Do new Micro Fine Ceramic Stones (1.4 and .6 micron) need to be lapped?

[wickededge]

These stones are the reason I want to come up with a new grit chart that evaluates the scratches left by a given abrasive rather than just grading the particle size. There are too many variables for particle size alone to accurately describe what an abrasive will do to your knife. In addition to the RA for the ceramic stones, there is the hardness and porosity of the substrate with strops, the friability of the abrasive particle in synthetic whetstones and crystalline structure of diamonds and other abrasives both in stones and lapping configurations.

-Clay

3 users thanked author for this post.

Snecx, sksharp, Marc H

[wickededge]

Here’s the data sheet on the white, Micro-Fine Fine stone:

It’s interesting that the original crystal size averages 12µ but the structures vary from 2.4µ to as large as 44.8µ. It’s also interesting that the stones are made up of Aluminum Oxide, Silicon Dioxide, Calcium Oxide, Ferrous Oxide, Sodium Oxide and have some Zirconium Oxide in them.

-Clay

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2 users thanked author for this post.

sksharp, Dwight Glass

[Mark76]

Thanks, that’s interesting info, Clay. I also completely agree that a “grit chart” based on scratch size would be more useful. But also this won’t be easy: there are scratch width and depth, but not all scratches have the same size. Maybe you could work with average width and variation (particularly for the ceramic stones).

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

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