Ken Schwartz

[Ken Schwartz]

Leo, THANK YOU for the warm welcome. Anything I can do to help you or any forum members – just ask.

As most people who know me will attest, I can chat about sharpening all day long.

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

I’ll send you some samples in the next box I send out to you – very soon 🙂 Both nanocloth and Kangaroo.

I’ll be pleased to watch the results you get.

It’s a real treat to see you striving to push the limits of your device with your own product evaluations. Kudos to you!

And of course, my compliments to your good taste in compounds 🙂

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Magnesia based stones like the Choceras should NOT be soaked for prolonged periods, or like any stone dried in sunlight or be subjected to extreme temp changes. But soaking them for 5 or so minutes is fine. No soaking will cause the stones to go dry constantly and you will get metal swarf buildup on your stones and they won’t perform up to their potential. In other words don’t run them so dry so that the surface doesn’t stay wet for reasonable periods of time without refreshing them. First time use stones will require more water than later on, even after complete drying.

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Like any kind of stropping, aside from touching up the edge, it is also slowly convexing the edge. So eventually that bevel will change its shape to the convex shape we know and love. Nothing wrong with that! But if you want, it is but a few minutes work on the WEPS to get a nice sharp shoulder with the attendant bevel. Sweet!

Leo

Well you could use the strop mounted on the paddle to freehand sharpen as well, but as LEO points out, stropping on the WEPS will give you greater precision and less rounding of the edge over time. Precision stropping is especially advantageous if you are using several levels of refinement (grits) stropping as opposed to just your final strop. Of course, the compounds you use for stropping on the WEPS can be applied to bench sized strops as well. And the cheap compounds could be used on the WEPS too (not that I would recommend that, but I’m biased 🙂 )

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Hope you enjoy the music 🙂

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

“You can actually get diamond papers down to 0.10 micron Ken Schwartz has them for the edge pro, and I’m sure he can put them on the Wicked Edge. I’ve actually got the whole product line coming in the mail to me as we speak, but not on the WEPS.”

Be glad to 🙂 Going from a 165 micron extra heavy duty diamond film to 0.1 microns in a series of steps (165, 125, 74, 45, 30 20 15 9 6 3 1 0.5 and 0.1 microns) I also have them in a bench hone size 3×8″ too. I can mount them flush to a WEPS blank or put a slab of glass inbetween to raise the surface to the height of a sharpening stone (1/4 or 1/8 inch thickness).

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Thanks for all the nice info Mark76. Something comes to mind as well. The Dry stones seem to chip pieces off the edge, whereas the waterstones seem to give a much smoother finish. This could be because it is using water as a lubricant and thus there is slightly less friction on the metal surface. Perhaps the liquid in the diamond pastes and others is not water and could be more oil based to help form the suspension. Maybe a slightly higher viscosity liquid to help keep the particles in suspension.

Not sure if the more experienced guys have used oil instead of water. Car engine oil comes to mind as that comes under alot of heat and friction. Not sure what that would do to the stones but on the wood and leather strops should be ok. Also Ceramics is used in some modified car engines so I think that could also be ok.

I would stick to the leather and some oil and see how that works. Maybe edible oil would be better for the kitchen knives and engine oil for the EDC/working knives. One can always wash the knives after the Oil strop with dishwashing soap.

There are various ways of putting abrasive particles in a liquid or paste preparation. Personally I use three methods.

For tiny particles, the particles ‘float around’ and sink very slowly so a simple preparation is adequate and IMO preferred. I find, as a practical matter that particles below 4 microns ( about 4000 grit stay suspended quite nicely with just a quick shake after settling, so my CBN and diamond products are simply put in deionized water. Why deionized? Well if there are charged particles or ions in the water the electrostatic forces on small particles will cause them to clump or agglomorate, effectively acting like larger coarser particles and you get scratches from these large particles.

For larger particles, I prefer to keep them suspended. Suspensions are a copmplex topic in their own right. Roughly there are aqueous (water soluble) suspensions and oil or lipid based suspensions. A good suspension won’t separate into it’s subcomponents and a bad one will. I have observed bottles of my coarser CBN suspensions, with particle sizes as large as 80 miorons not settle at all for more than 6 months at a time sitting on a shelf.

