CPM 110SV advice
- This topic has 11 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 01/02/2019 at 10:37 pm by
.
-
Howdy!
I am so glad to see this forum still going! I have been away for some time working on building my shop and restoring equipment for it and learning to make blades. Plus, all that is involved with a 6 year old and new chocolate Lab.
I so enjoy using and experimenting with different steels. The newest steel I am playing with is CPM 110SV.
And my experience with it has not been what I usually expect and I needed to talk to some experts on the subject. I consider some of the folks on this site the most knowledgable people I have ever experienced when it comes to sharpening steel properly.
I picked up a Spyderco new and not a factory second. This is the only Spyderco I have ever bought that is not from their factory seconds sale since they are in my neck of the woods. But I really wanted to test out this steel and the lock style on the Manix.
My usual experience and part of my testing routine with a new knife from any manufacturer is that I use it daily until the factory edge needs sharpened. On my first go on on the WE I re-profile to 17deg per side with no microlevel and see how it performs. It has been ages since I brought out the usb microscope because I needed help sharpening. I have sharpened enough blades in my time that I can feel when apex is made and move on in grits. The factory edge lasted the longest I have experienced to date. I sharpened it up at my standard 17deg which was almost what the factory had it at. It took longer to get to what I normally feel and to get it sharp. I needed to use some strops to get it to shave, but it did. It is a user and I do not stress out about getting them hair whittling since it is mine. And I know that goes away very fast to the blades working edge which is where I use them the longest until I notice it not performing well and sharpen it again.
Usually what I see is that my sharpened edge lasts much longer than the factory edge. After reprofiling, I will remove the whole edge with my 1000G stone flat and then re-apex it at the lower grits so that I do not have a burr to deal with and I know I have removed any steel that may have seen high temperature from its factory sharpening which is usually done on a dry belt sander without coolant. I think that leads to messing up the heat treat at a microscopic level at the very very end of the edge. And this is why the factory sharpness does not last as long as being sharpened by hand on the WE.
However, this time my sharpened edge dulled way faster than the factory edge. This time I am sharpening it again and really taking my time and testing it often and looking at it under the microscope. I have settled into just stopping at my 600 grid stones for most of my blades as the toothy working edge just performs for longer and it does not take as long to sharpen. I tried this with the 110sv blade. Result was poor as I stated before. I think I am getting chipping with my 600 grit. Trust me, these stones are broken in. Original stones. I am now just going to do the full monty and take it down to 1000 and then strop but It made me wonder if I really need to be doing everything without diamonds on this steel? Or for sure transfer over to ceramics? As all of these questions started to pop up, I figured I would tap into my most trusted resource on the web for sharpening right here. I am glad to see many of you still posting!
So, what have some of you experienced and learned about CPM 110SV from Spyderco? Tips? Tricks?
Hope you are all having a super great weekend!
Eric in Colorado
1 user thanked author for this post.
Welcome back, Eric. I hate to leave your post unresponded to. I personally have no experience with this particular steel CPM 110SV. I have sharpened several very hard stainless steels. I like to call them Super Stainless Steels. After a little research I found your 110SV to be 63 on the Rockwell hardness scale which is a fairly hard steel. I have sharpened some similar hardness steels. Some were quite difficult to sharpen and were brittle and chippy. Other similar hardness steels weren’t too bad.
I feel the difference may be tied into how the steel was hardened and tempered.
I wrote about my experiences with these steels and posted it here. Hopefully you’ll find something there to be helpful. I can say that I sharpen these steels with a more perpendicular stone stroke in an edge leading fashion. I believe edge trailing and longitudinal strokes tend to yield more chipping. It’s been debated why that is. All I know, based on my sharpening experience is these hard steels sharpen, for me, to better results when grind strokes are mostly perpendicular.
I do sharpen these steels with whetstones. I’m am using Shapton’s Glass Stones now. I have used Shapton’s Pro Stones in the past with equally good results. Clay recently stated I believe on this YouTube interview that he has had good results with Diamond Stones on any Steel.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)2 users thanked author for this post.
Thanks Mark!
ill have to check out the links.
I ended up moving through all my grits on diamond and finished it off with some 13 film. Everything into the edge on downward strokes. It will shave close to the skin so I know it is sharper than it was.
I could not not get the sharpness to progress to push cut with the 600 grit stone. I hit a wall and it must have been chipping out. I had to go up in grit to get the edge to not reflect light with the microscope. I had just not encountered this before. Now to use it for a while to see how it holds up. Then I can research some more. Might have to pick up that 1500 diamond stone/platten set. That did not exist lst time I was around. We were just testing out the new clamp system. That was a neat pass around
1 user thanked author for this post.
I had no problems.
3 users thanked author for this post.
Good to hear from you again, Eric. Glad to know you haven’t forgotten us.
I have no S110V experience either, but I do have experience with my ZDP-189 Spydies – a Delica 4 and a Stretch. I’ve found that they tend to chip in use at 17 dps, so I’ve stepped up to 19 dps and have had few problems since. Spyderco lists them at about RC64. Microbevels didn’t seem to help much.
