Hmm... Well I can tell you that the information in quotes is ridiculous, or at least stated in a ridiculous way that can't be shown to be true. Perhaps they were referring to "carbide tear-out" where a relatively large chunk of carbide, instead of wearing down, is torn out of the steel matrix entirely thus leaving a chip.Mr Danger wrote:No strop. Just mediums at 40. I saw people say S110V works better coarse because sharpening too fine can "knock carbon loose". I dunno...
When I think about these sorts of things, I always try imagine what the situation would be at the very extreme ends of the spectrum. So let's imagine two cases: an extremely fine sharpening, and an extremely coarse sharpening.
For the extremely fine sharpening, let's imagine an edge that has been sharpened to a mirror polish. Even at small scales, there would be very little irregularity and stresses would thus be evenly distributed. This is why all of the light is reflected in the same direction, having a "mirror" effect. If you imagine a circular glass table top, looking at the edge you can't imagine any one place that would be more likely to break off than any other.
For the extremely coarse edge, imagine an abrasive so coarse that the scratch pattern is actually visible to you, which would essentially be a serrated edge. In this case you can see smaller areas that would be more likely to break off than the flatter areas around them. In engineering speak, the irregular surface has created stress concentrations.
Thus, if you're experiencing chipping, I would say it could actually be better to sharpen the edge bevel to a higher (finer) finish. The verdict is still out as to whether increasing the angle of the edge bevel decreases carbide tear-out. Since the edge needs to come to an apex at some point anyway, it's possible that larger carbides tear out of the matrix even at more obtuse angles. That's one reason S110V is a powder metallurgy steel, since the powder size effectively limits the size of the carbide that can form.
