Convenient source for throwaway knives for practice sharpening

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bf1122

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Dec 22, 2013
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I recently found a pack of 4 stainless steel Farberware kitchen knives at Walmart for about $5 that seems OK for learning how to sharpen knives. I was glad to find them so cheap since as a noob I have a lot of learning to do. The blade is about 4.5 inches by 0.75 inches, in a generic kitchen knife shape, without serrations. The edge quality is poor, with readily visible variations in the bevel width and angle - I figure that learning to reprofile these messed up edges will be a good initial learning experience.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Farberware-Full-Tang-Triple-Rivet-Steak-Knife-Set/17808692

I suspect that the steel is so cheap and soft that it may not begin to represent what happens as you try to sharpen a modern, high-quality steel, but I have to start somewhere and I definitely don't want to risk damaging my small but enjoyable quality knife collection. My knife sharpening system is a Lansky 5. I hope to upgrade to an Edge Pro or Wicked Edge later in the year if finances permit.

I hope this suggestion is helpful to any others who have realized they need to practice on knives that they may have to throw away as they move up the knife sharpening learning curve.
 
The downside to using cheap stainless knives for practice is, sometimes the steel is a poor representation of what should happen if technique is decent or better. A decent quality steel should always reward good technique with a fine edge, even if the steel may not hold the edge after the fact. I've sharpened a few cheap knives that were too coarse-grained and/or too soft to even take a decent edge; that can mislead one into thinking they're doing something wrong, even if they're not. I pulled my hair out over some knives like these, only to finally pick up a 'good' one and discover I was beating myself up for nothing. The difference in ease of sharpening, between a good steel and one that isn't, is usually night & day.

I'd rather find some old, worn carbon steel knives of a known good reputation (for their edges), and practice on those. Basic carbon steel is much less complicated with the additional alloying elements that might screw up the cheap stainless ones (when poorly manufactured). Flea markets, garage & yard sales and the 'auction site' are good places to find those, and they can still be had for almost nothing. And the obvious bonus is, they'll still be fantastic users after one puts a 'knife nut' quality, obsessively-sharp edge on them. That's the best reward of all. ;)


David
 
You don't practice baseball to get better at hockey.
Just use the knives with the steel you plan on using to learn to sharpen. Cheap knives have cheap steel that doesn't act/respond the same as the newer super steels.
You'll get frustrated when it takes you more than 2x as long to get a burr on the better steels than the cheap ones. You'll feel like you are doing something wrong or that your equipment is no longer good. Best to practice with what you plan to use. Just my opinion.
 
ShepardCC said:
You don't practice baseball to get better at hockey.
Just use the knives with the steel you plan on using to learn to sharpen. Cheap knives have cheap steel that doesn't act/respond the same as the newer super steels.
You'll get frustrated when it takes you more than 2x as long to get a burr on the better steels than the cheap ones. You'll feel like you are doing something wrong or that your equipment is no longer good. Best to practice with what you plan to use. Just my opinion.
Click to expand...

And a good opinion at that!

Even as someone that has sharpened thousands of blades I still don't like sharpening faberware junk, awful burrs and poor edge quality are just standard with these blades.
 
ShepardCC said:
You don't practice baseball to get better at hockey.
Just use the knives with the steel you plan on using to learn to sharpen. Cheap knives have cheap steel that doesn't act/respond the same as the newer super steels.
You'll get frustrated when it takes you more than 2x as long to get a burr on the better steels than the cheap ones. You'll feel like you are doing something wrong or that your equipment is no longer good. Best to practice with what you plan to use. Just my opinion.
Click to expand...

+1:thumbup:

on a side note: I sharpen my cheaper kitchen knives on a cheap 1 x 30 belt sander with 220 grit...works great.
 
I've been learning how to use my belt sander also. I picked up several kitchen knives at the Goodwill store for 99 cents each. After I was done with them, I made sure they had a good edge on them and donated them back.
 
Creedmoor said:
I've been learning how to use my belt sander also. I picked up several kitchen knives at the Goodwill store for 99 cents each. After I was done with them, I made sure they had a good edge on them and donated them back.
Click to expand...

