Robert Borowski

[Robert Borowski]

Thanks mark76 that’s very nice of you!

Geo,
It made of wooden trim base board or molding actually. Haha taper side up. Yes the groove are pretty helpful I think and was all done with a dremel drill. It started out at small groove then lead to this after a little slip of the hand and some crafty thinking. I mounted it with straight 2 hole brackets on the sides, I did make pilot holes to make sure nothing splintered and I knew the base would be tough to drill into without pilot holes.

I know, I was surprised how close the blue matched it was my intention but it turned out better than I thought. Its krylon brand spray paint, statin finish, color was Oxford blue! Yep spray paint, it was the best match I would find so it’s what I decided to use.

And I agree the blue is the hallmark color and is why I wanted to match it!

[Robert Borowski]

Perfect solution bc I already own the micro fine ceramics! great thought!

[Robert Borowski]

It seems like the default answer is “It depends…” and this case is no exception. It depends on what you’re hoping to accomplish. The roo will give you a much smoother, more polished bevel, so if that’s what you’re after, then it’s the right choice, hands down. If you specifically want .125um micro-teeth at the edge, then you would be better off with the nano-cloth.

Thanks Clay! Good question one I am not sure I can decide ha!. I like a toothy edge at the apex but I want the beautiful mirror polish on the bevel as well. Is that possible with the nano cloths?

[Robert Borowski]

Hey guys before anyone orders these you really should check to see if their currents arm bar is in spec.

To do this just look from the front so you are looking at the sides with the holes. You know you will need a new bar if you see a belly under the bar pointing toward the wood or whatever you have it mounted on.
Good luck!

This is very obvious in M0DiFiEDZ new YouTube video he released yesterday.

“Installing the New Wicked Edge Ball Joint Arms”

Here is a pic from that.[/quote]

Good shot, I didn’t see the vid but that pictures shows it really well. Like I said check yours before your order!

[Robert Borowski]

Hey guys before anyone orders these you really should check to see if their currents arm bar is in spec.

To do this just look from the front so you are looking at the sides with the holes. You know you will need a new bar if you see a belly under the bar pointing toward the wood or whatever you have it mounted on. It appears that when the holes were pressed it pushed the metal out toward the bottom side of the bar. The new arms will not slide past this protrusion!

If you see this when you call WE to order make sure you tell them and ask for them to send a new bar.

Just trying to prevent another disappointing new toy unboxing!

Good luck!

[Robert Borowski]

rlbote=”wickededge” post=4466]Rlb – we got your package in today and tested them out. The new arms are just fine, it was the bar that was out of spec. We’re sending the parts back to you today with a new bar that we’ve tested.

so I just got the new arms today and I was super excited about them. However I have a problem. The new arms do not fit on the alignment bar. They get about half way through and stop. Then I try it from the other end and again it gets half way before it meets resistence again. Well I tried to force it on thinking it just may have had a little left over metal left on there from machining. Well not have have one jammed on the alignment bar.

Anybody have this problem. I will call WE tomorrow but I was hoping I was doing something dumb.

[/quote]

Hey clay,
Got the package yesterday and everything fits. Pretty sweet! Thanks for taking care of it for me!!

[Robert Borowski]

so I just got the new arms today and I was super excited about them. However I have a problem. The new arms do not fit on the alignment bar. They get about half way through and stop. Then I try it from the other end and again it gets half way before it meets resistence again. Well I tried to force it on thinking it just may have had a little left over metal left on there from machining. Well not have have one jammed on the alignment bar.

Anybody have this problem. I will call WE tomorrow but I was hoping I was doing something dumb.

[Robert Borowski]

Thanks clay!! I did just that and will have the by the end of the week. Let it be known I admire your ingenuity and progressive thinking. I certainly appreciate the product you have created, developed, and improved. Your time, effort, and passion have not gone unnoted. My redemption is making more Wicked-edge heads out there, (I have already converted 3)

Thanks again!!

[Robert Borowski]

I thought the effect was more logarithmic and therefore the factor becomes very significant across the range of say: 56RC to 61RC.

Hardness itself would have a linear change, however if the microstructure changes then the effect would not be linear with hardness. The problem is that too much is attributed to hardness when it only measures one thing which is the resistance of the steel to compression on a fairly large scale. For example 1095 and D2 at 60 HRC have the same hardness but they do not wear at all the same as the microstructure is completely different.

As manufacturers do not say exactly how they HT their steels everyone ends up guessing which is made complicated because the reported properties are from a user group which tends to be fairly biased and you can get large sheep like tendencies as there are no blind/controls being used so a lot of care has to be taken. I am not saying that the choices Reeve makes are optimal, but I would take care in heavy extrapolation from the user reports.

The question that needs to be asked is why exactly are Reeve’s knives slightly softer as there are many ways that they could be that way and all will produce different micro structures. For example he could simply reduce the soak temperature, put less carbon in solution. This will end up with a perfectly fine blade but it will suffer corrosion issues because the soak was not hot enough to get the chromium in solution. In general Reeve doesn’t have common reports of easy corrosion (relative) so I don’t think this is the case.

He could be doing a simple air quench (not oil or positive pressure) and no below room temperature quench and if he did this then the micro-structure would be adversely effected as instead of the ideal which is martensite with less than 5% retained austenite he would have other primary structures and a much higher fraction of retained austenite and possibly even embrittlement. If he is doing this then you could see effects beyond what you would expect from the small change in hardness.

