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WINNERS: Nordic Edge Quiz 2021

WINNERS: Nordic Edge Quiz 2021

Winners and results from the Nordic Edge Quiz 2021

The results are in from the Quiz that was held last week; a bit of a mix of knife making knowledge, Australian knifemaker network knowledge and with a couple of trick questions thrown in just to make it a bit more interesting.

We had 4 prizes; one blacksmith apron in buffalo leather, and 3 sets of Exhibtion grade Ringed Gidgee. Plus a $10 discount code on the last page of the survey for anyone who took part.

The quiz was open until Sunday 8th of August 2021, and here are the results and winners.

Summary:

  • 13 questions, some with multiple answers so a total of 15 points possible.
  • 265 responses, from 13% to 100% correct answers.
  • Average was a very respectable 9.8 of 15 points (66%) given the multiple choice questions and one or two tricky ones!
  • Ended up being 10 winners, not 4 but more about that later.

The easy ones:

Most everyone got this one right; How do you make Stainless steel?

97% of people got this one right, that it was about Chromium. 

This next one is also good to see that most people got right: The temperature to quench 1084 carbon steel from:

  • 85% got this right, being 815 C and not the tempering or normalising temperatures.

There are a lot of technical terms being thrown around as soon as you start discussing heat treatment, so well done on getting also this one right.

The difficult one:

This one was a bit of a trick question, "Which of the below is NOT true?" and only 12% got this one right!

Not only did it require fine reading and possibly a bit of googling, but you also would have to been following the Australian Knife Making Awards 2021 live streaming sessions to be able to sort out which of these were true, making the last option when all others were gone, the lie we were looking for..

  1. "Perth was the last KAA show held in Australia" - this is true, January 2020 before covid shut it all down.
  2. "Canberra Knife Show was the last KAA show on the East Coast before Covid hit" - not a single person thought this was the lie - well done! Canberra Knife Show is not a KAA show but run by Tharwa Valley Forge.
  3. "Darren Ilias was generally considered the most handsome host of the Awards 2021" - another cheek-in-tounge internal joke from the Awards live streams this year that migth been hard to get right if you did not watch the live streams.
  4. "Paul-Emmanuel Arestan is a well-known maker from the same country as Hercule Poirot" - did you know Hercule Poirot was Belgian while our Favourite French person is of course  French.
  5. "Curly Birch is the handle material of the Nordic Gods" - this of course is a well-documented fact, at least to us at Nordic Edge so that settles that one. In all seriousness, we have joked about this quite a bit on the facebook group so it might be hard to get this one if not a member of the group though. Consider this an extra point for those in the know.
  6. "Riley works with Nordic Edge because he came by at a market years ago, wandered behind the table after a bit and just took over running the stand somehow" - might sound unlikely but it is the honest truth. Mike Taylor and Bjorn were manning the table at St. Ives Medieval Fayre some years ago and Riley came by and chatted to us. Somehow he found himself behind the table and customers started talking to him rather than Mike and Bjorn and Riley just ended up running the stand somehow! He has been running our markets since, being the best suited to get things running smoothly and good at dealing with people.
  7. "1045 steel can be quenched in water while D2 can be quenched by a gentle breeze on a Summer's day" - bit of a trick question with the wording but an actual fact question: 1045 is a medium tensile low hardenability carbon steel which is quenched in water (due to low carbon content it requires a fast quench) while D2 is an air-hardening steel - it can be hardened by a gentle breeze..

TRICK QUESTION WARNING:

This one was meant as a trick question - hope we did not upset anyone!

We had several makers message us saying this is not right - cast iron has way more carbon than CPMS35VN.

We know - but Wikipedia agrees with us that Cast Iron has so much carbon it is no longer a steel, it is classified as "Cast Iron".. and we all know that if the Internet backs up something we think is true - it is :)

What we had not expected was that the answers should spread so evenly - we would have expected 1084 to not be selected as having more carbon than the others and that it would be a google lookup between the other 2 or 3?

So to our mind at least: CPM S35VN is the right answer, having more carbon than 1084 and 52100 and being a steel, unlike Cast Iron.

Gas or solid fuel - or maybe Adelaide?

Another factual question; is solid state or gas forges (furnaces) hotter? Most makers today use a gas forge, being easier to deal with but a solid state forge can get way hotter.

With a gas forge, your steel can crack or scale away - in a solid state forge your steel melts and the end falls off if not careful.. (ask us how we know)

Of the solid state fuels listed, coal burns hotter than charcoal and is the right answer.

24 people choose Adelaid in Summer as hotter than either gas or solid state forges, showing knife makers do have a sense of humour!

The clincher:

This next one was really difficult because not only did it require some internal knowledge from having watched the Awards 2021 streams - it also did not tell you how many right answers to select.

There were 3 rights answers to select and many got one or two but not many got all three:

  1. "It saves time to drill holes after heat treat.." - Incorrect as this is way more difficult than drilling before heat treatment. We all forget once or twice and then learn this important lesson.
  2. "Most makers grind edge up and sharpen edge down.." - Correct. This is how most makers use a 2" belt grinder with a regular flat platen or big wheel.
  3. "Tempering...not required for short blades" - Incorrect as tempering is generally considered required for all knife blades to reduce brittleness.
  4. "A hamon is created by very elegantly failing to harden the entire blade" - Correct. The hamon line is a line between hard and not-hardened blade. It takes a lot of skill to "fail" so elegantly that the edge is hard and the spine is not with the result a wavy line with ghost-like fingers spreading out like smoke across the blade.
  5. "Annealing ..is done after hardening" - Incorrect. Annealing is the process of making the steel as soft as possible, for ease of working it. Doing this after hardening would remove any effect of the hardening, forcing you to harden again.
  6. "Christian Mathieson was the head Judge of the Awards.." - Correct. Christian lead a team of some of the most respected and skilled Australian knife makers in the judging of the knives of 4 of 5 categories of the Australian Knife Making Awards 2021.

THE WINNERS:

  • We had 265 people doing the quiz, that is a great turn-out!
  • We had 5 people who got every single question right, scoring 100%
  • We numbered these 1-5 and used a random number generator to select the 1st prize winner.
  • The other 4 winners each get the ringed gidgee scales, adding one set to get 5 prizes.

1st place winner: 

2nd Place Winners:

  • Mitch Jones
  • Katinka McAteer
  • Justin Siow
  • Stephen Muller

Each win a beautiful set of Exhibition Grade Ringed Gidgee:

With so many people playing we need some prizes drawn from the entire pool as well so we added 5 x $20 vouchers and drew 5 more winners using the random number generator:

  • Campbell Taylor
  • Tom
  • Florian Brincker
  • Ben Meiklejohn
  • Peter Bennett

A big Thank You to everyone who took part in the quiz, and congratulations to the winners!

Bjorn & The Nordic Edge Team

9th Aug 2021 Bjorn J

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