Stock stone/strop progression (Lots of Pics!!)

Here it is again! 😉

Straight razor and knife sharpening are completely different mentalities, although the same principles apply.

The default answer to any straight razor related issues is “you’re using too much pressure” 🙂 Pressure is a key component – you really need to go very lightly to keep the depth of the scratches shallow and consistent -especially at the higher grits. With pressure, you can also actually flex the edge of the edge very easily, and miss abrading it altogether.

However, I see 2 more possible reasons popping out at me before the pressure issue. The first is that the 14 micron paste is actually a little coarser than the the 1K diamond WEPS, so you are probably seeing the effects of the almost same size scratches. Secondly, the paste abrades differently than the plates – the plates are way more aggressive. But after 500+ strokes, you shouldn’t have that issue with the paste.

The 1200/1600 WEPS ceramics will serve as a good in-between, but you might not need to go all the way back to 14 micron afterward (1K Japanese standard is 14~16 microns). I would suggest starting at the 5 micron or even 3.5 after the 1600 WEPS Ceramic. As you can see from the microscope pictures, the ceramics leave a very good, clean edge to work from.

One thing you may want to try on the WEPS 1K Diamond is to sweep in the opposite direction that you use the diamond paste strops on. This will give you a very clear indication of what’s happening with your scratches when you switch to the leather paddles. The 1200 WEPS sweeping picture in this thread’s OP shows a good example of contrasting scratches, which exposed underlying deeper scratches: here’s a shameless link [/url] to the blog post. 😆

The general rule of thumb on straights is that 8K, or 2 microns is the minimum level of refinement for a decent shave. However, I personally feel that you should at least get to the 1 micron or 15K level for a more comfortable and smoother shave.

Josh – I just did the WEPS paste progression after the WEPS 1K diamond. Very interesting, and I think I know what is happening.

Pictures coming soon!

A few disclaimers before I begin, since what you are about to see is not indicative of my best work, or what can be accomplished with the WEPS pastes. I simply set out to document the WEPS pastes for Josh in order to give a comparison to what he was experiencing. It was not intentional to get these results – should anyone think I would purposely sabotage the experiment for my own gains. 👿 Quite honestly it was surprising to witness the unfolding drama firsthand, and I think it opens up a huge area for discussion and learning. I know I am completely baffled by what I saw.

So buckle up and get ready for an amazing show!

A quick refresher – Josh (Razoredgeknives) experienced “no change” in scratches after many hundreds of strokes when transferring from the 1K WEPS diamonds to the 14micron Diamond paste on leather. Possible reasons offered were that the 14 micron and 1K diamonds would leave roughly the same scratches, as well as the old standby for anything razor related “too much pressure”.

Well – we were completely wrong…

Before we begin, here is a reference knife that Clay Sharpened for the competition we had last year – excuse the focus, I was much less skilled with my Veho at the time 😳

First, the 1K WEPS diamond – this is a newly sharpened knife @ 18.5 degrees. It was preceded by the WEPS 200, 400 and 600 Diamond Plates. I jumped to the 1K WEPS Diamond, skipping the 800.

Then I pasted up my 14 and 10 micron paddles. and did about 200 stropping strokes – note that I did use edge leading in the 1K picture, so on the 14 micron, I would need to end with the scratches going in the other direction.

Yeah…. Josh is right there is no real change except there is an awful lot of polishing (Note how the lighting goes to that black and white contrast instead of the red/blue on the 1K WEPS.)

So I did a couple hundred more, with pressure.

Yeah…. Then I added more paste and more pressure with a couple hundred more strokes….

Now were are getting somewhere, but still not quite there..

At This point, I think this completely reproduced what Josh was experiencing. To get the knife sharp in this lifetime, I changed the angle to 19 degrees, and the 2d picture below finally shows some scratches going in the “right” direction.

I needed to move along, so I hit the 10 micron paddles next at 19 degrees.

