Thread: What is breadknifing?

Good afternoon all,

I keep running into the term breadknifing and thought I understood its meaning at first, but now I'm not so sure. For the record, what does breadknifing mean?

Thanks,

Breadknifing is the term used to describe running edge of your straight (in a sawing or bread cutting motion) across a hone (i.e. the blade is held perpendicular to the hone). It is used to quickly take out chips / damage on the edge .... it is a restoration method to quickly take out damage not a 'honing' method.

cheers,

rick

Thanks, Rick,

I'm glad I asked. I was way off.

I wondered as well, but I pretty much guessed what it meant, just never heard it called that that before despite spending a fair bit of time sharpening knives, probably best to do it on a crappy stone though, I have a hard old stone with badly chipped edges on my bench for that kind of job.

Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that "breadknifing" described an edge that was so dull that it wouldn't cut s%$t let alone stubble!

One way to hone an eBay or damaged blade - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Here is a thread in the Wiki I did about how it is done, you might want to go to the original thread also for more discussion...

Breadknifing is great for wiping the slate(blade) clean. Uneven blade width disappears, smiles and frowns in specific. Tears, chips and nicks, corrosion on the edge is gone, leaving “virgin” steel. Just make sure you grind past any newly exposed “virgin” corrosion. All at a cost of blade width for the whole razor and some time grinding a new bevel. But you presumably breathed new life into an otherwise destroyed razor.

Thanks guys, this has been most illuminating.

Another note -- the ideal situation is to use the diamond hone type sharpeners to breadknife on. I used the blue DMT coarse pocket hone (my son's) to breadknife my razor after I nicked the blade. It's about 320 grit. I also then used that diamond hone to start on creating a new bevel - the diamond made fast work out of both tasks!