Kelly Craig

Add to the pile of information offered, the topic of knife profiles.  This involves considering the over-all shape of the knife and adjusting sharpening methods according to a given knife profile.

Garage sale knives I picked up because I was drawn to their shape have cheap, stainless steel blades that are the same thickness from the cutting edge to the back.  Sharpening them will never change their profile, because it will always be the same, even if I use the knife so long I take an inch off the original edge.

On the other hand, most my other knives are best described as V shaped. That is, they become thicker, as you move up the blade.

Because a knife can get thicker, sharpening it at the same angle can, over time, totally change the resulting edge. It can become more like an ax or even a splitting mall. For this reason, many find themselves re-profiling their knives, to get back to a finer edge.

Re-profiling can be where those coarser stones become a critical part of your sharpening tool box.


Angles are the stuff of big deals too.

A friend brought his only kitchen knife over for me to sharpen.  He had tried sharpening it on one of the belt sharpeners said to be for that purpose, but was just frustrated. Probably, in part because he was trying to use a single belt to bring a neglected knife back from the dead, then get it to sharp.

Because he indicated it would continue to be neglected, I only took it to 25 degrees on each side.  If he would maintain the blade regularly, I would have taken it down to a lower angle.

On angles, think of it this way - a 90-degree angle will never get dull. A 75-degree angle will dull, but will still last a few hundred years, before needing "sharpening." The finer the angle, the quicker it will dull, in comparison to a thicker angle, but the better it cuts.

Of course, blades that won't cut are hammers, so one has to trade longevity of the edge for ability to do the task, and the task determines how much we need to compromise edge retention for ability to do the work.

There are knives out there that will take a fine edge, but will dull so quickly their fine edges push them toward the hammer zone, after a single cut. Such blades could be more tools for lessons on frustration than tools for cutting carrots, tomatoes, or steaks. In short, and size aside, a razor blade would be horrible at carving a roast, after a few slices.

In the end, it boils down to the quality of the knife (type of steel,  profile) hardening of the steel (too hard and it's brittle and will chip, too soft and it won't hold an edge) and getting familiar with your knife and your maintenance habits.

If you aren't going to maintain the edge of your blades, you'd be best off backing off on the angle and accepting the fact you're going to have to work harder using it.  From there, go to the tips others gave, above, on getting to and maintaining the angle.

In the end, keep in mind, all of us learned things we were, at the beginning, overwhelmed by, but, in time, those things (cooking, driving, operating tools, jobs) became so familiar many became boring.  You've already got to the best starting place - wanting to.

One small, easy project I did was, like others', a rack to store firewood inside.

Mine was made from 2x4's and measured 1.5' front to back, 4' tall and 8' wide. That figures to 48 cubic feet, so just a bit more than 1/3 cord of wood (128 cubit feet).

The vertical 2x's were trimmed with a saber so that they went into holes cut into the horizontals.  All that weight and pressure didn't faze the rack, thanks to the aforementioned mortises and tenons, and other approaches to assembling the simple rack.

We live on a rock farm too, and are surrounded by thousands of acres that WERE other rock farms. Driving a town over, there is a pile of rock stretching across one, several acre property and it's about 20' wide and 6' to 8' tall.  They've pulled a lot of rocks from their fields over the years and piled them there. I'm 74 and the pile was there when I was a kid.

We have gardens, grass and the swamp, which is just a piece of OUR desert named such and where our dogs unearth more rocks (they ended vegetation there some time back.

At a loss for what to do with rocks, and more rocks, then some more on top of that, it dawned on me I HATE bark for flower bed covering. For that reason, I covered my wife's beds in black plastic and started dumping rocks on them. I have a BUNCH of rings from wood barrels and use those to designate spots for roses or whatever my wife wants to grow.

I no longer have a problem with the so called mulch decaying and becoming food for things to be fought. Instead, I have rocks. And they look better than the mulch did, in my opinion.

