A theory of how the WE diamond pastes work

[wickededge]

Interesting…
First, thanks Clay for all of this! it is real nice to be able to see what is happening with these progressions.

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

The 10K Chosera edge is interesting because it seems to be non-uniform or maybe a bit uneven.Not sure how to describe it. Curious, so far I have liked the edge that this stone leaves. Though I must say that I have almost always gone to the leather strops at 1 micron diamond and .5 micron CBN after the 10K.

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.

It it my imagination or is the 1 micron diamond bevel showing fewer scratches than the 0.5 micron bevel.
At this magnification it seems hard to tell which “edge of the edge” is better, but I am leaning towards the 1 micron edge.

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.

BTW, just saw the last photos. It looks like the horse butt is some abrasive stuff. Interesting that there are all kinds of stories out there on the razor forums about how superior it is to other stropping media!

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.

-Clay

[wickededge]

That 1 micron diamond paste after the 10K Choseras makes a smooth edge…

Agreed!

And then it is weird that the .5 micron paste seems to make scratches again.

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.

The results with split horse leather are strange. The .25 micron stuff on split horse leather seems to make even wider scratches than the .5 micron stuff. But then the .125 stuff seems to smoothen the edge again… Could it be the lighting? Or contamination?

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 🙂

What strikes me is that the .125 scratches seem much more apparent after the top horse leather than after the split horse leather. But after the cow leather they are hardly visible. Lighting? Or are we running into the limitations of the microscope?

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.

Your post does seem to show that the smoothest edge is not necessarily the sharpest (also not for push cutting or the HHT). Or do I interpret things wrongly?

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.

I’d be interested to see what that plain top horse butt leather does to a completely clean edge, compared to plain top cow leather. Some straight razor honers like top horse leather[/url] because it apparently has silicates in it already by itself. And your first HHT pass was after the top horse leather.

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.

-Clay

[wickededge]

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!!!

Attachments:

• 1umDiamondonCowLeatherTop.jpg
• 25umDiamondonKangarooLeatherTop.jpg
• 125umCBNonNano-Cloth.jpg

-Clay

[wickededge]

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!

-Clay

[wickededge]

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.

-Clay

[wickededge]

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.

Attachments:

• 25umDiamondonHorsebutt-100strokes-2ndpass.jpg
• 10k-100strokesafter.25umonKangaroo.jpg

-Clay

[wickededge]

and just for grins…:

10k Chosera – 100 strokes with human hair

.25um Diamond and Kangaroo Leather (Top) – 100 strokes

After the 10k Choseras, I went back and did a quick 100 strokes with the .25um Diamond and Roo strops to see how quickly I’d get a result – pretty quick!

Attachments:

• 10k-100strokesafter.25umonKangaroowithhair.jpg
• 25umDiamondonKangarooLeatherTopafter10k.jpg

-Clay

[Joyal Taylor]

WOW!
I want those Kangaroo Leather and Nano-Cloth strops ASAP.

[wickededge]

WOW!
I want those Kangaroo Leather and Nano-Cloth strops ASAP.

We’ll be listing them on the site this week.

-Clay

[Mark76]

This is totally cool! :woohoo: WOW! Finally the submicron compounds do work.

We’ll be listing them on the site this week.

And maybe work some overtime to process orders… :cheer:

It seems like the substrate is much more important than I (we?) thought. That roo and nanocloth must be supersmooth. For that reason I’m still very interested in the top grain horse leather pictures…

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Jende Industries]

Holy Day-am!!!! That Kangaroo and Nanocloth wins first place!!!!

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[wickededge]

The kangaroo and naon-cloth are shocking, really. 🙂

-Clay

[Phil Pasteur]

Yes the Roo and Nano cloth are pretty amazing stuff for sure. We have seen differences in stropping media, but these are at least an order of magnitude better.

Another thing that I found interesting and maybe a bit disapointing was how comparatively rough the Chosera 10K stone left the blade. As Tom might say, “from the macro level” this stone leaves a real mirror finish. We have discussed the limitations of our cameras, and I am sure it is all in my technique with the Veho, but I never would have guesssed, nor have I seen, the level of scratches being left by that stone.

Additionally this series of photos really turns a bunch of the common wisdom on stropping on its ear. What are considered to be the best stropping media around just flat are amazingly abrasive on their own.

It is just counterintuitive that soft “smooth” leather or balsa can scratch hardened steel like they apparently do.

Again, great stuff Clay!

[Josh]

Wow, those edges are sweet! Count me in for an order… This may be what I’ve been looking for. I got an edge on a razor to pass the HHT, but it was holding the hair really close to the edge. Then when I went from the .25um paste (Norton) to the .125um spray I lost the HHT capability… was really weird. Looking forward to getting some of that stuff! Probably too early to tell, but which would you prefer Clay, nanocloth or kangaroo leather? Which one is easier to mount to one of the normal strop paddles? (i.e. I will remove the leather from the ones I have and replace it).

Awesome work bro… keep it up. Looking forward to seeing pics w/ your new microscope, lol!!! Did you see the thread a while back where someone had posted a link to another forum where a guy had a 1000x microscope that he could take pics with? You should just pull the trigger and get one… you know you will have one eventually anyway, haha!

Edit: its called a metallograph… here’s the thread, check out those edge pics! Unfortunately, they’re real expensive… $1700-$1800!!!

[wickededge]

I am really impressed by the super smooth polish I got from the Roo and Nano-Cloth. That said, the smoothness doesn’t necessarily translate into either performance or durability for all cutting tasks. The blade did best at the HHT after the plain cow top grain and the plain horse butt top grain. As far as the 10k stone goes, I’m still a big fan – my thinking on it is this: if you want a great cutting edge, then 10k, or 1.74um is an extremely well rounded level of finish and the uniformity of the Chosera scratch pattern is exceptional, plus the path to get there is short. I went straight from the 1600# ceramics to the 5k/10k combo and was at that level within just a couple of minutes. As far as the scratches go, the 10k is nearly 7x as coarse as the .25um strops on roo leather, so we’re getting about what we should expect and it’s hard to overstate the necessity for some micro-teeth, ideally perfectly formed, uniform micro-teeth. After all this, I find myself wanting to do a massive cutting comparison of identical blades with different finishes! What I’d really like to do is develop a matrix that helps us to pinpoint exactly which finish is best suited for a given application both from a performance standpoint and from a durability standpoint. Another big factor is ease of maintenance. I think a lot of the fun of the Wicked Edge platform at this level is the ease with which one can experiment and contemplate the exact best geometry and finish to apply to a given knife. Lots to explore… 🙂

Yes the Roo and Nano cloth are pretty amazing stuff for sure. We have seen differences in stropping media, but these are at least an order of magnitude better.

Another thing that I found interesting and maybe a bit disapointing was how comparatively rough the Chosera 10K stone left the blade. As Tom might say, “from the macro level” this stone leaves a real mirror finish. We have discussed the limitations of our cameras, and I am sure it is all in my technique with the Veho, but I never would have guesssed, nor have I seen, the level of scratches being left by that stone.

Additionally this series of photos really turns a bunch of the common wisdom on stropping on its ear. What are considered to be the best stropping media around just flat are amazingly abrasive on their own.

It is just counterintuitive that soft “smooth” leather or balsa can scratch hardened steel like they apparently do.

Again, great stuff Clay!

-Clay

[Author]

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