Need Help with Basics of Using Lapping Film
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Is it still your belief that there is a problem with the 0.5 micron WE lapping film, or do you think the erroneous scratches you were seeing previously can be explained by contaminants introduced in the sharpening and wiping process?
I did experience the same unexpected scratches with two tries from different strips. I won’t go so far as to say there’s something wrong with the WE 0.5 micron DLF with out future more careful trials. I don’t think it would be fair to draw that conclusion from my unstandardized test.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)1 user thanked author for this post.
Nice work Marc and thanks for sharing it with us.
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Great posts Marc! You should put a photo of the finished knife in the super polished edges thread.
Here’s a shiny bevel shot. I still can’t get the hang of these photos:
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)Yeah, great posts Marc. Thanks!
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge
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I’ve done a little digging and found that I have 0.5 micron film from three different suppliers; Wicked Edge, Nanolap and Lee Valley. I hope to get a chance to test them all on one of my EDC’s soon. Will post the results.
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Wow, I didn’t know there were so many suppliers. 3M also makes this films, but from the specs I wasn’t impressed.
Someone mentioned that Jende Industries also supplies the lapping films. They are specifically for the WE and here is a link: https://www.jendeindustries.com/index.php/sharpening/diamond-films-plates/jende-diamond-products.html?p=2
By the way, they also have a nice blog (https://jendeindustries.wordpress.com/) and Tom Blodgett (of Jende) is a great guy to deal with. And they usually supply quality products.
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge
O, here goes a bunch of photos, taken in an experiment to compare 0.5 micron DLF from three vendors.
I selected my small SOG folder as a test bed, as it had by far the widest bevels of any of the knives I own. To give some background, and for comparison purposes, I’ll show the progression:
I started with 6 micron:
You’ll notice that there is a microbevel at the upper part of the knife. Not important here.
Next is the 3.0 micron DLF:
Next is 1.5 micron DLF. Here is where we start to see the scratch pattern turn into a polish. I didn’t get a very good image, but here’s the best one:
Next is 1.0 micron DLF:
OK, now we know what we’re starting with. Here’s the Nanolap, which I think was slightly used:
Not too impressive. Next is the Wicked Edge:
And surprisingly, here’s the Lee Valley DLF:
Now what is happening here? Why would one of the three be pristeen, while the others (not just WE) were downright ugly. The three patches of film are of slightly different colors, so maybe there’s a difference here. But each of the pics was taken after 40 -50 strokes, so maybe it’s contamination that happened with my sloppy discipline around the rig.
So read onto my next post:
I have no clue as to why the photos are scaled differently here. Each pic was set for the same number of pixels. But I digress…
Next,I got a little more scientific about it and ran three sets of new film. Each set was preceded by a return to the 1.0 micron film to assure that each set was starting with the same basis.
Here’s the Nanolap sequence. To get a more meaningful result, I marked the blade with a Sharpie to zero me into the same spot. I first re-polished with the 1.0 micron DLF:
Then I loaded a new strip of Nanolap 0.5 micron DLF and limited the run to 10 strokes:
Notice how the 0.5 DLF removed almost all of the 1.0 scratches in only 10 strokes.
Next was the Lee Valley film. 1.0 micron first to reset the background:
Next is the 0.5 micron DLF from Lee Valley – 10 strokes:
Next is Wicked Edge, reset to 1.0:
And finally, the 0.5 micron DLF from WE,which was the big question mark – 10 strokes:
And what do we conclude? Pick your own reasoning, but it looks to me that contamination is the culprit, and it doesn’t take much to cause it. I had to be meticulous in my efforts to avoid it. At one point, I dropped a strip of the Nanolap on the floor and very carefully cleaned it off.
It also looks to me that it doesn’t take a hundred strokes to progress from one grit to the next when you get down to the finer grits.
Comments please gentlemen?
First a word of warning. What you see in the microscope images is highly depended on the light. And, as you remarked yourself, pollution could also play a role.
And I can see noticeable differences between the first and the second post.
First post
My conclusion would be that the WE DLF’s until and including 1 micron seem to work fine.
However, both the 0.5 micron Nanolap and the 0.5 micron WE films appear to cause scratches that are posssibly larger than the 3 micron film.
The Lee Valley 0.5 film seems to produce pretty fine sratches, finer than the 1.0 micron scratches, although it is difficult to see.
Second post
The Nanolap 0.5 film shows more scratches than the 1.0 micron film. I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that “the 0.5 DLF removed almost all 1.0 scratches in almost 10 strokes”.
A similar remark applies to the Lee valley film.