Great idea Creedmoor. Paying it forward. ;):thumbup:
 
Quite inexpensive but decent enough woule be Sanrenmu or Enlan. They use 8Cr steel, while not as good heat treated as a Spyderco or Kershaw, should be ok.

Having said that, their current price is already quite hight (used to be sub 10$ each), which for people in US might be better getting Kershaw (Crown?) with 8Cr steel too. It's not S30V but it'll give what a hair splitting edge should be ;)

Another alternative is small Victorinox paring at about 3$ each.
 
I found and bought a set of Old Hickory knives in a butcher block holder at a local Goodwill store and paid $9.00 for the set of 9 knives. The smallest one was a boning knife, and the rest were different length chef's knives. They were in excellent shape although dull and had an excellent patina on them. They really sharpened up nicely using my paper wheels, and I still have them in my kitchen and use them more than my expensive Soligen stainless steel set.

Blessings,

Omar
 
Old Hickory and Opinel paring knives can be had for around $10. It's pretty hard to wear through an entire knife when your not using a powered sharpening setup to my understanding. I learned on a victorinox paring knife and used my DMT Aligner, norton economy crystolon and india stones quite extensively and well I removed a lot of metal from it I still have a lot more left.

And quite honestly half of that metal removed was from a couple quick swipes from a carbide scraper as I wanted to see how bad those things actually were at sharpening, and it's bad considering how dull it left my knife and it removed more metal than what I have done after several hours of grinding away on various stones (sharpening and various reprofiles).

My victorinox paring knife leaves me wanting something more for a practice knife and I will probably pick up an Opinel paring knife to practice on. Partly due to defects in the knife I got, I am moving more towards carbon steels, and from my experience with the carbon steel #6 opinel the metal they used is more than willing to take a stupidly sharp edge if you sharpen it right. So my advice don't buy cheap for your practice knife, you can get a quality one for a relatively cheap price there is no need to save a couple dollars by getting something that won't sharpen as good.
 
I very much appreciate the many suggestions and comments on what knives and steels to use for sharpening practice.

At the moment, I favor the idea of practicing on beat-up or damaged knives that use higher quality steel. While I don't need to practice on the most high-tech, extreme steel available, as I mentioned in my post and as is mentioned in others' comments, there are problems if the practice steel is too soft or otherwise unrepresentative of good-quality knives.

I found a Ganzo folder online for about $15 US dollars, including shipping - this is something I can personally afford to practice sharpening and eventually throw away. 440C is printed on the blade and it's obviously much harder than my Walmart throwaways. I wonder if gun show used knives will feature anything that is more suitable for $15 or less? Perhaps a higher-quality knife with a broken tip would be at least somewhat usable. I'm thinking that something like 154CM steel might be OK for this purpose.

I just tried sharpening one of my Walmart throwaway knives, and it was usable to learn how to create a simple, constant geometry edge. The original factory edge was very wavy and varied in width from one end to the other, but even my inexperienced sharpening improved the factory edge quite a lot.

However, as expected, I quickly discovered that this unknown generic stainless steel blade is *much* softer than my other knives. Thus, as others have cautioned, learning sharpening skills with such a soft steel would likely be hard if not impossible to transfer to higher quality steels. Would I learn anything much by trying to polish the Walmart knife's edge?

Thanks again for all the helpful comments and suggestions.
 
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It can't hurt to try polishing the cheap knife to see what will happen. All you have to lose is time.

I bought a small assortment of flea market knives a while back for around $5 for 5 blades. All different and all beaten up more or less. I've been pretty impressed with the edges that they have taken. I don't know if they will hold them, but these small (4 to 5 inches) blades take extremely sharp edges. I'm talking almost no catch, almost no effort shaving. "Moving off hair" I call it. S cuts in paper. Very smooth and fairly quiet phonebook paper cuts.

Brian.
 
