You should see the pile of knives I have here on my desk from practicing! I've made my fair share of screwups too, including on my very own EDC knife I accidentally used the wrong depth key holes! I had to throw it in reverse and go back to 600 grit to undo the slight amount of accidental reprofiling I caused with the 1000 grit touch up. That's one of the best things about the system, I've found... being able to undo those D'OH moments pretty easily and learn from a bit of extra work, rather than a ruined chunk of steel.

@Clay: Now you have me preaching the stone wear-in gospel too! Just in the maybe six weeks or so I've had my kit (has it really been that long?) all of the stones have settled in nicely and continue to improve.

On the topic of pressure, there are times where some elbow grease helps but by and large on most normal sized knives and MANY types of steel, pressure is detrimental. I had to really put some muscle into profiling that kukri, but some cheap made in China cutlery a friend brought over would chip just sneezing on it. The first week or so was all countering my natural heavy-handedness on the stones.

Regarding stropping, that's something I'm slowly collecting more knowledge about but the Pro Pack definitely gives you a glimpse of how effective it can be. There's a big gap between 1000 grit diamond stones and a 5 micron paste, though, so until the stones wear in a bit you'll be seeing edges that aren't super polished... but plenty sharp! The best looking edges I've done took a long time stropping with both 5 and 3.5 micron pastes from the Pro Pack, so I'm already looking at bridging that gap. I've read a lot about sandpaper and figured I'd try that out, treating the more fragile paper (and different media, aluminum oxide typically) as more of a stropping operation. I can say that 600 grit wet/dry makes a pretty nice edge, looking forward to getting the grits up to 3000 (not available locally, anywhere )

Whew, wall of text! Look at me sounding all edumacated and stuff!

ApexGS wrote:


Yes, definitely. Or the ability to just step back and go "maybe I could get this a bit sharper if I go back to 600 and work a bit more on that.

ApexGS wrote:


Yes. Which, brings up a point I'm wondering about. What do you do about the "drop" of the stone to the blade (as you come back around and start at the heel of the blade again, that initial contact of the stone to the blade). Do you just do that as lightly as possible, or...? I would think that impact, however light, if the blade is truly apexed, is going to cause some deformation each time.

ApexGS wrote:


Yes. I am going to try sandpaper in the coming weeks. I bought some at a local Autozone (a combo pack of 1000/1500/2000/2500 half sheets). 3000 grit is weird stuff. It's green/grey and kind of cushy. www.amazon.com/3M-01459-Trizact-Performa...anding/dp/B005CEHTEY I haven't ever used it. The 1000-2500 stuff, I have used when I was lapping a water block for my computer (I used to have a water cooled computer). But that was mostly wet, rather than dry (which I would guess you'd want when using it for knife sharpening). =)

Yes, wall of text, but that's why we're here. =)

Staze wrote:


I try to keep from whacking the edge as much as possible, and feel that it's worth taking that extra second or so to get the stone square and lighten up pressure. Especially if you're like me and have a tendency to get heavy handed, it helps break that habit by making you focus on getting everything just right and minding the pressure on the stone. I think of it kind of like hitting the slow mo button just before you reach the blade again... slow down for that second or two and right back to normal speed again. Sadly there are no cool Matrix effects when this happens

Random aside: I actually picked up that concept of identifying when to hit the brakes and when to swing back into full speed from a pistol instructor several years ago. Funny how down the road, the thing I learned doing speed reloads on a handgun applies just as well to knife sharpening... just in a slightly different way!

Makes sense. I'm trying to be careful about that contact, and not hammering the side of the blade. =)

I had a little more fun with the microscope just now and did a quick progression. Here is the blade after my well worn 1000# diamond plates:



The burr is very obvious even with alternating strokes and semi-light pressure. I could always stand to go a little lighter!

Here is the blade after 10 strokes with the 14 micron strops:



The burr is definitely getting smaller and giving us a more refined edge. That's from only 10 strokes...

I went a step further and completed 50 strokes with the 14 micron strops. Here is the edge:



The edge is clearly a lot cleaner and the scratches are already being smoothed away. New, more shallow scratches are being cut in by the diamonds on the leather which is interesting because the diamonds in the paste are generally twice as large as the diamonds on the 1000# plates. The reason for the smaller scratches is most likely due to the pliability of the leather so that the diamonds in the paste are not making full contact and are not getting pressed in as deeply as are the diamonds on the steel backed plates. For that reason, it can be reasonable to go back to a coarser grit on your strops and still get a more refined edge/bevel.

Clay,

Great to see. It is interesting how stropping produces such a different result that stone, but as you said, obviously leather is not stone. =)

It would be interesting to see how each strop material (cow, balsa, and roo), with the same compound, compared after a similar number of strokes. It also occurs to me that one could use something like glass, with the paste on it, and get something more inline with the stone (so, a real 14µ scratch pattern), no?

Just makes me wish my USB microscope would get that magnification... =P