Sharpening medical equipment.

[Jed Bowen]

My mother inlaw works in a pathologists office where they cut human tissue to look for abnormal cell growth such as cancer. There they use this blade which is 4″ long to cut the tissue imbeaded in wax. She told the Dr. that I sharpen things on the side and he asked if I could try these out. They are very thick and had to use a long screw for the top to get it to fit and just clamped it down really tight then set her to 17° on each side and they say that the blade cuts better than new. So just throwing out another thing the WEPS can sharpen.

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[Jack Montrose]

Jed, what stones did you use and did you strop?

Jack

[Mark76]

I guess we have another first here 🙂 .

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Gary Reed]

I am impressed! Your never going to get a better compliment on your work!! Kudos. 17º? I have always gone 20-25º. Thats what I always did on my planer knives, chisels etc. I just always thought it would be the same with my knives for some reason. How in the world am I going to retrain my old hands? If your sharpening medical tools, getting compliments like that, thats what it’s all about. You know that docs gonna be back for more. Thanks for sharing.

[Jed Bowen]

I had 4 blades to do and 2 of the 4 had a big chip in the blades so I ground those two down with the 50 grit and the two that were not chipped were fairly sharp but not sharp enough to make clean samples, so withthose I started with the 400 grit and progressed to 600, 800, 1000, fine and super fine ceramics then the diamond paste strops with 1 and 0.5 micron pastes. I tried one of the knives at 15° but it was too acute and started getting micro chips as I went so I opened it up to 17° and that was the previous angle from what I found and it was what the knives liked. I love the 50/80 grit stones, they take a lot of work out of the initial bevel and pull out chips very quick. I could have done a much better job on them but they wanted to pay $10 per blade so I knocked them out in 30 min each.

[Jack Montrose]

Thanks Jed, sounds like you used the stones from the pro pac II. Glad to here you got great edges with the stones/strops you used.

Jack 🙂

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