A knife CAN be made so sharp that it will cut through a grape or tomato
under its own weight. The edge would also be so delicate that it would
be theoretically less sharp after the first cut and noticeably less
sharp after the 10th or 100th cut.

Our goal for kitchen cutlery is an edge that will be serviceable for
thousands of cuts - a year in a home kitchen, a week in a restaurant or
a day in a food processing or harvesting operation. This edge can still
be efficient when used with a slicing motion. Slicing is the ultimate
in skew cutting and effectively lowers the angle or thickness of the
cutting edge by several orders of magnitude. Slicing also allows any
imperfections in the edge ("teeth") to act a tiny saws to initiate the
cutting action.

Steve

Sharpening Made Easy: A Primer on Sharpening Knives and Other Edged
Tools by Steve Bottorff
Copyright January 2002 Knife World Publications
www.sharpeningmadeeasy.com


Tim wrote:
> I have been sharpening my knives recently but am wondering just how
> sharp I have made them. My cook knife still need a small forward/back
> motion before it glides through the a grape. I was hoping it might
> just drop through the grape skin almost under its own weight but this
> doesn't happen. Is my knife edge still dull ?