With experience you might simply feel an edge with a thumb and declare it sharp, but if you find yourself unsure there are several easy tests to employ. One of the fastest is to stretch a rubber band between thumb and index finger, running the broadhead edge across it lightly. A sharp blade should sever it instantly. The dull head might only saw through, or roll across without cutting at all. Jack Zwickey, maker of time-proven Zwickey broadheads, suggests running broadheads across taught packing twine secured horizontally, holding the arrow only by the nock. A sharp head should easily cut the string. He-man types have long used the shaving test, checking edges on the hair of their arm to see if they will shave. I don't recommend this, as you might cut more than hair...

Modern Broadhead Edge
The modern replaceable blade is a marvel of mechanical technology. They are sharper than almost anything man is able to achieve by hand. Bruce Barrie, owner of Barrie Archery/Rocky Mountain Broadheads, says they inspect sample batches of blades under a microscope to look for uniform edges, then evaluate them through a process that measures ounces of pressure required to cut monofilament line stretched by a consistent weight. They graph each batch to assure consistent sharpness.

Bill Henderson, Ballistic Archery/Steel Force partner, says that most manufacturers purchase stripground blades for replaceable broadheads. Cut-on-contact blades, like Steel Force models, are stamped to create individual pieces and then sharpened, more like the creation of a knife. Steel Force manufactures their own blades, heads that are normally good and sharp out of the package. All of their equipment is dedicated to making broadheads, equipment used only for sharpening, all custom-built, including a final process of leather stropping. Steel Force offers lifetime sharpening of their heads.

NAP's Bob Mizek puts it all into obvious perspective. "We've tested all kinds of heads in ballistic gelatin, finding that seldom does a broadhead create the same size hole as its true cutting diameter. They most often make a smaller hole than their actual cutting width. This is a function of material resistance and elasticity. We've found through careful testing that the sharper the broadhead is, the bigger the hole it creates. Test results have shown that a sharp broadhead will produce a 15- to 18-percent smaller cutting diameter in soft tissue than its measured width. A dull head can loose up to 50-percent of its measured cutting diameter. Animal hide, flesh and vital organs are all elastic, stretchy if you will.

"We've taken our sharpening process as far as it can go. We've created edges that are easily much sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. We call our process Diamize, using diamond wheels and a cold-grind process in which the last .005 of the grind never exceeds room temperature to assure we sacrifice no temper."

Maintaining The Edge
A razor is simply two converging angles cut into steel to create a straight and fine edge. It's important to remember that this makes it somewhat fragile, that every cut corrodes a blade's sharpness. Few archers consider this when removing and replacing broadheads held in bow quivers, blade edges dulling ever so slightly each time they cut the foam in the quiver head. The easy solution is to rotate the arrow you most often grab when readying for a shot so a single broadhead doesn't receive all this wear. Back quivers like Rancho Safari's Catquiver, for example, hold broadheads only by the tip, but cramming too many arrows into the quiver, or replacing them haphazardly when in a rush, can damage edges with others around it. Even while stalking or sitting, inadvertently bumping heads into vegetation can dull edges slightly. This is not something to obsess about, just factors to keep in mind.