Was it just my imagination?

[ken hatch]

We may have a failure to communicate.

I do not consider using a 1000 grit or lower stone as honing. MY normal grinding stone is a Med or Course India and sometimes a Washita depending on how deep the ware or if there is damage. The power grinder seldom comes out to play and I really do not consider using it as grinding but as bevel profiling.

ken

[Jim Koepke]

We may have a failure to communicate.

Which leads to a failure to understand… Many of us are not set up with the luxury of having a permanent buffing station. Many folks may not even have regular access to a power grinder. For many years all my sharpening was done by hand on various honing stones and abrasive sheets.

However the unicorn edge method works out for folks, it is still only a different way to get to a sharpened edge for working wood.

Certainly some will love it as much as sharpening on diamond stones and creating a convex bevel as Paul Sellers once demonstrated.

Others will continue with what has worked for them over the years.

Then there will be some who will glean a bit of information to modify their current methods to improve the edge on a blade.

Life goes on…

jtk

[ken hatch]

Which leads to a failure to understand… Many of us are not set up with the luxury of having a permanent buffing station. Many folks may not even have regular access to a power grinder. For many years all my sharpening was done by hand on various honing stones and abrasive sheets.

However the unicorn edge method works out for folks, it is still only a different way to get to a sharpened edge for working wood.

Certainly some will love it as much as sharpening on diamond stones and creating a convex bevel as Paul Sellers once demonstrated.

Others will continue with what has worked for them over the years.

Then there will be some who will glean a bit of information to modify their current methods to improve the edge on a blade.

Life goes on…

jtk

Jim,

I think that is where I will be in the end.

ken

[Thomas Wilson]

I just used my phone (iPhone 11 Pro) and got a microscope mount for it.

This is the mount. Whereas the microscope itself seemed like a bargain -- $75 for a real microscope, not a kid's toy -- this mount seems overpriced, at $26 for some plastic. But it does the job and it doesn't look like there are a lot of other options.
https://www.amazon.com/Gosky-Microsc.../dp/B07412S738

Thanks Winston for posting the methods of sharpening and the microscopic photography that showed us all what is happening at the edge. The equipment you chose for the test is reasonably priced for an interested hobbyist like me. Your video show how useful the equipment can be.

Have you seen James Wright’s chisel test? He compared chisel brands but he has some good testing methods for edge retention also. He used a homemade slide hammer to strike the chisels with a calibrated force and counted the blows to cut through test material. He used a Edge On Up sharpness tester to measure sharpness before and after. It is not a metrology lab but it is good kitchen science. Both you and he are setting a good example for how to introduce quantitative methods into things like sharpening that have relied on feel, intuition, and personal anecdote.

For those who have not seen, James Wright’s (woodbywrighr dot com) chisel test methods are here.