Break-in roughness question

[Rusty Shackleford]

I got my WE Pro Pack I this week and I’ve been practicing on a bunch of old, insanely dull steak knives.  My first results were pretty terrible, but my last couple have been much better.

Last night I finally got my USB microscope to really see what was going on, and I spent almost 2 hours on this knife.  First I ground in a new 20 degree bevel on my worksharp @ 80 grit because the edge was completely trashed and I had to remove… a lot… of steel.  Then I started with 100 and progressed 200->400->600->800->1000->5µm strop->3.5µm strop.  At each step I verified (to the best of this cheap microscopes ability) that I got all the previous scratches out.

I think I’m not using enough pressure when stropping, but I also think I need a lot more break-in time.  This is maybe the 6th knife I’ve done.  It’s sharp, but it does snag on paper.  Not nearly as sharp as I can get something on the worksharp yet, but I got this because I now own a number of knives I straight up can’t put in that machine (and I don’t trust myself enough on a slack belt on my grinder for expensive knives).

Does this look like a reasonable edge for a new setup that’s only sharpened a handful of knives?  How many more “cheap” ones should I expect to do before this is fine enough for a good knife?  Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks!

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Marc H

[Organic]

I think that looks pretty good. My stones started to perform dramatically better on the seventh knife I sharpened. Most people report that break in of the stones become apparent at about 10 knives or so. Keep at it!

 

Pressure is really important to getting stropping results that are good. It is mostly a trial and error game to find the right balance of angle modification and pressure that works well for you.

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wickededge, NotSharpEnuff, Haffner, Marc H

[Rusty Shackleford]

Organic wrote:

I think that looks pretty good. My stones started to perform dramatically better on the seventh knife I sharpened. Most people report that break in of the stones become apparent at about 10 knives or so. Keep at it! Pressure is really important to getting stropping results that are good. It is mostly a trial and error game to find the right balance of angle modification and pressure that works well for you.

Thanks!  I did notice, especially with the 600/800 and 800/1000 grit stones that they sounded a little different this time and felt a little smoother.  Less of the crunchy grinding sound and more like a file skating on hardened steel.  I’ll keep at it and experiment with more pressure stropping.  It’s not as sharp as I can get on a water stone/worksharp/etc yet, but I’m super happy with how consistent the bevel is along the entire edge.  Even under a microscope it’s basically a perfect line all the way across.

[airscapes]

I used a hunk of bar stock to help break in the lower grit stones.. the end 1 1/2 of the stones were not seeing much steel and when I did go a bit to far to an end they would put real deep scratches in  the bevel. working the stones on the bar stock helped smooth the ends so they are closer to the center…  I did this after about 6 or 7 knives.. And yes you could hear the difference between the end of the stone and center when passing it over the bar stock.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by airscapes.

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wickededge, NotSharpEnuff, Haffner, Dwight Glass

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