very serious conversation about the balance of freebies-to-wages with a mod in another forum. We spoke indepth on the telephone, and frankly this "nice guy" problem was one to which he was very familiar.

You want to be a nice guy, a problem solver. But let's be clear, if I was the tinker that appraised that abused Shun, the cost for repair and a polishing would be from 100 to 200 dollars. You gave that away, income for your family.

It's a Japanese laminate. Now, this guy might be the head chef at a fancy-schmancy restaurant. They buy him new knives allowing him to throw away the dinged ones. A cheap honing on a hot grinding wheel may indeed be foolish, but clearly a write-off.

However, we both know that a relationship between the chef and the tinker develops into a professional service. Once the client has pristine and useful edges, they "magically" seem to hit the floor less and less. Suddenly, the chef wants to know what else is in your sharpening case. Oooh, there's a new gyuto and a butakiri...

Now take that idea to a discussion with your friend. You wouldn't ask him to re-shingle your roof for free. And one of my best clients paid me about 7,000 dollars in one year.

At some point, the exchange has to be professional. Of course, I will do pro bono work for a soldier about to be deployed or a subsistance hunter. However, there's a clear-cut line.
 
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