Hello From S.E. Wisconsin
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Hi Dale, following the 1500 grit diamond stone, many of us are mounting and using the 6µ Diamond Lapping Film, (DLF), to the opposite side glass platen. That has worked well for many of us as a starting grit in our lapping film progression. Then we follow with the 3µ/1.5µ pair, then 1.0µ/ 0.5µ. There are mixed reviews on the polishing quality and effectiveness of the 0.5µ film. Remember DLF, are nothing more then just a finer grit diamond stones. Being made from a plastic film you need to exercise care using them as they can cut and gouge easily. It’s bests to avoid any edge leading direction strokes.
Here is a post I made earlier suggesting two relatively inexpensive USB Microscopes I have use with good success. The least expensive Plugable is still my daily use go-to microscope. It is always plugged in to my laptop and sits besides my WEPS on my sharpening station. If your looking to take fine quality edge magnified photographs there are better models. For edge quality control visual inspection of your progress, IMO it can’t be beat.
Marc
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Thanks MarcH. I don’t see me taking pictures with it. But the way I am going now I am liking the camera just for visual inspection. I do get a kick out of checking the bevel for sure when changing grits, and sometimes while doing a grit. I have slowed the sharpening w a y down, and producing better results. That said, I still need to take a close look fairly often at what I am doing. Maybe less often once I get better muscle memory and technique.
The prices on the two scope you listed are right where I need to be.
Hello Dale,
I recommend that you find several knives that you can use to test different edges. Knives that you don’t mind sharpening more than you normally would. Try to 1000 then strop and test on different materials, 1500 then strop and test. A 1500 diamond edge hit with 6, 3, 1.5 lapping film followed by stropping is one sharp puppy in my world. 1500 followed by all four ceramic stones and strops is as well, but the ceramic with not have the same level of polish as the films.
I personally don’t use ceramics or films until I’m done with the diamonds. Like MarcH said earlier, all mediums have there own characteristics and limitations but by combining them you can achieve different results and there are a lot of combinations.
One of the best tips I received shortly after I started was don’t worry so much about mirror edges, progressions, angles ect. ect. and concentrate most on the techniques that you are developing. Holding the stones consistent throughout every stroke, finding your rhythm, pressure, consistency, picking up on the change in the feel and sound as you work with a stone. All of these things with wind up helping you more in the long run than what progression you are using right now.
You will see a major difference in the edges of your knives when your stones break in. WE stones start breaking in at 7 to 10 or so knives. I don’t think my stones fully broke in until they had maybe 75 to 100 knives on them and then they are quite frankly surprising. The diamond stones that I have used in the past were wore out after 20 or 30 knives. They would still cut but very very slowly and weren’t consistent at all. I had some idea of the break in period, and the longevity claims on behalf of the WE diamond stones, quite frankly I think most people under sell these stones as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t want to talk you in or out of purchasing more abrasives as I know that whatever you add to your arsenal you find a use for and be glad you have it at your disposal. You will see a big improvement in your edges especially if you pay close attention to the habits and techniques that you are developing as you start with this system. Then as your stones start to reach fully broken in I think you will be impressed with a 1000 diamond edge, stropped with a couple sets of strops. It’s really hard to convey how much better this thing gets as the stones break in.
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Thank you sksharp, that is very sound advice.
I have a whopping 6 or 7 knives under my belt now. On the last two I really tried to keep my thumbs on the second indent from the bottom, this seems to force me to use lighter pressure. I went slower, checked with the loupe more often, and these two turned out the best so far. The apex on these two knives was insanely consistent!
I read somewhere in the forums about checking the angle with each set of stones. Guess who has one ceramic where the stone is not mounted flat on the handle? I think it was tcmeyer that had a solution to that, something about cutting off the plastic. I’ll go search again.
I am going to end up buying the 1500/glass stone, eventually. For now I will just continue to practice on my bag full of cheap hunting/skinning/deboning knives.
Thanks again,
Dale
EDIT:
I found tcmeyers post about the stone not setting correctly in the handle. From the picture, it looks as if the stone is too long. (or probably just not glued in correct position) I can see where trimming down the lip would have fixed that. In my case however, the stone is centered correctly. It just seems like too much glue was used, or the stone was not pushed down all the way into the handle. If I come up with a solution, I’ll post it. I could talk to support to see if they’ll warrantee it, but like I said, I bought this set pre-owned. So if the warrantee is not transferrable I won’t get any grey hairs over it.
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Dale, exercise caution working with the ceramics. By nature of the material I expect they’re brittle.
Two ways to remove the stones I know about: 1) using heat. and 2) Soak in “Simple Green”
With heat you have to be careful not to over do it so you don’t damage the plastic. (I believe TCMeyer also posted about this)
With the “Simple Green” it’s a cleaning solution concentrate from the hardware and maybe grocery store. On forum member discovered when he used this product simply intending to clean his stones, that the stones became loose from the handles. Apparently the “Simple Green” loosened the adhesive.
After you get the stones loose, and then the stone and handle, cleaned and dry, “3M VHB tape” is use to re-secure the stone.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)Huh. I missed the thing about Simple Green. I use heat to remove steel platens, but I would not dare to try it on ceramic stones. Ceramic is a very poor conductor of heat and is brittle enough to crack if you tried to pry it loose. Too scary for me, so the Simple Green is very interesting and worth a try.
FWIW, I heated my diamond stones by setting them face-down on a hot plate, set to 200 degrees F. At about 170 F, the tape softens enough to pry the stone off. The hard part is removing the tape residue. It’s like rolling really, really hard boogers.
Since switching to the new rods and handles, I haven’t had any troubles with angular errors. I haven’t checked the angles for each stone since the first time I tried out the new stuff. I had been checking angles with each grit for about five years, so it’s a real pleasure to buzz through a sharpening.
If a stone or ceramic plate is standing proud (not mounted correctly down in its pocket), it would cause the stone to sharpen at a lower angle, thus failing to reach the apex.
It’s possible that a stone or ceramic plate would be too long to fit in the molded-in pockets on the handles, but I haven’t seen it. The VHB tape has a final thickness of only 0.025″ and I think the pocket is deeper than this, so it’s likely that the plate is not attached solidly. This also means that a solvent like Simple Green would be able to penetrate into the tape zone. Assuming that you get the ceramic plate separated from the handle, you can still remove the end lip to open the length of the pocket. Which end you cut is unimportant and there is no functionality that would be lost, other than a tiny bit of protection against dropping the stone on its end and breaking the ceramic plate.
I had just enough simple green left over to give the one poorly mounted ceramic a soak. (Not both ceramics)
I will let you know the results of a simple green soak in a few days.
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Dale, I too check my stone angles and make micro-adjustments with each and every grit change, as necessary. Once you get the hang of it it’s pretty quick. After doing it a while you get a feel for how much to turn in or out your micro-fine screws.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)If I understood him correctly, at one time Josh at REK kept a log of the micro-adjustments he needs to make with each grit change. For instance, whenever he changed from 400 to 600 grit, he might make an adjustment of 1/6 of a turn,CCW (which is about 0.05 degrees) on the left and 1/4 of a turn CW on the right. The downside is that you would have to keep the left-hand and right-hand stones on their respective sides and possibly with the same ends up. Once you have it down pat, you only need the AngleCube to set the initial bevel angle.
I already keep a diagram on the wall showing which stroke direction for each grit, so with my graduated micro-adjusters which read in tenths of a turn, that would be pretty easy for me. Since I went to the new handles and rods, I don’t have the need.
I think I’ll put an example diagram together, showing the appropriate data. Maybe in the next couple of days.
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