Why water stones?

[Geocyclist]

Sorry, spell checker got me. I meant plain bench choseras. Just plain chosera stones for hand sharpening.

Chasers would also be interesting. 😛

[Phil Pasteur]

OK…OK.
I said something in another thread.. I am working on it.
I spent a buch of time over the weekend re-working the B75P blade.
I went back to the 600 dimaonds, then 800/1000 then the 1200/1600 ceramics,
then the micro-fine fine and course. I took photos at something like 200X.
I then went “back” to the 1000 Choseras, then 2K, then 3K, then 5K, 10K, then the 12K Naniwa Superstone.

Vey interesting results. I took about 100 pics trying to tease out details. I hope that what I got will be intersting to anyone looking at waterstones.

While doing this I start to really, really appreciate what Clay does. This stuff takes a whole bunch of time.

Now that I have the photos, I have to go back and label them properly, then upload them, then compose a message where they are in the right order and I can comment on them..
I will do it though :).
Just a teaser, here is a photo after I went through the 600 to 1000 grit diamonds and the four levels of ceramics. The bevel was pretty reflective.. can read print reflected in it, just not real clearly. It is a great edge that cuts like crazy… just not a real hyper reflective mirror edge..

More to come !

Phil

Attachments:

• ceramicsmag2.JPG

[Phil Pasteur]

One more while I am awake… this is after going “back” to the 1K choseras.
You will see the scratches that show that I tried Clay’s suggestion about attacking the scratches from different angles. I did about 75 edge trailing stokes, then 75 edge leading strokes, then about 30 edge trailing strokes… you can see the scratches…

Notice the scratches are not all that different than the 0.6 micron ceramic scratches. On a macro level, at this point the edge was noticeably more reflective…
Later I will catergorize and rename all of the photos and uploade them to photobucket so I can just link them…

Phil

BTW, we are talking about maybe 200 to 250 X here. I have a set of three extension tubes between the body and the lense… a 24 to 85 mm macro lense… at max zoom, then a 10X magnifier on the front. I looked at formulas, ran them and came out around 250X… not an exact science for me.. too many variables. If anything, at this magnification it gives a better perspective on what you see. There is more blade in view, and ..after all, we can’t see at 500 or 2500X. When you pick up your knife and look at the edge, well you see what your eyes show. You cut ..what you cut..and know how that works..
🙂

More to come…

Attachments:

• chos1K_mag2.JPG

[Mark76]

Very nice pictures, Phil!

Interesting, particularly in the last photograph, is the line about half-way the edge. It is as if the edge has been sharpened at two slightly different angles. I noticed that in some of my photographs, too. But I never noticed it until people here started talking about the slight play in the joints of the “old” arm rods. Are you using these? Or did you do this on purpose to create a multi-beveled edge?

A nice thing of the ball joints is that this play has disappeared. Not that it matters a bit in practice. I guess Clay just did this for people who like to stare at edges under their microscopes :-). (And, yes, I’d be the first to agree that’s a weird deviation ;-). )

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[wickededge]

Those look great Phil, I can’t wait to see more!

-Clay

[Phil Pasteur]

Wel it will be tonight before I can make much progress on this project. I am at work now.

As we will see, it is very interesting how the lighting brings out features differently. I took some with just ambient lighting, some with bounce flash, and some at a steep angle to the blade (mostly to show reflectivity). At one point it got to where the ambient pics showed nothing but a featureless smooth surface. I then used the flash with a difuser that was angled up and back bouncing off of the white ceiling. This revealed all kinds of sctratches that just werent visible previously.I even took some that should be interesting, but I only reviewed them on the camera. I focused on the reflection of a tree about 20 feet away as reflected in the edge after the 12K Superstones. Definitely different if nothing else 🙂

This was a lot of fun to play with, but take a great deal of time. It makes me admire and appreciate the studies that Clay does just that much more.

Mark, I noticed the indications of different angles as well. I do have the new ball joint arms. I adjusted the angle a bit between the superfine and microfine stones, but thought that I simply set it at 18 degrees each time. I was trying to be careful, perhaps the angle cube tolerances ended up being stacked against me. This goes away when I go higher in grit.

I do really like the stuff that Clay does at 500 /800 and 2500. We can really see what is going on at each grit. Sometimes I get lost in the scale at that magnification though. I really set out to let people see the difference that the Chosera stones make in the appearance of the edge at the macro level while tying it is with the scratch pattern. I just like this scale better, for that, and was able to get better and more consistent results than with my Veho. One I get them all up, I will really want to hear what you all think.

Phil

Phil

[Ken Buzbee]

Wel it will be tonight before I can make much progress on this project. I am at work now.

Jobs! Can’t you just call in sick or something, Phil? This is important stuff here 😉

Well, I can’t wait to see the rest of the story!

Ken

[Phil Pasteur]

Still getting my act together on the progression stroy.. but I thought these might be interesting to somebody. This is the edge after the 10K Chosera stones. I managed to fool the camera into focusing on thereflection of a tree about 20 feet away instead of the blade. Keep in mind, the reflection is through a window screen and a triple pane window with low E coatings that really needs a good wash job. Now that might well be called a mirror edge…

[Phil Pasteur]

So just to get warmed up, this is the knife. One of the Mule team knives from Spyderco. They make 400 to 600 of these with no handle, just the blanks. They do this so they can get people to try different types of steel at a relatively low cost. This one if the MT15 made from CTS B75P. The “P” stnds for powder metalurgy.

This is the Snakewood handle that I put on it. I used brass liners and am pretty happy with the way it cam out.

Soon to get to the Waterstone related part..

[Dennis Gocong]

Phil,

Love your work on this thread and really want to see the pics you’ve posted, but for some reason it’s not showing up properly. It’s coming out pixelated….. let me try downloading one more time and see what comes up.

—————-

Yep, first picture in thread #7033 is still coming out pixelated.

But love the handles on your Mule knife….very nice, and I like the results with the Chosera stone finish.

[Mark76]

Yes, very nice handles! Is it snakewood?

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Phil Pasteur]

Yes Mark, they are Snakewood. Very dense and hard to work…and heavy. They are pretty, but between the Snakewood and the brass liners, the knife is not well balanced.

Phil

[Phil Pasteur]

Curious. They are showing up here fine and displayed on my desktop and laptop at home OK too.
That picture is pretty bizarre anytway. To get the camera to focus on the tree, everything in the foreground is waaaay out of focus. I just thought it interesting that I could even do it.

I was struggling with Photobucket. I carefully named all of the photos then upladed them. Once there I could not see my file names. I had to go back and match them up to what is on my PC and rename them.

Not sure why they are showing pixelated for you. Anyone else having issues with the photos?

You can try looking at the pictures at the web site:

http://s1169.beta.photobucket.com/user/mandrake50/library/CTS%20B75P%20Mule

I will still post them here with some descriptions.
Phil

Phil,

Love your work on this thread and really want to see the pics you’ve posted, but for some reason it’s not showing up properly. It’s coming out pixelated….. let me try downloading one more time and see what comes up.

—————-

Yep, first picture in thread #7033 is still coming out pixelated.

But love the handles on your Mule knife….very nice, and I like the results with the Chosera stone finish.

[cbwx34]

Pics look good to me.

Nice work!

[wickededge]

The pic in #7033 is a little blurry, but I think that’s due to the screen and glass. It isn’t pixelated on my system.

-Clay

[Author]

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