And here the WE film actually looks to produce the best results. Here the 0.5 micron film appears to produce similar scratches to the 1.0 film.
Conclusion
The Nanolap 0.5 film shows more scratches than the 1.0 film in both cases.
The Lee Valley film show (far) more scratches in the 0.5 film than in the 1.0 film in the first post. Also, in the second post they show more scratches, although the effect is less dramatic.
Here the WE 0.5 film seems to produce the best results. The 0.5 micron film appears to produce less scratches than the 1.0 film (or at least similar).
I think this is a good reason for more invesigation in the WE 0.5 film (and the 0.1 film). And I’m curious how the Jende industries 0.5 and 0.1 micron films work, since Jende generally has a good name.
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge
Thanks Tom, did you indicate what power setting the Microscope was set at? From what I saw, I’d be happy to go to strop from any of the 1.oµ DLFs. I really don’t think cross contamination is the culprit, especially if you prewipe the DLF with an alcohol or lens wipe before using it, to ensure there’s no debris on the DLF.
I just want to say, again, if you use the DLF for what it is, a very fine diamond stone you get results that are what should be expected. If your using the DLF as a polishing media, then it’s just another step in the whole process, not the last step. You’ll still need to finalize with strops, IMO
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)First a word of warning. What you see in the microscope images is highly depended on the light. And, as you remarked yourself, pollution could also play a role. And I can see noticeable differences between the first and the second post. First post My conclusion would be that the WE DLF’s until and including 1 micron seem to work fine. However, both the 0.5 micron Nanolap and the 0.5 micron WE films appear to cause scratches that are posssibly larger than the 3 micron film. The Lee Valley 0.5 film seems to produce pretty fine sratches, finer than the 1.0 micron scratches, although it is difficult to see. Second post The Nanolap 0.5 film shows more scratches than the 1.0 micron film. I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that “the 0.5 DLF removed almost all 1.0 scratches in almost 10 strokes”. A similar remark applies to the Lee valley film. And here the WE film actually looks to produce the best results. Here the 0.5 micron film appears to produce similar scratches to the 1.0 film. Conclusion The Nanolap 0.5 film shows more scratches than the 1.0 film in both cases. The Lee Valley film show (far) more scratches in the 0.5 film than in the 1.0 film in the first post. Also, in the second post they show more scratches, although the effect is less dramatic. Here the WE 0.5 film seems to produce the best results. The 0.5 micron film appears to produce less scratches than the 1.0 film (or at least similar). I think this is a good reason for more invesigation in the WE 0.5 film (and the 0.1 film). And I’m curious how the Jende industries 0.5 and 0.1 micron films work, since Jende generally has a good name.
Lighting is a major deal in trying to diagnose the problem, as the glossy background seems to amplify the size of the scratches. In any case, the scratches seem to be much, much larger than what is expected for 0.5 film.
The 6, 3, 1.5 and 1.0 films in the first post were from Nanolap.
In all cases, the 1.0 film was stroked the same way – up and to the right. All of the 0.5 film was stroked up and to the left.
Please note that the two photos (Nanolap and WE in 0.5) are scaled much larger in the post. I’ve no clue as to why, since the scaling is the same, but these are the photos which depict the large numbers of scratches.
I should have pointed out that this knife required me to use the Tormek adapter, and because of this, there was a little bit of side-to-side movement of the blade (the hinge point is slightly loose). To deal with this, I took care to photo the same area in all cases shown in the second post. While the 0.5 film didn’t remove every scratch from top to bottom, you’ll see that some of the 1.0 scratches (for instance, along the top edge of the bevel) are completely gone in 10 strokes. I think that if I had mounted the blade directly in the vise, (the 17 dps angle was too low for this blade) the scratches would have all been eliminated.
Yes, it seems that the Nanolap 0.5 film (2nd post) produces more deep scratches than the others, but I was thinking that I’d dropped it on the floor and that may have slightly contaminated it. For me, the differences between the 0.5 films in the first and second posts were so dramatically different that I concluded that the difference had to be contamination. In all cases, the films were strips cut (in the case of the WE, peeled) from the same sheets, with the first and second posts actually being strips which were immediately adjacent to each other. How can you deduce that the films were so different without also deducing that contamination is not the culprit?
What I didn’t elaborate on was why in this grade of film so inclined to get seriously contaminated? Is it softer or somehow more prone to embedding contaminates than other films?
nope…Mark76, only what you bought…
What are you guys looking to achieve using the DLFs? Besides doing these tests looking for problems, why are you using films? Unblemished mirror shine? or super thin sharp edge? I don’t think you can beat strops for smoothest, cleanest, shine. IMO
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)
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