Ceramic Question

[Les Garten]

I just ordered the Professional series from WE today. My wallet now looks like Jack Spratt!

Anyhow, the Professional comes with 1/.5 micron Ceramics but not the 1200/1600 ceramics.

Do I need the 1200/1600?

I think I’ve read some posts where it was hard to tell the difference between the 2 different sets.

[Josh]

Welcome Les! I seem to recall Clay doing some testing on his microscope and finding that the micro fine ceramics measured right in that range they were supposed to – 1-.5um. I think this would be too large of a jump to make when going from the 1k diamonds to this if you were going for mirror edges. That being said you can use the poor man’s fix (which you are like to be after spending that much money! congrats!!) is to use automotive sandpaper up to 2500 grit taped to your 1k stones or your ceramic stones. you can achieve just as good of an edge with these, it’s just a pain sometimes.

with all that being said I don’t own either of the ceramics lol… i went w/ choseras. so I will defer to those more knowledgeable than myself! please do a review after you get it in!

[Les Garten]

Thanx, good tip about the sandpaper!

[Mark76]

Hi Les, welcome to the forum!

I did a blog post comparing the 1.4 / 0.6 micron stones to the 1200/1600 stones (and other stones): http://moleculepolishing.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/more-on-the-wicked-edge-micro-fine-ceramic-stones/ . It seems the 1.4 / 0.6 micron indications are just that: indications. I don’t think they are really that fine.

In practice I find they 1.4/0.6 and the 1200/1600 are quite close together. The 1.4 stones are a bit more coarse than the 1200 and the 0.6 a bit finer than the 1600. But not 0.6, which should bring them in the range of Shapton 30K stones.

So my advice would be initially not to get the 1200/1600 stones. If you find the jump from the 1.4 to the 0.6 stones too big you can always order the 1200/1600 stones, or use sandpaper. And of course, the Chosera’s are the royal road 🙂 .

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Author]

Posts