Jacob Wilson

[Jacob Wilson]

Soo happy for this! Makes participating so much easier for me! Much appreciated!

[Jacob Wilson]

Welcome, Jacob! And nice table you’ve made. I’ve been thinking of building something similar myself. One reason I haven’t done it yet is I thought it has to be heavy with thick legs in order to be stable enough and not wiggle. Your table/drawer seems to have quite thin and long legs. Is it stable enough?

It does wobble a little, and if you were to run into it accidently, it might just fall over. But for sharpening, it doesn’t wobble nearly that much at all. Granted, my strops are not like Clay’s–where they will lift the base–but I haven’t had any trouble. There are also angled top plates you can use to angle the legs outward to provide better stability. For the $4 it cost, I might switch them out sometime later.

[Jacob Wilson]

I plan to inlay the Blank platens with some glass.
I’ve got a storage solution set up.
I’ve got a list of ancillary tools and mods.

Welcome! Post some pics when you’re all setup! :)[/quote]

You asked!

I got my Wicked Edge all set up.
Prior to today I had kept the sharpener on the base sitting on my nightstand. All the accessories were kept in here:

The wife didn’t like me using the nightstand and I wanted something more capable for storage and whatnot. So I built a small table:

Mounted the sharpener:

Attached some drawer liner to protect the stones and joints from banging around when I set them down:

Made the table a hinge top box to store the stones, strops, and other items:

A dowel to keep the door open:

Some dowels to hold up the stones:

A VCI pack to keep the rust away. I know the diamond stones won’t rust, but I wouldn’t want any steel shavings left on the stones to cause any rust that might spread to the stones. Farfetched, maybe.

The alignment ruler is tucked away:

The magnifiers also work ok with my phone so I can get some edge pics (only about 60x):

I love this system and set up. Definitely recommend it. The table cost $40 to build.
Anyway, I’m having so much fun with the WE. Sharpened a bunch of knives, broke in the stones.

[Jacob Wilson]

I think everyone agrees that leather polishes steel. It’s unmistakable. We’ve all experienced it sharpening.

The question is why. Is it because of smearing metal or micro fine abrasions.

[Jacob Wilson]

I’ve read most of the controversy between burnishing or not burnishing on the various threads here. I’ve always been under the impression that the stiction of leather is enough to pull molecules.

However, I’ve always been at war with myself. Logically, burnishing with leather makes absolutely no sense to me. However, being what I’ve always known about stropping, it isn’t so easy to just switch to the other side of the issue. I still haven’t seen very adequate proof to prove the point either way (although some of Clay’s pictures do seem to show metal that has ‘smeared’ or ‘collapsed’ into itself or it’s valleys). The jury is still out on the matter for me, and in the meantime I feel pulled both ways.

Me too conflicted… But I can tell you one thing… it is not about burnishing, it is physics, you are not smearing molecules, even if burnishing is happening. Even during plastic flow of the surface, there is no way you can smear molecules. To really smear molecules, you need to change their shape. This means changing their geometry. The bonds that hold molecules together give them their physical properties. To smear them you would have to change the molecular shapes, and distort the bonds. Doing that would make them something else. Regardless of whether burnishing steel with leather is possible, you aren’t smearing molecules with your strops.,

Now, I tend to think that we all can agree that stropping works. In the context of this discussion, the real question is why. I contend that it is all due to the abrasives involved. Whether plain leather or charged strops, the abrasives are doing the work. Or so I believe. In no case are we distorting or actually smearing molecules on the atomic scale.

If you have read my other stuff you will know that I am a stickler when it comesto defining terms. I may seem to be a PIA, but I think that the best way to start a meaningful dialog is to make sure everyone is on the same page…

Imagine that…:silly:[/quote]

I can agree with this. I’m no physicist, but what logical side I have (and you’re persuasiveness) sways me.

[Jacob Wilson]

I’ve read most of the controversy between burnishing or not burnishing on the various threads here. I’ve always been under the impression that the stiction of leather is enough to pull molecules.

