Got my 1.4/.6mu Micro Fine Ceramic stones. What next?
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I think rubbing the faces together to remove any small particles which stand proud and might have slipped through will be enough. My 1.4’s looked a little rough at first but seemed to be just fine after the first knife or two. My 0.6’s were beautiful out of the box.
Flattening (lapping) should only be necessary with waterstones, which shed particles into a slurry. I think that variations less than 0.010″ (which amounts to about 0.1 degrees over 5.5″) in flatness should be OK.
Lapping my 1.4/0.6 ceramics on a 400 girt EZ-Lap plate changed their effective grit size. I was able to pretty well restore their original grit by re-lapping them on sheets of diamond film of similar (1.5 and 0.6 micron) grits, but I strongly recommend against it.
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As Tom said. Or just start using them. Some dust may come off and there may be some particles sticking out (which is why rubbing them together is a good idea), so don’t use them at your nicest knives for the first few session. But after that they should be fine for any knife.
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge
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Is it true that its 14000/40000 grit?? Cant find any info other than Ebay
Kind regards
MartinIf I interpolate from my chart from Advanced Abrasives, it says that 1.4 micron is equivalent to about 13,700 to 14,000 grit. 0.6 micron is equivalent to about 41,000 to 42,000 grit.
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OK I just picked up a set of Micro Fine Ceramics to do some experimenting with, and had 3 quick questions about them:
1.) Besides the Super Eraser, is there anything else I should use to clean these?
2.) Should avoid using anything on these to clean them (soapy water/ceramic cleaners/hydrochloric acid, etc.) Yes, I’m kidding about the acid.
3.) Finally, is there a way to tell (visually) when these are broken in, or a ball park number of knives they need to do before they are broken in?
Thanks!
Mike…
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I judge the “fully-broken-in” stone by how uniform they seem to feel as they cut and how uniform the scratch patterns are. A new stone will have some grit that lies on top of the base matrix. These will produce deeper scratches and you can usually feel them and/or hear them, especially when you are down to just a few of them. With the coarser diamond stones, you may actually hear a “click” in the middle of the “zzzzzzzzz’s.” With my experience, the ceramic stones took very little use to reach a “broken-in” state.
BTW, the last batch of replacement diamond plates I bought were much more uniform and took less time to break in than those from one or two years earlier. I think there’s been a significant upgrade in the quality with WE’s current supplier. I haven’t used my ceramics for quite a while, so I can’t comment on the current offerings.
I think I’m going to dig out my ceramics, relap them with appropriate grit diamond film ( I lapped them with a 1200-grit EZ-Lap and buggered them up) and give them a try, just for old times sake. Kind of like righting a wrong in an attempt to get on the right side of karma.
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The white one I have cleaned with “Barkeepers Friend”. I used the powder because that’s what I have but there is also a gel others have used. It’s very finely abrasive, less so than “soft scrub” or “comet”. It does a fair job but doesn’t remove all the black. I do the same to the black/grey stone side but it’s harder to see an improvement. You can freely rinse the stones under the faucet with not harm.
Marc
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I haven’t used the liquid BarKeeper’s Friend yet. I use the Superaser for normal cleanup and Comet for heavy cleanup. I bought my Spydie SharpMaker about 30-40 years ago at their booth at the Wisconsin State Fair. This was before they ever made knives. The guy doing the peddling demonstrated how to use Comet as a cleanup means.
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