I spent a little more on my practice knives: a carbon steel three blade trapper in 1095 and a buck 110. I got the traditional with a sheepsfoot, clip, and Spey blade so I could practice on different blade shapes too:thumbup:
It was money well spent, but I thought of it a little too late after messing up a TA Davison folder!!
 
bf1122 said:
I very much appreciate the many suggestions and comments on what knives and steels to use for sharpening practice.

At the moment, I favor the idea of practicing on beat-up or damaged knives that use higher quality steel. While I don't need to practice on the most high-tech, extreme steel available, as I mentioned in my post and as is mentioned in others' comments, there are problems if the practice steel is too soft or otherwise unrepresentative of good-quality knives.

I found a Ganzo folder online for about $15 US dollars, including shipping - this is something I can personally afford to practice sharpening and eventually throw away. 440C is printed on the blade and it's obviously much harder than my Walmart throwaways. I wonder if gun show used knives will feature anything that is more suitable for $15 or less? Perhaps a higher-quality knife with a broken tip would be at least somewhat usable. I'm thinking that something like 154CM steel might be OK for this purpose.

I just tried sharpening one of my Walmart throwaway knives, and it was usable to learn how to create a simple, constant geometry edge. The original factory edge was very wavy and varied in width from one end to the other, but even my inexperienced sharpening improved the factory edge quite a lot.

However, as expected, I quickly discovered that this unknown generic stainless steel blade is *much* softer than my other knives. Thus, as others have cautioned, learning sharpening skills with such a soft steel would likely be hard if not impossible to transfer to higher quality steels. Would I learn anything much by trying to polish the Walmart knife's edge?

Thanks again for all the helpful comments and suggestions.
Click to expand...

You actually could learn something about use of pressure and maintaining a constant angle. With really soft steels like that, so long as they're still pretty fine-grained and capable of taking a sharp edge in the first place (never mind holding it for long), it can be a pretty good exercise in 'finesse' and training the hands for a light touch. I have a 'Chicago Cutlery' branded 6" utility knife that I purchased at Walmart for about $7 or so. I used it for 'practice' when I first was learning to use my Lansky guided set, and I polished the bevels to essentially mirror, finishing with Lansky's UF ceramic hone. The blade was able to take a 'tree-topping' edge (clipping hairs above the skin, from my forearm), which was the first time I'd been able to do that with any blade. The downside is, that edge would roll over if I did much more than look at it the wrong way, as the steel is so very soft. ;) So long as one is aware that the steel is still 'inferior' in it's lack of edge-holding, there are still lessons to be learned, especially after you take your practiced and light touch to a higher quality and more 'worthy' blade, and see how the two compare in edge-holding (night & day, if you do everything right).

One of the most important lessons to be learned in sharpening is in paying attention to what makes a 'good' edge, and what doesn't, and also seeing how widely different each blade can be, dependent on steel type & quality, heat treat, abrasion-resistance, differences in ductility or brittleness, etc. Keep an open mind throughout, and don't let one bad blade sway your opinions too much about a particular steel. I've lost track of the number of times I've had to re-calibrate my opinion about certain steels, simply because the quality of the steel's manufacture, and the heat treat afterwards, can make all the difference. Not to mention, some of the 'inferior' blades I once thought I had were only 'inferior' because I hadn't yet figured out how to do them right. Hence the 'open mind' recommendation. :D


David
 
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I was in Lowe's today and saw this set which is down to under $20:

6936815800877.jpg


I considered picking up a set to practice sharpening, but then passed since I am sure it is pretty crappy steel. However, it does have a decent variety of blade sizes and shapes, which could offer plenty of practice holding angles while freehand sharpening. For that I may have to go back and pick up a set.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_503066-50034-51551_0__?productId=50086744&Ntt=appalachian+knived&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dappalachian%2Bknived&facetInfo=
 
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I have no experience with Ganzo. In another thread, we compared lots of these Chinese brands, and the general consensus was that SRM (Sanrenmu) and Bee/Enlan are more consistent in term of HT of the steel.

It's possible the Ganzo you got is good enough to practice on. I had Navy that was too soft & difficult to get that hair popping edge.
 
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