Whoa! New scope Clay? Nice pics... what is it?

WOW! Those are some interesting photos and observations Clay! It would seem that there is no sense in going 10>5>3.5>1 when you get the same, if not better results with just going straight to the 1m! Is this observation correct?

wickededge wrote:





Also, it seems as if, when you started w/ the 1k grit and on you weren't really hitting all the way to the edge of the edge, am I right?

BTW, Clay, which knife is that a pic of? I am curious as to how hard that Aus 8 steel is on the HRC scale...

Thanks for checking on the lapping film... still curious as to what your further testing will reveal

That's a good question and I'm not sure I've discovered an answer yet. I'd like to do a lot more testing because I don't think I controlled the experiment enough. I think I need to at least repeat it but perform the exact number of strokes with the 1000 grit stones. I think I may not have done enough strokes with them when I rebuilt the bevel each time which could be skewing the results. You can see in the first 1000 grit picture that I didn't do enough strokes to reach the edge, so I'll repeat and see how it turns out. I'll also need to control for age of strops and amount of paste applied.

The new scope is the Dino-Lite AM-413T5. I'm really liking it so far!

wickededge wrote:


That is a good one. In my experiences the leather strops usually work a little better than the balsa strops for burnishing. However, I had one case in which the balsa worked better. That might be the reason.

I tried, by the way, to increase the stiction of a leather strop by making it wet. Not the slightest effect. Next up is stropping with chewing gum on balsa .

mark76 wrote:


Totally funny. I just redid some of the tests and the role of stiction seems to be huge. I'll post more below.

Man, that is really weird why the lapping films were so slow working and hardly did anything... I can't believe it! My assumptions were totally opposite... lol, it seems as if the only way you can get a fast cutting consistant edge at sub micron levels is with the shaptons... I just don't have a grand to drop on stones right now

* edit: keep the test coming Clay! lol, there's gotta be another answer! I haven't given up hope!

Slight tangent here - polishing tapes... I decided to retest the polishing tapes, starting from a polished bevel and counting strokes, so here goes, working backwards from 1 micron polish:


510x - 7000 grit polishing tapes after 1 micron polish - 100 passes


510x - 3000 grit polishing tapes after 7000 grit tapes - 100 passes

These look better than yesterday's results but not overwhelming.