That is an interesting article.
However, after an insightful discussion of which metal gets sharper, he finishes with a statement about edge holding that puzzles me. He concludes his piece by saying "If you sharpen very frequently, which you should, then the difference in edge holding is really marginal."
I don't understand this statement. I would have thought it axiomatic that if the edge is holding better, you don't have to sharpen as frequently.
Put another way, as a turner, I do sharpen frequently, but it makes more than a "marginal" difference to me whether I have to go back to the wheel 4 times while shaping a bowl or just once (or not at all). I see edge holding as an important element in the frequency of sharpening. It is not that I have to sharpen four times anyway, it is that I either have to sharpen once or four times.
I have posted the question to Lucas via the article, but the Q&A feature doesn't have a way of coming back to me. If he finds the question interesting, perhaps he will expand on it in the magazine.
In any case, that is a side issue, I found the observations about how the different metals take an edge--the point of his article--very interesting.
Gord