Excess rocks go on a bank, which is about 8' tall. Over time, fewer and fewer weeds show up on it.

Now, on to the swamp. There, I have to go on routine patrols related to owning a couple dogs that process food.  When done with each "patrol" round, I switch to using the rake and scoop to rake up small rocks. There seems to be an endless supply of them.  They, all, go over the fence and onto the walkways just outside the fence.

Once in a while, i grab my big, five foot wrecking bar and coax stubborn rocks from where they insist on staying.

Over time, the rocks become fewer and fewer. At least at the surface, and parts of the grounds around us become less friendly to vegetation we'd have to fight.

I remind myself the things I do make a big difference, and that difference comes from just a little here, a little there. . . .

Another fix of antique furniture:  

A lady was moving, and whoever helped her didn't secure her grandmother's table well. It fell out of the pickup at highway speed. The road won.  

There was a gouge on the edge and whole thing split.  Just pulling the two pieces back together didn't come close to working, but I was able to cut out the bad parts, run them through the joiner and glue them back together without losing but an inch or so off the diameter.  

Between my bandsaw, a circle cutting jig and a router on a long base, I was able to pull off that part of the repair.

The hard part was the gouge out of the edge.  First, I tried just chiseling out (leveling, etc.) the damaged section so I could insert a piece of scrap, which, pretty closely, matched the grain of the table. A butt joint wouldn't work, because the line at the end was like a sore thumb. I tried a spear point and that worked.

The problem was, the grain was not perfect. Experimenting, I used an Exacto to scrape grain into the added piece and that crossed into the original wood. A bit of stain, then some sanding, highlighted the fake grain and brought it to what the surrounding, real grain looked like.  About seven coats of oil based poly later, this is the end product (even I had to work to find the repairs.

Now in my 70's, I've dealt with ear issues since I was a kid.  I've had I don't know how many operations, and a whole lot of ear aches.

A few times, the affected ear took me to the deaf category, after the drum ruptured (I heard a literal explosion (okay, it was a pop) as the ear drum burst, which, interestingly, brought immediate relief).
Anything I did hear in that ear reminded me of my antique cylinder phonograph, with the megaphone removed. All words sounded tinny and far away.



All that aside, the years taught me the one, FIRST, guaranteed cure is, avoidance. Others mentioned this and that, but I know, first hand, the most important thing is, CAUTION, when you have a stuffy nose and blow it.  When you do, you push all that nasty stuff up that freeway from your nose to ear, and cause a 100 car pile up the DOT would be hard-pressed to handle.



Once, about 20 years back, I tried the advice of a friend. It was for treating swimmer's ear. I THINK it involved alcohol and vinegar.  One drop, and it felt like someone slapped me upside the head with a sledgehammer.  Put that one on my HELL NO list.


Interestingly, in years since, I've had good luck with drops that incorporated acetic acid (back to that vinegar thing).


One thing helped in many cases. It was just good old-fashioned sweet oil (olive oil). Go figure. "Experts" warn against it. Ramble it could hurt the hear and cause the small ear farm to grow.  All I know is, it, with some cotton, stopped the pain.  


On a couple occasions, a heating pad helped drainage when there was a lot of pressure.


Now, I am curious about DMSO. It has been used for a lot of cases of congestion and head infections. It can have iodine, a great antibacterial in its own right and,  added, or even zinc. When used with DMSO, which, by itself, renders tiny critters unable to reproduce, has a lot of potential.

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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7245270/

For those who have no idea where to start, here are plans to build my version of a 2' wide by 4' long cart I built from a single sheet of 3/4 ply.  The one in the Instructables post held about 500# without a groan.

For those interested, here is the Instructables link to the step-by-step build:   https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Heavy-Duty-Mobile-Shop-Cart/

I made smaller ones too. In total, I have about nine of these, with wheels, in my shop.  


The one in the attached photo has a cart being built sitting on top of it.