>>254328I guess I can add something about testing sharpness
When I was learning to sharpen from my grandpa I asked him how to tell if a knife is sharp and he said "lick the knife, a bull blade taste like metal, a sharp one taste like blood"
If you pick up a knife and have to question if its sharp or not chances are its not all that sharp
As
>>254355 said try to hack through a rusty nail
Seriously though place the blade flat on your thumb and raise it till you are either a little shy of the angle you used to sharpen or right at it, and very carefully push it along the nail like you want to shave a layer off
If its sharp it will hang up and try to bite into your nail, if it just skates around and you have to give it a steeper angle than what you used to sharpen it for it to bite its dull
Go easy, you don't want to actually cut the nail, it kind of creeps me out to do it that way but you can also use the smooth side of a sharpy or pen in place of the nail
If you like to test with the pad of your thumb, don't run it along the length of the edge, if you doe that even a fairly dull knife can cut and its easy to cut yourself deeply if its a keen edge
To do it right test one part of the blade at a time by putting your thumb on the edge and carefully draw it straight toward the spine, if its sharp it will hang up, repeat that from the heel to the tip on both sides
Shaving hair off your arm is pretty good but if you have a wire edge it can sometimes trick you into believing its sharp by plucking up some stubbles
For the paper test it should slice the paper with little effort, again a wire edge can be deceptive here, make sure that the paper is cutting not tearing, a sharper blade will cut thinner paper, so move your way from notebook paper to news paper to phone book paper
If you have a ridiculously sharp blade it will push cut paper, meaning that instead of slicing with the whole edge you push a single part of the blade through the edge of the sheet