The edge of the edge is polished quite nicely, and this knife is getting sharper.

AT this point, the 19 degree edge is shaping up and the 5 micron paste makes it quite polished.

And finally, the 3.5 micron:

I spent 4 hours discussing this last night with friends on Skype… Again, if you look at Clay’s finished competition knife, the pastes are certainly amazing in his hands. Given more time, I would eventually have gotten that same finish.

I’m floored that there is such a difference in the cutting power of the diamond plates vs. pastes. Also, how do we explain the obvious difference in scratch size? This also gives rise to the importance of the Ceramics and Water stone options before hitting the pastes.

It’s not necessarily bad, just revealing, and I hope to discuss and explore this a lot more with you guys.

This is extremely surprising! Man, this may give new insights into stropping, but for now I find it quite astonishing.

Since you have had a long Skype call on this already, you may have some hypotheses already about what is going on. I can think of only two things that are happening. One is that the diamonds from the paste disappear almost completely in the leather of the strops. And the other is that there is something “wrong” with the stropping compound. Did you already ask the supplier of the paste what they think is going on?

I think this cries out for a repeat experiment with balsa strops (assuming that is the hardest strop there is, I am not sure). Perhaps that would shine some more light. Now I happen to have some balsa strops and 5/3.5 diamond paste… as well as a bursitis :angry: . But as soon as I’ve recovered I will do that experiment.

Something else that struck me was the influence of an angle change of only 1 degree. At 19 degrees you are really polishing the edge of the edge and not the rest of the edge (so it seems) anymore. I thought that leather, especially with some pressure applied, would be pliable enough to also polish material around the area where it is targeted at directly. But apparently the leather is quite stiff.

This is really interesting stuff! Very interested in other people’s experiences and theories!

Josh, I’m glad this “helped” 😆

Some comments about what I saw, now that I’ve had some time to reflect a little.

First, the thought did cross my mind around picture 2c that the paste was not up to spec – but that was immediately cast aside for three reasons: 1) this is Wicked Edge; and 2) I’ve seen what Clay can do with the pastes (that’s why I put the reference picture).

What was immediately apparent was the whole “polishing of the grooves” that was happening with the paste. Again, note just how “White” the picture of the 14 micron paste is compared to the 1K Diamond. If my scratches wee going the the same direction as the stropping motions, I would end up with very cleanly polished scratches, which would make the edge seem to jump in refinement despite the overall depth of the scratches.

The big question to me is why the scratches are so different in size.

Clay, There is definitely smoothing over of the high points of the grooves. The overall lack of speed is probably due to the lack of density of the paste – it’s just a thin smear, and the fact that a lot of the paste actually comes off onto the bevel of the knife (especially as more pressure is exerted). When I added more paste, the abrasion speed picked up a bit.

We all know that leather is quite textured – (if you don’t already know, read this[/url]) B) My first thoughts are that the abrasive is getting “hidden” by the peaks of the leather, causing more shallow scratches. Pressure would still make them cut deeper, though, so that is kind of out.

In theory, the 14 micron should be more aggressive since the whole abrasive particle is exposed, as opposed to a fraction of the abrasive being embedded in the binding of the diamond plate. But this theory looks proven wrong in this case.

Have I got a progression for you guys! I don’t know that it proves or disproves anything, but it was a blast to do and will give us all a lot to talk about. Krystina Muller from Sharper than New sent in a Global boning knife that a customer of hers had sent in. It had originally been sent to Sur la Table for sharpening which was done on a Chef’s Choice machine (I don’t know the model.) Here are some before pictures, on by regular SLR and the other by microscope:

And for the finished product:

Next I’ll start the progression images.

Next I wanted to see what the effect of plain leather would be so I used some horse butt strops, top grain out, moistened with distilled water:

I decided to look at split grain leather too, so I used a set of strops, also horse butt, but the split grain side:

Interesting…