Emerson Chisel Grind Question
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I finished up my Emerson today, or as close as I’m going to get. There is still a faint scratch pattern in the mirror – very faint – but the mirror polish looks great. The last step in my progression was nano-cloth stropping with 200,000 grit diamond paste; this is the finest I have. It really took out a lot of the scratch pattern that was left.
I tested for sharpness, and was disappointed: although it felt sharp to my thumb, it didn’t do a great job shaving. If I shaved with the polished edge up, it was very poor; polished edge down was slightly better, but still not acceptable. Especially weird was the fact that I had tested sharpness at some point during sharpening, and it was extremely sharp.
So, on a hunch, I took a freshly cleaned and loaded barber’s leather strop (using the green chromium dioxide compound that comes in a bar). The green compound hadn’t been used. I performed 4 light passes on the polished edge; 2 light passes on the other side, and then switched to the linen with no compound. I hit 2 passes on the polished side, and 1 pass on the other side. All the passes were quite light; the passes on the linen were extremely light.
I looked at the green compound on the strop, and it had quite a bit of black afterwards, indicating fresh metal had been laid down.
The knife was much sharper after that; it’s not quite at the point where the hair on my arm screams and pulls itself out when it sees the knife, but it’s pretty close, regardless of which side is facing up. Shaving is definitely not a problem now.
Does anybody have an explanation?
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So I’m about to sharpen an Emerson Chisel and would like some basic instructions on how to do this? Not sure how to begin. (I’m surmising I just sharpen like a typical V grind only just do it on the one side? Start with a sharpie on the one side and then go through the progression of grits etc?)
Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing. Since I only have the one Emerson on which to practice, it’s quickly getting to the point where it sees me coming and I swear I hear a little voice whimper “Oh dear god not tonight I’ve a headache.” Essentially, depending on condition of the beveled side, I’ll start with diamond 100-200-400; obviously the more the damage, the lower the grit. Then I follow a standard progression on the diamond stones, up to either 1000 or 1500.
Here’s where it gets interesting, in my opinion. I have, as the pics I posted somewhere show, made the bevel very wide – my idea was to do a wide bevel, and then try various experiments to get a high polish. That will achieve, according to my brain, a couple things: one, the standard show-off factor of “Mirror mirror on the bevel, who is the master of the universe?” type thing; secondly, given that the width acts something like a magnifying lens, I can see fairly quickly what methods produce the most / least scratches. This has its drawbacks as well, because the bevel is always wide, and any flaws are hugely visible.
With that said: I’ve had some luck taking the diamonds up to 1,000, then switching to the MF ceramic: coarse, then fine. Then balsa wood or nano-cloth, using a .5-.25-.1 micron sequence; I’m finding that I like the nano-cloth quite a bit at this stage. No need to fiddle with angles at this point, I want something fairly hard and unforgiving. I’ll hit anywhere from 50-200 strokes, depending on how the bevel surface looks.<span style=”color: #ff6600;”>*</span>
After that, I hit the WE leather strop – .25-.1 micron sequence – at least 100 strokes, and take the time to watch the surface carefully. You will also have to adjust your angle a bit as per normal stropping protocol.
The other sequence I’ve used with great success after the diamond stones 800-1000-1500 is to skip ceramics altogether, and use balsa wood or nano-cloth strops, in a sequence something like 5-3-2-1-.5-.25-.1<span style=”color: #ff0000;”>**</span> micron. I’ve experimented and discovered that if I do the .25-.1 sequence on a nano-cloth belt using the WorkSharp as a belt grinder/polisher, I quickly draw out a fantastic mirror edge. When you’re done with this stage, strop as per above.
<span style=”color: #ff6600;”>*You probably know this, but: I’ve found it critically important to examine the edge in a variety of lighting conditions. The best one for making the edge look bad is a darkened room, and a bright Red LED flashlight. The scratch pattern really jumps out for evaluation.</span>
<span style=”color: #ff0000;”>**I’m sure you can eliminate one or more of the 5-3-2-1 micron steps</span>
Then: I have tried to knock off the burr on the backside using a couple methods. First, just a manual strop, smooth leather loaded with a bit of 1 micron paste; I use a hanging strop with smooth leather and linen. I hit about 10 strokes on the leather, with the strop pulled quite tight and using ample pressure. I follow this up with 2 or 3 strokes on the plain linen.
That seems to work, for the most part, OK. Sometimes I have trouble getting the entire burr knocked off, so I’m trying a new technique: I use a nano-cloth or balsa wood WE strop, loaded with 1 micron paste (not much paste at all), and adjust the WEPS for the smallest angle it can manage against the backside. I strop about 10 strokes, using what I would call a pressure of “4” on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being just enough pressure to control the paddle, and 10 being enough pressure so as to require placing my other palm down on the WEPS base, and putting all my weight on it (granted, I’m light at 265lbs) to keep it from flipping over.
Hope that helps.
As somebody with advanced terminal cancer, there will be dark days when I complain about things you say for no apparent reason. Please consider this my apology in advance for such times. There will be days that what I say is clearly wrong, making no sense: on these days I will often be argumentative. Please do not "let me slide" at such times, but rather call me out, point out what is factually wrong, and demand I explain my position. Please also consider this my apology in advance for such times.
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