Specialization is for Insects.
Here’s a fun one folks! Cali teamed up with the Discovery channel’s The Colony experiment and put together this Top 10 list of survival necessities. If you find that the world is coming to an end, you might just want to have these items on hand.
My favorite is number 5! Let me know what you think. ;-) By the way, you can head over to Cali’s blog for the show notes including links to all the goodies in the list.
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One of my readers (Kirk) wrote in with the following question:
I have just purchased the whole set of Katana knives plus a few extra to fill the block. My question is, how the heck do you use that steel properly to keep them as sharp as they were out of the box? Is that even possible? I have ran several of them on the steel at the recomended 22 degrees and it seems to change the edge. Don’t get me wrong, they are still very sharp, but they don’t pop hairs off my arm as they did right out of the box.
Great question Kirk, and I’ve got a rather complex answer for you. As far as sharpening the Katana knives – or any other knife for that matter – you need to know that, just like everything else on Earth, there are varying degrees of cost associated with higher levels of performance. So, I’m going to give you a ton of information here, and you can then make a decision as to which way to go based on your budget and willingness to put in some elbow grease.
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As a professionally trained Bladesmith I’m often asked for my opinion on affordable, commercially available cutlery that can be purchased locally. Since I’ve answered this question many times for friends and family I thought it might be useful to share here on the Blog.
Before we get started let me just say that there are a lot of different factors that go into the selection of a good set of knives, and if done properly there is no reason that a high quality kitchen knife can’t be put to service for 20 years or more.
Some of the factors that influenced my recommendations include steel composition, durability, “feel” or balance, aesthetics, and sanitary considerations.
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Daniel Gentile, a bladesmith in Switzerland, recently posted a video online demonstrating many of the steps involved in the production of Damascus – or pattern-welded steel.
Those of you who know me are aware that I am also a Bladesmith and I studied under four separate American Bladesmith Society Master Bladesmiths, Joe Flournoy, Mike Williams, James Cook and Steve Dunn.
Among my courses of study, Damascus production was the toughest. There are only a few hundred people on the planet that can make this stuff, and once you make a billet of it you still need to be able to turn it into an actual finished blade and then a completed knife.
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