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Comment by Halicon on November 20, 2010 at 4:32

Ok Tosirou, this is the last chance I'm giving you.

I will put this as simply as I can

Fixed angle sharpeners gets the job done for a beginner. When a beginner wants to move on, he moves to bench stones.

Bench stones is THE step you need to take. When you start using a bench stone you will also have to start using a microscope to look at the edge in atleast 50x. Best is 200x magnification.

Maybe you won't be able to read this part but it will serve as a reference to others that might. Fixed solutions are only cut-up artificial (very rarely natural stones comes up and some types are cut to fit the most popular sharpeners, edge pro at the top).

Now what makes to a professional sharpener, to have a tiny little rectangle of abrasive or a full block where you can use twenty, if not thirty times the amount of surface the same time.
And not to forget that unless you're getting No-name brands then you will indeed get much better stones than what any fixed solution has (even though they are great for beginners, I cannot stress that enough).

If I put things as simple as I can. If you can't establish a completely flat back hollow along with a fixed angle on the front side of say a Deba then you will never, ever become a good polisher. You will be able to sharpen the edge to a degree, but you will microscopically hinder it's lifelength and force the steel to perform less than what it can.

There's a ton of other things I could get into too if we get into Synthetics vs Naturals but that is another equally big subject. It took me about as long to get a good hold of all the quarries, looks of strats and all as it did to learn all sword polishing terms.

Your pocket knife, the one you said sliced hair. It sliced hair because it had been sharpened on a diamond file. Diamonds make the serration pattern much harsher and thus it microscopically tears the hair to shreads (I think you can see that yourself, it doesn't cut, it tears it off).

That is something you can get going already with a 125 grit diamond stone, but those serrations wears off immediately, all will be gone almost the first real cut you take on a hard surface. It's much better to polish it out, as I said before, I can see the pillars that still exist from the factory grinding.

Nice vid btw Don, I think I will give them a call and see if they can make an XL version for Nihontou!

Comment by Tosirou Hiraki on November 19, 2010 at 14:07

haha・・・・・no kidding.
Those sharpeners make a edge
to slice hair, if you want to do that?
you think so ?