Viva Las Vegas!
Ryan SwansonViva Las Vegas!
The end of April saw Ryan travel to Las Vegas as a sharpening instructor for the annual Western Sharpeners Roundup, a three day convention of the best knife and shear sharpeners in the country. Hosted by Cliff Curry of Curry Custom Cutlery, it's one of the best networking and instructional events for the professional sharpener and features a hands-on approach where instructors in their respective fields educate attendees by demonstrating their sharpening processes.
Ryan's no nonsense approach to quickly and efficiently sharpening knives on a 2x42 grinder was well received, and his demonstrations of thinning and repairing Japanese knives, which is his specialty, drew quite the crowd over to his table. Attendees were also amazed at how fast he could sharpen knives on whetstones and repeatedly score under 100 on the BESS sharpness tester. For reference, sub 100 scores are considered insanely sharp.
On the second day, Ryan gave a 90 minute talk on building relationships with both the customer and their knives where he emphasized the importance of assessing blades before sharpening and educating the customer on what to expect, performance wise, from their knives. Overall, general knife knowledge was a recurring theme as well as training the eyes to see damage or poor edge geometry. Having sharpened well over 100,000 knives, Ryan could talk for hours about this topic.
This show was also the debut of our new signature radius platen, developed by Ryan and Ozzie, and designed by their friend Juan in Puerto Rico. Its design mimics a three foot radius grinding wheel to correctly thin Japanese knives while transitioning to a flat area for easy blending for Western style knives after thinning. After Ryan demonstrated to the crowd how it's used, they sold out immediately! More are on the way if you are a professional sharpener looking to take your skills to the next level.
Overall, Ryan called it the best sharpening show he has been to. He got to catch up with his old time sharpening friends but also got to meet and train new sharpeners who truly appreciated his skills and knowledge. The amount of gratitude showed to him at the end of the show was humbling and invigorating.
Thanks for reading this far, this industry means the world to us as does sharing it with our loyal customers. So to celebrate an awesome trip, and thank you in the process, we'd like to offer our award winning sharpening services at a 30% discount by clicking here.
And here are a couple more pics worth sharing.
Ryan with event organizer and professional sharpener Cliff Curry of Curry Custom Cutlery, a long time sharpening friend.
Ryan on Fremont Street with Tyler Moyer of Summit Sharpening and Cody Thweatt of Ft. Worth Shaver, both long time sharpening friends.