trouble with 50/80 grit stones.

[Roman]

I was apexing my knives with VG10, S30V, S35VN and S110V with 100 grit and never had chips on the edge. But I use light pressure.

[tcmeyer]

It’s been made clear to me here that everyone doesn’t have the same experiences. I think that the break-in process is the big variable. Some stones break-in easily and some don’t. Once they shed all the anomalies, it’s clear sailing.

[Roman]

It’s been made clear to me here that everyone doesn’t have the same experiences. I think that the break-in process is the big variable.

This is good to know. Thank you. I expected break-in process to be consistent, but all depends on manufacturing process and I am not familiar with it. It is sad to say, but I am giving-up on 50/80 stones. I just cannot use them the way I wanted. Prior to WE, I was using Congress Tool stones. The coarsest was 50 grit aluminum oxide (Ruby), which I used to apex during reprofiling, without any damage to the edge. So I didn’t expect issues with WE Ultra/Extra coarse. Visually it didn’t look as rough as 50 or even 80 WE diamonds. But this is different makers. Possibly they determine grit differently.

[Zamfir]

Man them 50/80 grit stones came in handy today. I had to make this old knife have a sharp tip again..The 50/80 made short work of grinding down the blade and start of the re-profile procedure for the edge. Now that I have used mine a few times, I do seem to keep running into situations that they help save a hell of a lot of time on.

Attachments:

• olhickorytipbefore_2015-01-03.jpg
• olhickorytipafter_2015-01-03.jpg

[tcmeyer]

BH49:

Before giving up entirely on your 50/80 stones, you might try my method of accelerating the break-in period.

I happened to have some pieces of plate glass, 1″ W X 5.5″ L. I clamped one up in the vise with a straight edge exposed and proceeded to try stoning the edge. When I got to a point where I could feel the bumps of the last couple of high spots on the diamond surface, I’d concentrate on them until they abandoned ship. Worked pretty good for me. So long as you don’t apply too much pressure, I don’t think it’ll harm your stones.

Tom

[CliffCurry]

I found found the 50/80 stones a bit intimidating when first unboxing. Luckily I had some re-profiling to do on basic kitchen knives similar to Eric above.

After just a few hours of a fairly intense medium duty workout they settled down and I wouldn’t think of doing major reshaping/repair without them. Granted I have not tried redoing a zdp-189 with them but Im pretty sure I used them when I took my s30v spyderco down to 12dps. I probably just used them for material removal and kept away from the apex when I did it.

Its a tool that has its place in my kit. I use it to grind shoulders, thin secondary bevels and such. I follow that up with a new pair of 100/200 to remove the heavy scratches, refine the bevel shape and almost take it to apex, then use a heavily worn old pair of 100/200 to hit the apex before running up the scale.

Aloha,
Cliff

[Roman]

tcmeyer,
Thank you for idea.

[Author]

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