Why Your Knife Dulls So FAST! Proper Burr Identification And Removal

The $20 Stone In this video is back in stock➡ amzn.to/3KeXXF1 Review here➡https://youtu.be/06OW8ahqZDg Jeweler’s Loupe ➡amzn.to/3Kgx9E9 Purchased with my own money but⬇ Amazon affiliate link. As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The epitome of the saying “don’t just tell me, show me”. Best knife channel currently on youtube? Strong chance!

Hands down the most detailed information on sharpening on YouTube. We appreciate your work.

I wear my lighted dental loupes when sharpening. When stropping, I can feel the burr"scratching" the leather. When the scratching stops, the burr is usually gone. I have to watch your videos twice. Once to gawk at the incredible magnification views. Once to actually listen to what you are saying. THANK YOU, Alex!!

Alex, would love to see a “closeup” video of what’s happening to the edge during common mistakes (varying sharpening angles, over angles stropping, over aggressive pressure, failed apex’s, etc).

I was just about to go to bed... oh well, how bad could be 20 minutes + probably resharpening all my knifes?

A cheap little 50x-1000x digital USB microscope for $25 was such a great tool for helping me understand my sharpening results. It really helped me get a feel for how much pressure to use as well as how burrs actually worked and the differences between diamond stones and whetstones and fine grit vs coarse grit. It taught me so much about how tricky burs can be with their false edges. Your channel and advice is spot on; I have also come to the same conclusion that diamond stones are the way to go rather than whetstones, and I also prefer getting a refined apex on a coarser stone. I too have experimented my way into preferring the method of apexing on a coarse stone, and then alternating edge-leading passes with lighter and lighter pressure. However, one last thing that I do to minimize the burr before the strop is I skip from my 300-grit diamond stone to an 8,000-grit diamond stone and do very light pressure alternating passes as well. I find this helps me maintain the geometry a little better than the strop. However, I am definitely not practiced enough to do any of this freehand like you, so I am doing this with a sharpening system that lets me get incredibly consistent customized angles, but still all of the pressure and movements are by hand.

I was so full of myself to think that I can feel any burr with my finger or see it with naked eye by turning the knife a bit and catching the reflection of light from the edge. But I took a knife that had no burr (I was absolutely certain) and looked at it through jewelers loupe and surprise-surprise super small burr was still there! Few more alternating passes on extra fine DMT with pressure less than the knife weight and then 1 micron diamond strop and I got my first ever hair whittling edge! First time after 2 years being into knife sharpening. Cant believe that what I was missing is simply using as little pressure as possible at the end. And I WAS reducing pressure, I just didnt realize how little pressure I actually needed. Big thanks for your contributions to the knife community. Your videos are the best.

I kind of feel like on in a class when watching your videos. I fully understand this particular video. I once had this exact problem until rather recently. Your videos guided me to really recognize the burr and work properly to remove it. I still haven’t gotten to Hair whittling yet. More practice…

It doesn’t get any better or clearer than this…a strop with the proper compound is your best friend when sharpening! Outrageously good photography..next level! Seeing is believing..Thanks Alex ..awesome video MikeR. 🇨🇦

Hello from Ireland. Just wanted to say thanks for all your efforts and teaching! I had tried a few times in my life to get good at sharpening and sucked at it, but your videos helped me to learn how to get an edge using the crap stones I had and after a while I got some diamond stones and made a strop and it's made a huge difference. It's a life skill I'd always wanted even though I'll only really use it for my family/friends kitchen knifes. It's nice to be able to have a few good steel knifes and not need to bin/live with crap knifes. Thanks again, I'll send whoever is interested your channel's way. Hope you go from strength to strength.

I know why my freshly sharpened knife gets blunt quickly. Because my wife keeps using it to cut the kids fruit and sandwiches on ceramic plates every morning. 😭

The best knife channel out there. Why? Simple. Instead of just talking, we get hard data in pictures. There's nothing subjective here.

OMFG. I think you just changed my life. I've hand sharpened and carried a pocket knife for about 30 years. I can always get mine very sharp, but I feel like they dull quickly, I always thought, well I sharpen too a fairly shallow angle guess that's to be expected. I tried this and I think I 100% have been just folding my burr. Thank you thank you!

I like to think I know how to sharpen a piece of steel. But this, this was a GREAT deep dive on the topic. You really laid out how the process progresses. We'll done.

Alex, this is your best video since "ceramic knives sharpening" masterpiece!

The best, knife sharpening and burr removal video on the internet period. As always fantastic content on this channel.

I've been watching sharpening content for a long time, but this is the first video that explicitly showed burr removal. Also discussing the relationship between the last stone used and the stopping compound chosen is very helpful.

I look for burr and defects on the blades with the reflection of a light. A good apex doesn't reflect anything, dulled knives have spots, burrs and even more bent burrs reflect all the way.

The macro photography is absolutely insane. In future could we get a timelapse of paper being cut with the macro to simulate video??