Thread: When did Breadknifing get popular?

I'm one of them newbs that's bread knife crazy. I'm up to.. well... more razors than I have fingers and toes (so over 22), and I've bread knifed (to some degree) the vast majority of them.

There are different degrees of breadknifing, though. There's the type you do to remove a 1/16 inch chip out of a blade, where you're going to get rid of *all* the bevel, plus some additional metal, and there's the kind of bread knifing you do to remove microchips: you're not removing hardly any metal, just enough to make the blade smooth and micro-chip free.

I have tried to get rid of microchipping through honing (circles and back n forth) with limited success. It seems that I just end up wearing away more metal off the spine and blade doing it this way than a few light bread knife strokes would do. So in the end, I've resorted to the few light bread knife strokes.

I think it's just a matter of not going to any unnecessary extreme: if your blade has micro cihps in it, don't bread knife it all the way to the spine. Take away just enough metal to get rid of the chips. This'll leave you with the majority of your bevel intact, and a nice smooth, level edge to work with.

I'm currently working with my new Hess 44 SS that has microchips in it. I'm going to start with some light breadknifing on my chinese 12k to see if that will remove the chips. If it does, I'm miiiiiiles ahead than getting jiggy with a DMT8E and bread knifing the bevel til it's gone.

IMO, bread knifing is a great tool, but if all you're left with is a really nice looking spine, you're probably over doing it.