I imagine somewhere between 50-150. Same with shaving, etc.Soanso McMasters wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 1:32 amI call it good when I can wave cut magazine paper or receipt paper. This level will definitely shave hair. Where would that fall on the Bess?
It's why I got a BESS tester, all of these other methods are very good indicators of a knife that is what most people would agree is "sharp". Even a decent indicator of different levels of 'sharp'. But that still leaves big gaps when trying to describe performance in a meaningful way.
One person's idea of hair whittling or smooth cutting may not be the same as someone elses. Even if your talking wave cutting recipt paper. Lets say anything under 150 BESS will do that. Then you've still got everything between 0-150 that falls in that range. So someone with a knife thats 150 BESS and someone with a knife thats 90 BESS would say, it will wave cut recipt paper. Even though there is a significant difference in sharpness between them.
With the BESS you can measure a 1 gram difference in the force required to cut the test media. It gives you a quantifiable and repeatable number.
It's certainly not a perfect measure. It's a measure of push cut sharpness, not slicing sharpness, so blade finish can play a big role, and things like BTE thickness don't play as big a role than they do in real world cutting. But I really like being able to put an actual number to things. It allows me and anyone else with a BESS tester to accurately compare things.