In some instances you might want an oil type suspension. These should be kept away from waterstone, specifically synthetic Japanese stones and only in the rarest of instances on a select few natural stones should they be used. I tend to avoid their use in many instances BUT they are superb to use on leather sharpening belts and other motorized sharpening applications.e For use on strops they are also fine, BUT one should avoid cross contamonating stones with a blad that has some residual paste on it. I have the CBN available in a paste formulation going from as fine as tenth micron to as coarse as 180 microns (about 80 grit). The paste is optimized to spread easily, conditions the leather and sticks well to leather. I prefer to dab a bit on and spread it with either a disposable glove and or a butter knife (one you haven’t sharpened 🙂 You know who you are ). Pastes can range in viscosity from a thin oil to a thick waxy stick. I’ve had multiple levels of viscosity that I tested until I came up with what I liked to get something that gives me a pretty uniform spread without applying a hugh amount of it.

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

“It is confusing, because a lot of people say they work with “green paste” or “red paste”. Green paste often contains chromium oxide with a grit size of 0.5 micron (although I also encountered chromium oxide with a grit size of 3 microns ) ”

Chromium oxide (CRO) is not as precisely specified as good diamond and CBN products. It is a dual use product and is often used as a pigment in paints where precise grit specification is not at all critical. Sometimes this same stuff is used for honing (sharpening/ stropping). Because it is so much cheaper than diamond and CBN, it like aluminum oxide is a commodity product usually purchased in coarser amounts than individual carat weight (grams to tons)

I have tested various CRO products specified as being as fine as 60 nanometer (0.060 microns) particles and 0.3 microns (300 nanometers) and found horrific discrepancies from their advertised sizes, some having mean particle sizes well in excess of several microns and with very broad variances and various contaminants. If you wish to use CRO, I would strongly recommend you not using the powdered form, but rather get it already formulated in a paste or slurry formulation from a reputable vendor. The powder is a serious irritant to eyes and respiratory system (lungs, etc) and I wouldn’t work with it without a hood and a respirator for fine particulates.

I’m not a big fan of green sticks which usually contain low grade CRO that are loosely specified grit sizes, plus other abrasives (contaminants).

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

“I forgot where I read it, but a nice method to make your own stropping compounds is to collect the slurry from your whetstones, put it on some paper and let it dry. The micron size of the particles in the compound should be equal to or less than that of the grit size of the stone.”

That would probably be me 🙂 I’ve been using stones, both natural and synthetic as a source of stropping compound for years, using paper originally and balsa later as a substrate. I harvest various forms of stone slurry, derrived from flattening or surface conditioning stones with diamond plates of various levels of fineness, typically from 120 to 1200 grit. In some instances, primarily with natural stones, I also harvest swarf produced from sharpening activity which includes both the metal slurry and the metal swarf. In some instances the metal swarf forms a useful component for example swarf from a clad knife. It is a dry technique and is quite useful.

Lately I’ve extended the technique to incorporating CBN, Diamond and most recently Alumina suspensions, all in a water soluble medium, in stone abrasive slurries and using this hybrid slurry in a similar manner to straight stone only slurries.

At this point I have both a paper and Balsa slurry ‘library’ that I’ve collected over the years.

One interesting ‘trick’ in using these slurries is that, in addition to usually getting a finer finish than the original stone, by applying paper under various supporting structures from glass to neoprene, you can control the ‘hardness’ of the stone. So for instance, you could take the swarf from a 30K Shapton and put it, dried on paper, over a piece of neoprene / mouse pad and make a ‘soft’ 30k Shapton surface for a convex edge. Or take a soft natural stone like a Hakka Tomae or Monzen Aoto and, using this technique, put the dried mud on paper over glass to produce a hard Hakka stone effect, making the surface suitable for a straight razor which usually prefers a harder stone. You could also take a natural stone like a Shinden suita, which has pores or ‘su’ that clog and use the swarf rather than the stone directly, eliminating the clogging issue entirely. And so on.

Collecting these various swarfs on balsa for the WEPS would be a fun sub-hobby in itself 🙂

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Ken,

Thank you so much for your input! I too really appreciate an owner of his business who gets involved in the furthering of his products… rock on Clay! And I also want to thank everyone else who has contributed (especially Tom)… all the info posted has been very helpful.

So Ken, where would one get this “kangaroo leather” for the WEPS paddles? And what about the nanocloth? I am very interested in looking into that… please post a website if Clay is good w/ it =) Thanks

For now, you can contact me directly – (ksskss at earthlink dot net). In time, if Clay likes it, you can get it from him directly.

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Ralph,

Thank you for the second chance! 🙂 I’ll earn it. I do want you and anyone else reading this thread to know that I strongly support my (and Tom’s) products and the WEPS platform.

I hope you won’t mind me stuffing the return package with one of the new products I have in development for the WEPS for you to try out. I know you will give me your opinion 🙂

Tom, you’re right – this is one classy joint! I’ll have to hang out here more often.

