What is the limitation of cheap steel?

>>30791395
Unless the steel is extremely soft, it's likely your sharpening skill to some extent at least. However, if it dulls quickly, then most likely that's the steel failing you. It sounds like you're doing just fine, so keep up the good work.

>>30791395

Stropping with compound is the next step, you can make a shit chinksteel knife ridiculously sharp sharpening then stropping.

>>30791395
What the other guy said. I got plain ol' iron with pretty much no carbon content to speak of to shaving sharp. How long is it going to last is the other question. Hair-popping would also be influenced by the angle you sharpen the knife to.

To clarify I sharpened to the two coins / half thumb / 8 degrees standard. When I said 45 degrees, I meant shaving angle. I just now sharpened it and it already has some tiny nicks along the edge. I use newspaper to strop.

With this extra info, does it suggest the issue is skill or steel?

>>30791565
How did the nicks get there, what did you cut?

If they were there before you probably haven't removed enough steel, dull the knife on the side of the stone and start from scratch

>>30791565

get a piece of leather and some green compound on amazon~15$, newspaper strop is nigger tier.

>>30791600
All I've done is thumbnail testing and shaving. It's possible the nicks were already there but I doubt it because the edge as is was relatively smooth. I also reprofiled the angle with a 220 stone.

They make straight razors from meteoric iron. So the limitation is your skill at sharpening, not the material itself.

>>30791646
The stone itself can leave visible nicks if it has irregularities or if it sheds grit or if its too coarse, not that I believe 220 is too coarse, I'm pretty sure it didn't happen from testing the edge

My suggestion remains the same, start again and see what you come up with

>>30791662
Razors are single beveled, the angle is half of most of knives.

File: Blade Edge types.jpg (30KB, 1000x326px) Image search: [Google]

30KB, 1000x326px

>>30791395
'Cheap' is somewhat of a misnomer, most steels serve a purpose- people cheap out on the treatment of steel.
You can have softer and tough, harder and fragile when they're treated a certain way, a lot of cheaper knives will tend towards the softer and tough simply because they don't want the knife to break and you can get away with less material. Harder blades are able to maintain their edge at the cost of the material being somewhat more fragile and needing more material for durability

Edge type is also important, some edges are meant for razor levels of sharpness, but will sacrifice a little of their edge toughness, for example the Hollow and High Flat will chip more often along the edge because the material behind them is less. A lot of swords for example will use a Compound or V-Grind as they will resist chipping because the material behind it is thicker- at some cost to their ultimate levels of sharpness.

So it basically comes down to, what type of use is the knife and what type of edge will suit that purpose?

>>30791395
It's your shaving technique that sucks.
30 from the skin.

OP back, I realized something that gives a lot support to the steel argument. I ignorantly sharpened my HSS knife at a blunt angle. I didn't strop either, I just finished with an 8000 grit water stone. This was around 3 months ago, it's the kitchen knife which I've been using. Despite all of this, it was still shaving sharp on the relatively unused heel of the knife.

I'll throw in another question. Is it bad to clean up the knife after sharpening with something like bar keeper's friend? Would something corrosive/abrasive mess with the new edge?