I have seen the reports where people have had blades rehardened and they report excellent results, however I am always very leery of such reports as again that could just be expectation bias. As what you are doing is fairly quantitative and not overly influenced by subjectivity I am interested in your results. I would like to see, if you have the time/inclination if you would see a different relative performance if the edge was finished with a high and low polish.

If the Sebenza has a lower relative ability to hold the low grit finish it is a fairly strong indication of a micro-structure issue as the teeth are approaching the size of the micro-structure (micron scale).[/quote]

Sorry I had a interesting week to say the least so I have a bit of catching up to do on this thread.

Just curious do you have data for the linear changes of performance with hardness? I would assume some variation between different steels as well which would muddy the picture. If this was the case and microstructure was more indicative of performance or retention I would be willing to ascertain that hardness may have a congruent relationship with microstructure and retention. Although maybe not. So to say it is a good indicator of retention seems like it is to be determined still.

Even with a linear relationship there would be no question what knife I would choose if I was presented with two knives, one had 3x better retention!

I agree with the bias statement, but without properly reported methods and lack of generated data it is hard to avoid. Consider a phase II drug trail where x many patients are given a new drug and are observed for adverse reactions. Study participants will talk to each and generate a similar type of bias. It may even statistical significance. My point is that bias occur and are sometimes unavoidable but then again thats what statistically analysis is for right?! haha that was definitely a joke!

Back to the knife at hand. I agree that it’s a burr problem but I just don’t think it was made from sharpening. I know I formed an apex/burr and I felt. No, I did not feel a burr after the ceramic and I did not mean I felt a burr after it stop slicing, haha that would be ridiculous. What I meant by that was that I know that I apexed the edge and formed a burr on the lower grits.

Also for clarification, I have high standards and when I say it stopped slicing after 10 slices it still would but I actually had to move the blade as compared to just blowing right through it. I may have been a little histrionic! ha However when it was sharpened up the the 0.6micron ceramics and stropped down to 0.25 I expected a lot.

Anyway, interesting thread, Thanks guys! This is why I posted it here instead of the CRK forums on BF where I would have been eaten alive! (Disclaimer I am a CRK fan just not a fan boy!)

[Robert Borowski]

I can’t speak to the steel quality, but an edge that fails after only a few paper slices means that it still has a burr. When converting a convex edge to a straight edge… it’s tricky reaching the very edge… if for example, you mark it with a sharpie, it may look like it’s all gone, but if you look at it under magnification, there can be the tiniest line still visible. There’s a video that talks about this…

My suggestion would be to start from around the 400g stone, thru to whatever you want to finish at, and make sure that you have a good clean edge established. If it still fails, then you could add a small microbevel at a higher angle (I’d do it with the ceramics or finest stone you have), just a few very light alternating strokes to ensure the edge is burr free, and strengthen it a bit.

Clay also did a video sharpening a Sebenza (but he returned it to a convex shape)…

There seems to be a lot of “problem sharpening Sebenza” threads and videos… switching a convex to a flat grind usually causes this. It doesn’t have anything to do with one grind being stronger or better than the other… it’s just a matter of getting to the very edge.

Let us know how it goes!

Thanks for the reply. Good thinking and I wish it was that easy. I don’t want to say I am a master with the wicked edge but I feel comfortable enough with it to be pretty sure I have made and the smoothed out the burr. I do the sharpie trick and more so I trust my finger to feel when the burr has been created. This one had the factory convex edge Which was uneven and not consistent so in re profiling I had to be sure I got a burr along the whole blade and checked it more than I typically do while going through the progression. Thanks for the reply I appreciate the brainstorming.

Yeah I might try the convex edge next. I have seen the vid and no did it on my zaan which did a little better I think. Its m y next step. I wi ll keep everyone posted for future references.

Thanks!

[Robert Borowski]

Thanks Dan, unfortunately this was one of my theories,I mean 58-59 RC is a little soft for me too. It’s also why I didn’t posted in on the CRK forum of the blade forums haha. Trust me a love CRK when it comes to quality but this isnt the first time I have experienced this so I thought I’ d post it to see if I was just doing something incorrectly. Seems like you speak from experience…have you owned a s30v CRK heat treated to their standard 58 to 59? Any better?

I have heard of guys who will heat treat a sebenza blade but I am not sure I want to do that with all my CRKs. Maybe a convex edge will do better. I did it with um umnumzaan and it’s held up a little better I think. .

[Robert Borowski]

Nice pictures. I tired something similar on my milie when i had a similar problem and got good results. great reference! Thanks!

[Robert Borowski]

Mine is 00003019. DO you have stock of them or do we have to wait untill your receive more from the company?

[Robert Borowski]

HMMMMMMMMMMM… I really haven’t paid much attention to the order dates since I’ve been waiting for my ceramic stones, however, I looked back this morning and my order date is February 16th, still no stones. I received the 800/100 stones almost 3 weeks ago, which were ordered the same date.

I am in the same situation, I ordered by a while too and still have not received anything. I too order them with other products which were fulfilled. Here lies the problem I bet. Maybe everyone that just order the paddles got them and those who order more have not bc the system sees the order as completed. Who knows. I tried to call wicked edge and I also email them about it over the weekend. They havent got back to be through email and no answer when I called. We shall see! I really hope I don’t have to wait for another shippment though..

[Robert Borowski]

We just got word that the ceramic stones should be shipping to us tomorrow so we’ll hopefully have them by the end of the week.

Thats great news!

My question is: Is the initial shippment large enough to fufill all the standing orders or will some people need to wait for the next shippment before their stones are sent to them? I know there a a pretty big waiting list and I was just wondering how large the initial shippment would be compared to that.

Thsnks for the update,

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