When I received the knife from Locutus, he had already spent his hours profiling it. To be quite honest, having dealt with un-profiled s30v and it kicking my butt, I was quite impressed how quickly the WEPS stock Diamonds made new angles on the s90v. :cheer: Of course, Locutus wasn’t as thrilled since he did all the work 😛
But after the WEPS 800/1000 diamonds, things didn’t start slowing down until the 5K Chosera Level. I noticed a point of diminishing returns as the grits got higher. As the abrasives got finer, they needed more time to abrade through the steel.
There were some decisions to make with the sharpening of this knife, too. I still wanted it to function as a knife, so I went for the 10K Chosera edge at 16 degrees, and some .125 CBN to “polish the grooves” to make it a basic shaving edge. The knife was sharp, but the shave was horrible – the steel was actually too thin and seemed to roll over when stropping. So I upped it to 18 degrees and used the Shapton 15K with some HA .25 Micron Diamond spray (to help cut) and then the 30K Shapton with some Ken Schwartz 0.050 Poly Diamond spray. The shave was better, but still not quite to the point where I felt comfortable. I went back to stropping (a lot!) with .25 micron diamond on felt at about 30 degrees per side (I was going for a convexed edge here), then I finished on 0.050 Poly on Balsa.
The edge for the shave wasn’t popping hairs, but it was whittling them. The edge geometry was much more stable, too.
The S90V really does need diamonds all the way up if you want it to shave… Otherwise, the WEPS diamonds to 1000 with a little polish from the Choseras or Shaptons really do make the edge quite aggressive and unstoppable.
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