As far as your sharpening problems are concerned, I’m guessing that at a microscopic level, you’re not really forming a good apex. Jack your ‘scope up to its higher magnification and scan the full length of the edge, looking directly down on it in a good source of light. If you see any hint of fine lines of light along the edge, they are either a burr which wasn’t fully removed, or the apex has not been fully refined. Occasionally, I’ll find that removing all of the prior grit’s scratches isn’t quite enough to refine the apex, and I think this applies especially to harder steels. If it takes you 20 strokes to remove the scratches, take another 20-40 strokes. I think this is particularly important at the lower grits.
Precision is a wonderful thing, but under certain circumstances, it can work against you. I’ve put way, way too much effort into improving the degree of precision in my rods and stones. Currently, I have one 1000-grit stone which shows an angle about 0.15 degrees different from all the others. Everything seems to measure out right, but I think there is a small difference in the parallelism between the rod hole and the face of the stones. If the handle is placed on the rod in a certain orientation, the angle will be lower than the set point for the other stones. The result is that this particular stone will not quite reach the apex. If I then use my 1500-grit stone (it’s on the same handle as the 1000-grit), the problem is corrected, but if I stopped with the 1000-grit, I will not have added the 1000-grit benefits to the edge.
2 users thanked author for this post.
Eric: I hope you don’t read my post (above) and think I’m disrespecting your experience, which I know is extensive. This same thing has happened to me quite a few times. In every case, I know that I had seen a fine line reflected along the edge and made the decision to proceed to the next grit, thinking that I had applied plenty of strokes that it was either a burr or was so small (maybe only a few microns wide) that surely the next grit would erase it. But the steel was hard enough to stand up to the finer grits and the apex was never fully formed. Perhaps the width of the apex continued to get smaller, thereby causing me to think that it was nothing to be concerned about. The fault lied with my confidence in my own judgement and the hardness of the steel contributed to the error.
In most, if not all of the cases that I’ve had, I had flattened the edge to remove a chip or a dent of some type. Trying to re-establish an apex becomes a tedious job, especially so with hard steels. I was eager to move on in the grit progression and simply talked myself into a bad decision.
All that having been said, you might just have a case of steel that didn’t harden properly and tends to crumble, even with finer grits. This could also explain the failure to maintain an edge. Take a look at the edge with your highest magnification, but with a forensic mindset rather than a sharpening mindset.
2 users thanked author for this post.
Heck No I don’t feel like you are disrespecting my experience man! I had talked to Josh about this awhile ago which had lead me to pick up some new stones. Now that they are broken in (Ill see about that when I get the scope out) I am ready to finish off my vacation with some serious attempts at sharpening this sucker while using the scope. I had just gotten so used to being able to feel where I was at and throwing great edges on everything I sharpened without having to bring out the microscope (used some hand loupes occasionally) but this sucker is calling my bluff in thinking I know what I am doing. lol. A fella gets used to certain blades and steels and can hammer out great edges. I just really think this one is different (actually really hard) and you are probably right. I do not think it is a bum heat treat or bum steel because Spyderco has sharpened it 2 times and it lasted a good long time. The lock pissed me off because it was sticky and I just did not use the blade for a long time. Then I drove it to them one night and left it with them to fix it. They fixed it and sharpened it. Time to blow the dust off the microscope and sit down with some good toons and see what there is to be seen. I too am glad to see some familiar names still posting away here. This place is my go to for getting real information on sharpening.
Thanks! Ill follow up with what I find.
1 user thanked author for this post.
My advice is to avoid Spyderco’s CPM S110V. Its a super hard steel coming in just 2 below the hardest steel on this chart attached. I have only owned a WE system for 10 months and have re-profiled and sharpened around 75 blades so far. I ran into CPM S110V when my office mate who has owned his WE system maybe 3 months longer than me. He tried sharpening his new Para 2 with the 110 steel and messed it up. He sent it back to Spyderco and they installed a new blade for him for maybe $35. When it came back he sold it to me and bought another Para 2, but this time he bought it with S30V. I never sharpened the one I bought from him as I was going to re-sell it in the near future for what I paid for it.
But I picked another one up last week for $80 with a small chip near the tip, so I figured it would give me a chance to try and sharpen S110V and work that chip out (I’ve read a few other complaints on other forums with this steel). It is a real annoying steel to sharpen as its so hard it micro chips when using too coarse a grit. I had 50/80 stones (they are fast) but they are way too coarse, so I started with 100’s working the chip out then apexing/ re-profiling it. It took me like and hour to get a burr and thats with vertical scrubbing along with the regular WE motions. I finally got the burr, but got so tired trying to flip it to the other side and since I was told not the rush the process for fear of fatiguing the metal that I should do it over several sessions. I finished mirroring the bevel just for looks as I still have a burr to work off in my next session. I progressed through the rest of my stones, DLP’s and stropped with Nano strops and diamond spray just for looks for now.
I have 5 Chris Reeves knives with S30V and Benchmades with S30V and S90V and they are all a joy to work with on the WE.
Personally, I would never by a knife with CPM S110V when they also offer the S30V. Another issue with a steel this hard is if you drop it say on a hard floor you could very easily snap the tip off.
Came out looking good, but not sharp enough on the Bess scale at a 185 with that burr still on it. I should be able to get the sharpenss number lower to the 110 area, but I’m probably looking at another 1.5 hours of work on it! I do have to say CPM S110V starts mirroring at the 800 grit. Where as my CRK’s don’t start clearing up until the 1500 grit.
2 users thanked author for this post.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.