Clay,
What kind of steel is this blade and what hardness was it tempered to, that you used for this round of tests?
BTW, even though it is not constructive in this case, this sort of deformation or "plastic" flow of the metal is what burnishing is all about (what I have fixed in my head that it is anyway).

This is why I ask about the type of steel and the hardness. It looks more like plastic that has been partially melted than steel

Phil

It's just an unspecified high carbon steel - I'm using a bunch of utility blades so that I can easily compare apples to apples in different sharpening sessions. I don't know anything about the hardness. I agree about the burnishing and I find it really fascinating that leather can do it so easily.

PhilipPasteur wrote:

Well, in the case of these pictures, was that not done with and by the ceramic stones.
You did get rid of it with the srops though...

Phil

Yes, in these pictures the deformation we're seeing is from the ceramics. I'm about to clean the edge back up and then repeat the edge leading photos.

PhilipPasteur wrote:

Here is another shot of the blade as I left it last night after the 20 edge-leading strokes:



I cleaned up the edge again with the .25um kangaroo strops, 20 strokes per side. Again I'm impressed by how well it works. Here is that picture:



I then went on to edge-leading with the .6um Micro-Fine Stones using ultra-light pressure. My technique was to just rest the stone on the blade and let gravity pull it down and using my hand to guide the direction and speed so I wasn't applying any force in the direction of the blade. Here it is after 5 strokes:



Here it is after 20 strokes with ultralight pressure:



and another 20 strokes with firm pressure:

wickededge wrote:


Haha... I do forget the magnification we're looking at these sometimes...

I'm looking at them this a.m. on a big screen tv. (god bless modern technology).

Now I'm wondering if it's possible, to take a shot of the edge looking straight down... to see if that shows any differences between the edge trailing vs. edge leading edges?