However, I’ve always been at war with myself. Logically, burnishing with leather makes absolutely no sense to me. However, being what I’ve always known about stropping, it isn’t so easy to just switch to the other side of the issue. I still haven’t seen very adequate proof to prove the point either way (although some of Clay’s pictures do seem to show metal that has ‘smeared’ or ‘collapsed’ into itself or it’s valleys). The jury is still out on the matter for me, and in the meantime I feel pulled both ways.

[Jacob Wilson]

Thanks for your response. I look forward to trying them both.

[Jacob Wilson]

WOW! Just spent 2 hours reading through this thread. My mind is blown.

I had some thoughts/requests. I’m no expert by any means. Just learning and thinking.

I’d love to see some updated pictures of the results of Roo & Nano with the added magnification. It seemed that at 510x the steel was so smooth. I’m wondering what the abrasions look like under 2000x+ magnification and how smooth the steel really is.

I was also wondering if the backing of certain leathers produce different results. Since the regular cow strops are composed of thicker slices than the Roo, could the ‘give’ of the cow leather produce different sorts of abrasion or burnishing than the thinly sliced Roo on aluminum? I would think the toughness of thin Roo on aluminum backing would create a much different ‘scratch’ or ‘smear’ than cow with give. It’d be interesting to see samples of thinly sliced cow on aluminum backing up against Roo on the same. Maybe the give of the cow leather allows the inherent abrasive quality of the media to be more present, while the stiffness of Roo allows the diamonds to do most the work.

[Jacob Wilson]

Photos will be provided. Ordered the set up on Thursday. Not sure how long estimated shipping is. Not worried about it though.

[Jacob Wilson]

You’ve asked some great questions. I’m sure some of the answer is cost… the regular leather is not as expensive. Plus, there’s a question of whether you’d benefit from using “coarser” abrasives on the nano cloth or ‘Roo strops. One advantage you would have though is consistency. The ‘Roo and nano cloths are thinner too, which means less chance of “rounding” the edge.

Don’t know what your goals are, but one thing to consider is going “too fine too soon”. You’ll improve the edge going to the 1/.5 pastes, but you probably won’t polish out the marks of the coarser stones or ceramics. Just thought I’d mention it…. again, it depends on what you want.

Hope others chime in on some of this.

Thanks! I’m not too worried about cost. I’m going to take my time acquiring things.

My plan is to add Micro Ceramics and Chosera later on before I go all the way with the strops–I just want to get things straight in my head. I want to maintain as much of a V-edge as I can, so I’ll probably stick with Roo and Nano. Roo for the coarser stuff where the natural grit won’t have an affect and Nano for the crazy sprays.

[Jacob Wilson]

When I get my blank platens in I’m gonna fashion some up at work. I’ll let ya know how they come out.

[Jacob Wilson]

It’s just a personal thing, but I’d prefer to finish with leather strops with no diamonds on it, just neatsfoot oil rubbed in, as the barbers used to use to strop their straight razors. The burnishing effect that leather has on a metal bevel is not replicated by any man-made synthetic substance. But I’m not necessarily suggesting that for you, as I haven’t used the nano cloth myself.

Right! That’s a good point. Forgot about burnishing. With just the Nano, all you’d get is a grit scratch pattern, whereas with Leather you’ll get the pattern plus the smearing of molecules. That probably explains why Clay’s microscope pictures of balsa vs leather favored the leather much more. Thanks!

[Jacob Wilson]

I guess the real question I’m trying to get at is the functional difference between certain media.

It’s seems obvious that Nano Cloth is good for sub micron grits because the media has no grit quality–unlike another media which might have an inherent grit quality very close to the minuscule micron sprays. But Nano Cloth, for the same reasons, would work GREAT with larger grit sizes. Why would one choose Roo over Nano? Why would I choose basic leather over Roo?

There is the small difference in toughness of the media resulting in convexing edges. But other than that, what’s the logic behind not buying all Nano-Cloth or all Roo and loading the different compounds on the same media?

The only other explanation I can think of is the progression of technology resulting in new products that stand beside existing products. Basic leather is trumped by balsa which is trumped by Roo which is trumped by Nano–but all are still sold together.

Thoughts?

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