It seems like the default answer is "It depends..." and this case is no exception. It depends on what you're hoping to accomplish. The roo will give you a much smoother, more polished bevel, so if that's what you're after, then it's the right choice, hands down. If you specifically want .125um micro-teeth at the edge, then you would be better off with the nano-cloth.

Rlb wrote:


This is very obvious in M0DiFiEDZ new YouTube video he released yesterday.

"Installing the New Wicked Edge Ball Joint Arms"

Here is a pic from that.

so I just got the new arms today and I was super excited about them. However I have a problem. The new arms do not fit on the alignment bar. They get about half way through and stop. Then I try it from the other end and again it gets half way before it meets resistence again. Well I tried to force it on thinking it just may have had a little left over metal left on there from machining. Well not have have one jammed on the alignment bar.

Anybody have this problem. I will call WE tomorrow but I was hoping I was doing something dumb.

BassLakeDan wrote:


Hardness itself would have a linear change, however if the microstructure changes then the effect would not be linear with hardness. The problem is that too much is attributed to hardness when it only measures one thing which is the resistance of the steel to compression on a fairly large scale. For example 1095 and D2 at 60 HRC have the same hardness but they do not wear at all the same as the microstructure is completely different.

As manufacturers do not say exactly how they HT their steels everyone ends up guessing which is made complicated because the reported properties are from a user group which tends to be fairly biased and you can get large sheep like tendencies as there are no blind/controls being used so a lot of care has to be taken. I am not saying that the choices Reeve makes are optimal, but I would take care in heavy extrapolation from the user reports.

The question that needs to be asked is why exactly are Reeve's knives slightly softer as there are many ways that they could be that way and all will produce different micro structures. For example he could simply reduce the soak temperature, put less carbon in solution. This will end up with a perfectly fine blade but it will suffer corrosion issues because the soak was not hot enough to get the chromium in solution. In general Reeve doesn't have common reports of easy corrosion (relative) so I don't think this is the case.

He could be doing a simple air quench (not oil or positive pressure) and no below room temperature quench and if he did this then the micro-structure would be adversely effected as instead of the ideal which is martensite with less than 5% retained austenite he would have other primary structures and a much higher fraction of retained austenite and possibly even embrittlement. If he is doing this then you could see effects beyond what you would expect from the small change in hardness.

I have seen the reports where people have had blades rehardened and they report excellent results, however I am always very leery of such reports as again that could just be expectation bias. As what you are doing is fairly quantitative and not overly influenced by subjectivity I am interested in your results. I would like to see, if you have the time/inclination if you would see a different relative performance if the edge was finished with a high and low polish.

If the Sebenza has a lower relative ability to hold the low grit finish it is a fairly strong indication of a micro-structure issue as the teeth are approaching the size of the micro-structure (micron scale).

I can't speak to the steel quality, but an edge that fails after only a few paper slices means that it still has a burr. When converting a convex edge to a straight edge... it's tricky reaching the very edge... if for example, you mark it with a sharpie, it may look like it's all gone, but if you look at it under magnification, there can be the tiniest line still visible. There's a video that talks about this...



My suggestion would be to start from around the 400g stone, thru to whatever you want to finish at, and make sure that you have a good clean edge established. If it still fails, then you could add a small microbevel at a higher angle (I'd do it with the ceramics or finest stone you have), just a few very light alternating strokes to ensure the edge is burr free, and strengthen it a bit.

Clay also did a video sharpening a Sebenza (but he returned it to a convex shape)...



There seems to be a lot of "problem sharpening Sebenza" threads and videos... switching a convex to a flat grind usually causes this. It doesn't have anything to do with one grind being stronger or better than the other... it's just a matter of getting to the very edge.

Let us know how it goes!

HMMMMMMMMMMM... I really haven't paid much attention to the order dates since I've been waiting for my ceramic stones, however, I looked back this morning and my order date is February 16th, still no stones. I received the 800/100 stones almost 3 weeks ago, which were ordered the same date.