I like happy endings and really appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Here’s to putting a big smile on your face. Seeing WEPS users not using Shaptons would break Tom’s heart and we can’t have that 🙂

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

What a fascinating thread! I should have joined in much sooner. The quality of the micrographs are stunningly clear.

So a couple of points.

There is a relationship between the edge of the edge and the scratch patterns on the bevels so it is useful to evaluate these scratches, but ultimately it is how these scratches intersect with the edge of the edge. And as Tom has pointed out in previous work, these scratches intersecting the edge of the edge are often points of failure, either chipping during sharpening or during blade usage.

I feel like we are seeing two primary effects – a sort of contmination AND a revealing of underlying scratch patterns from coarser grits.

The latter is more straightforward, so I’ll discuss it first. When a finer compound / stone/ plate is used, the predominant effect is the elimination of the more superficial scratches first, leaving the larger ones remaining, with enhanced contrast from it’s surroundings which have become ‘shinier’ due to a higher finish.

Now this is a critical point. The deeper scratches from the previus grit should be eliminated at this time, not allowed to remain as artifacts for yet the next fioner grit, which will have a more difficult time eliminating these deeper scratches. This is the ideal approach. It does have it’s drawbacks, however in that this usually will require that you keep on sharpening even past the point of getting a sharp edge. More labor and time, but for these levels of study, pretty mandatory.

In some of the photographs, scratches appear but it becomes more challenging to discern scratches being revealed vs new scratches being created. You can see some deeper scratches remaining through a couple of grits. ALL scratches should be removed so that the only scratches present are all in one direction and of the same depth – that of the stone / abrasive being used. This is a lot more work.

Then any new scratches can more clearly be attributed to the new abrasive surface and the chances of hidden scratches significantly reduced or eliminated. With finer jumps in grit size this further eliminates these ‘rogue wave’ scratches.

So next is grit contamination. There are several sources possible and more than one may be present. There is the compound itself. It may be poorly formulated with contaminants or poor quality control or contaminated from ‘user error’. Then it may become contaminated from airborne contaminants. For cosarse grits this is pretty unimportant, but it isn’t at all unusual to have airborne particles several microns or tens of microns in size floating around. For this reason, stropping surfaces should be in their own individual baggies and ideally even cross contamination between two abrasive surfaces on a paddle minimized. Then there is metal contamination. Burrs from a previous sharpening can easily cause hugh scratches, either embedding themselves in leather or other strop or be floating around in stone slurries.

Then there is the substrate itself. Balsa does have some abrasive properties. So do papers, both of which can have particles embedded in it, typically clay particles from the water used in the manufacturing process of paper for instance or from particulates the tree is exposed to in its life as a tree.

Leather naturally has abrasive content itself. These silicates aren’t particularly hard but are hard enough to scratch metal. And random in size over a range as it is a natiural product. This is why leather is an abrasive surface and along with it’s draw is used to refine edges. One of the finest leathers that still has a good deal of draw to it is Kangaroo leather. For coarser compounds, you won’t notice the extra refinement, but as one decends into the submicron particles, these errant scratches and so forth become more apparent as a problem and show up as random scratches, which I believe is some of what I am seeing. I am quite comfortable in firmly stating that both my products (eg the 0.125 micron CBN, etc) and the Hand American products are some of the cleanest stuff you can buy, so I strongly suspect other sources of contamination.

In addition to the Kangaroo leather which provides an extremely smooth substrate, I also carry another product which is available for the WEPS platform – Nanocloth.

What does Nanocloth do? NOTHING. Why would you want something that does nothing? To precisely address this problem.

If you strop an edge on nanocloth, NOTHING happens. No metal swarf appears at all. It has NO effect on your edge or as close to no effect as anything I’ve seen. BUT, if you spray, in the extreme, some 25 nanometer (0.025 micron) polycrystalline diamond on it – a very light coating, what you get when you use it as a strop is deposits of fine metal swarf.

The effect of using this nanocloth is a ‘pure’ compound effect. NOT a mixture of compound plus substrate effect.

So for instance, in the picture when the 0.125 micron CBN was being used and a number of errant deep scratches were produced, if nanocloth was used instead of leather, I would be quite surprised to see the introduction of all those errant scratches. Similarly so for some of the coarser compounds preceding it.

When you critically evaluate edges, it is so helpful to have a repeatable pure substrate to separate the effects of compounds from the underlying substrate.

And then there are scratch patterns from natural stones, which are a whole different ballgame, but that’s something for another thread.

It is a real treat to see such serious discussion of sharpening techniques and strategies among such knowledgable members. I hope that I can conribute to this on the forum in some small way.

