PhilipPasteur wrote:

You're welcome, these are very fun to do.

PhilipPasteur wrote:

I need to repeat the 10k stone because I think there might have been surface contamination or some other issue; most likely the stones picked up some grit from being stored with the rest of my Choseras.

PhilipPasteur wrote:

I agree that the .5um seems coarser than the 1um. I had almost identical results previously as well and it may be an issue with my strops. I had scraped off the surface of my .5um strops resulting in an almost suede surface which might be responsible. I'll have to replace the leather on that set.

PhilipPasteur wrote:

The horse butt is clearly very abrasive. It's interesting that the plain, top grain horse butt was one of the only ones to pass the hanging hair test - obviously the edge it produces excels at cutting hair.

mark76 wrote:

Agreed!

mark76 wrote:

I think there is an issue with my .5um strops - I had previously scraped the surface to clean them off and gave it a suede or split grain texture. I'll have to replace the leather on that set.

mark76 wrote:

Switching from cow leather to horse, top to split and back is creating a lot of confusion - I'll need to redo this series with all cow/top leather, all horse/split and all horse/top leather. Additionally, Ken is sending me a bunch of nano-cloth strops so we can compare pure abrasive

mark76 wrote:

I've done a similar series before but with alternating stroke directions which were clearly visible, so I think that we're not having issues with the equipment. The lighting for each shot is identical; I'm using a template for placing the blade. My guess is that it's amount of abrasive present on the substrate.

mark76 wrote:

I agree about the HHT. The push cutting through paper was so similar between grits that it is hard to tell when one is better. The 1600# ceramic and the 5k Chosera created some fraying, the rest were virtually identical.

mark76 wrote:

This would be a very fun test to conduct. I'll work on getting the edge as clean as possible and the re-testing the plain cow and horse leathers.

Okay, I just got my mind blown and now I'll share; Ken sent me some kangaroo leather for strops along with some nano-cloth. Here is a nice progression going from 1um Diamond on Cow Leather (Top) to .25 Diamond on Kangaroo Leather (Top) to .125 CBN on Nano-Cloth:


1um Diamond and Cow Leather (Top) - 100 strokes


.25um Diamond on Kangaroo Leather (Top) - 100 strokes


.125um CBN on Nano-Cloth - 100 strokes

Totally cool!!!

I can clearly see that with the Kangaroo Leather and Nano-Cloth strops, combined with the finer compounds, I've effectively reached the limit of what I can image with my equipment. I've spent the last 1/2 hour trying to tinker with the scope and lighting to see some scratches and just can't. I can move the blade around and see stuff that I didn't polish out, but for scratches created in the last progression, I can't see any at all. I'm really excited, thanks Ken! We'll be adding the Roo strops and nano-cloths soon and I'll be in the market for a higher magnification scope!

As much as I hate to put scratches on such a perfect edge, I'm going to now clean my 10k Choseras really well and see what kind of scratch pattern I get.

Okay - bit the bullet and re-created the 10k scratch pattern following a second iteration of the .25um Diamond and Kangaroo Leather strops. As always, there is a slight bit of convex shaping that occurs with the leather, so you see the new scratches from the 10k stone come in but not making quite to the very edge because of the last bit of curvature - shows a nice distinction between the media:


.25um Diamond on Kangaroo Leather (Top) - 100 strokes


10k Chosera - 200 strokes

For reference, the little band of super polished edge is only 31um wide.