In addition to Tom’s work, I really have to give a big thumbs up to Clay for designing a device that allows so many variables of sharpening to be eliminated that confuse and confound many ‘freehand sharpeners’, giving, in addition to being an excellent sharpening device, a device that allows the serious sharpener to explore the limits of techniques in such a profoundly clear manner. Combined with these micrograph, this platform represents an exciting level of sharpening research that I am quite proud to be able to be a part of.

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Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Hi Ralph,

I will ask Clay to return the stones you have purchased to me and get a new set to you that are PERFECTLY square as measured with a calipers to within a hundredth of an inch. I will, if you wish, photograph them so that you can be completely reassured that they will meet your expectations.

I would hate to see anyone deprived of using these excellent Shapton stones on your Wicked Edge 🙂
Just let me know if this is a satisfactory arrangement. I take customer satisfaction very seriously.

I do appreciate your comments and take them not as harsh but rather as constructive criticism. If there is a problem that someone brings to my attention, as you have, I can (and will) fix it. If someone ‘goes away’ and doesn’t let me know why, I can’t fix it. So simply, THANK YOU.

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Ken

Ken & Tom, Thanks for your replys. Your comments and insights are much appreciated. I had a pleasant conversation with Clay this morning and have decided to return the Shapton Stones. As indicated to Clay, I am very happy with everything received from WEPS to date with the exception of the Shapton Stones. Call me cheap, but for approximately $1,100, I expected consistent flat/square stones that are of the same level of quality of everything else that is provided by WEPS. Call me lazy, but I do not want to have to use the angle cube in between each pair of stones.

I indicated to Clay that when the QC improves on the Shaptons or I can be assured of flat/square stones, then I would gladly purchase them again.

I hope my comments have not been too harsh. I initially failed to fully appreciate the hand craftsmanship that goes into cutting these stones for the WE system.

Thanks again.

[Ken Schwartz]

Ralph,

If you would like for me to flatten these stones more precisely, please send them to me and I’ll be glad to do it.

Regards,
Ken

[Ken Schwartz]

Hi Ralph,

Clay asked Tom and I to respond. I think Tom did an excellent job responding, but I would like to add a few more comments too. And very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss this topic.

These Shapton stones are cut by hand as opposed to automated processes and I try my best to maintain precision in the cutting process, but inevitably error accumulation does creep in as any cabinetmaker or woodworker knows. You will usually find me walking around with a micrometer sticking out of my pocket.

First let me address the width issue of the stones. The whole Shapton stones are usually 17 mm thick, slightly less than the 3/4″ width of the blanks. On occasion, from cutting another shape from a stone, I can go to doing a cut in the opposite plane and getting a wider piece available, fully filling the 3/4″ blank. Rather than risk taking off the difference of 2mm (3/4 inch is 19 mm), I prefer to give the customer more stone than he paid for rather than less. So sometimes the stones will be wider. To me I prefer to err on the side of giving more stone.

Regarding stone thickness, there will be variations in the thickness. Sometimes a good bit. This does vary from day to day for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this discussion. If the variances are a lot (relatively speaking), I have to compensate for this by cutting the stones thicker, which significantly (negatively) affects my yield rates. And spending considerably more time getting the stone to within specification. Cutting a stone too thin yields a total loss, so I tend to ‘give’ extra.

As Tom mentioned earlier, the spec is for a 5-6 mm thick stone. As you can see in the pictures, the stones in the pictures significantly exceed that thickness. Even more significant height errors can occur from the blade angle being off by one degree. I am constantly calibrating these angles but ultimately need to fine adjust for this degree of skew by hand, lapping the stones individually.

This skew issue is one commonly seen by freehand sharpeners and EP users as well. Fortunately, in each of these instances, especially in the design of the Wicked Edge sharpener, the stone pivots freely and compensates for this small height variation. If not, even with flattening, enough stone should remain to meet the specification. Personally I would prefer a slight degree of skew and getting a lot more stone. The stone surface should be FLAT, but a slight degree of skew should not matter.

Regarding actual stone thickness, as Tom mentioned, as stones wear, the thickness variation should be taken into account and an angle cube is the tool for the job. You could lap all your stones to the same height constantly (NOT recommended), but since your 30k stone will wear VERY slowly compared to say a 320 grit stone, you really don’t want to just flatten and wash your 30k stone down the drain.

Flattening stones and adjusting skew is an inherent part of the sharpening process. As your stone wears down you will be making adjustments to keep your stones flat and control skew over the life of each stone.

I hope this is a reasonable explanation showing a bit of what goes into handcrafting these Shaptons for the WEPS machine and maintaining them over their lifespan.

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Ken

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