I’m pretty new to WE and I have a gen 4 pro. I’ve sharpened about 15 knives so far, and I have these relatively cheap steak knives from Wolfgang puck that seems to be chipped after sharpening. They had never been sharpened before, so I spent a good amount of time with the 100, trying to get rid of all of the imperfections. I looked it over really well before going through the progression and now I see tiny chips along the apex. Is this a sign of the stones not being broken in enough?
Thank you for your reply.
Hi Folks… First time I’ve stopped in here in quite a while and the first thread I checked is an old topic that has popped up a number of times and it’s one that I had to deal with a long time ago.
Chipped edges with relatively new stones is the key here. I had it happen several times and always with fairly new stones and blades with particularly hard edges. For me, the main example is my Spyderco Delica in ZDP-189, which was supposedly hardened to 64-67 HRc. It showed some nasty chips after going thru my 800 grit stage. Examination revealed that I had a couple of clusters of diamonds that sat proud of the normal surface. A few clusters were rather long and oriented in the long direction of the stones. The result was that those particular clusters were highly resistant to the normal process of breaking free from the base layer of diamonds. Understand that the diamond particles are attached with a nickel plating process.
When those clusters hit the hard, thin edge of a blade and at low angles, they tended to tear pieces of the edge free. Ouch!
The answer for me was to finish the break-in process before subjecting a fragile edge to such brutality. I found a piece of glass to mount in the blade vise and then dragged the offending stones across the edge of the glass until the nasty clusters were gone. It only took a dozen or so strokes to finish the break-in process.
One bit of wisdom to learn is to avoid using the very low grits around fragile edges. I only use grits 200 and lower if I’m reprofiling a fairly thick edge. Even then, I carefully watch the progress of the coarse stones and try to never let them cross the apex line of the edge.
Here’s a photo of a cluster: I’m not sure, but I think this is of the offending 800 grit stone
I have shared tcmeyer’s experience with rough diamond plated clusters… That is a real issue we do see from time to time with plated diamond stones. The clusters are generally, easily knocked off without any damage to the plate.
I believe if that was Gene’s issue he would have noticed the same chipping effect previously, while practicing on the 15 knives he already sharpened??
This is true Marc, my EDC does not have these chips in the apex, nor does my friends gerber that I offered to sharpen for him. Since these steak knives are possibly crap stainless steel, do you think it would benefit to start with a higher grit such as tcmeyer is suggesting?
Tcmeyer, thanks for your reply! Is there a certain type of glass that you are talking about? Dumb question, but wouldn’t it crack when being clamped by the vise?
It’s hard to say…It also may depend on how acute or obtuse the applied angle is? It’d be hard to say without actually doing the sharpening myself and looking at my results.
I try to work with the least coarse diamond stones for any job, that will get it done, without unnecessary effort and wasted time. I believe too many people work with coarser stones than are really needed for most jobs.
About the glass…plate glass is pretty tough. Put something between the flat vise jaws and the glass and clamp on it, securely. Glass is solid and remarkable strong. I’ve done the same thing using a small piece of steel plate, (cold rolled). I only needed to knock off high spots one time in 8 years using W.E. stones.
Being they are inexpensive knives they may have inclusion within the steel… if you have a jewelers loop take a look at the chips.. some of us use an inexpensive USB microscope to monitor the edge as we sharpen and that makes seeing the damage rather easy.
Any piece of standard glass will work, including that of a dollar store picture frame.
You can usually feel the clusters as you move the stones thru their length. I could always pinpoint the general location of the clusters and then look for them with the USB microscope. When trying to knock the clusters off. I could always tell when I suddenly would notice that the “grit” seemed smooth throughout the length of the stroke.
I used glass I had bought for use with diamond film. It was thicker than single-strength glass - about 0.243" or 0.246" as I recall. I never had any problems clamping that glass in either the Gen 1 or Gen 3 vises. Yes, you can clamp it with chamois or even a paper towel if that suits you.
Moving the stone over the edge of the glass produced a very noticeable pattern of feedback. A cluster will produce a very pronounced “bump” as it moves over the edge. It’s a whoa-ho! moment.
I break-in stones on chisels or blades that need to be reprofiled. My hope is to get rid of diamond clusters when they won’t do much damage to the finished edge. I would notice chips in the edge of blades with bad steel myself. Good steel will also leave a decent burr, but the burr on bad steel will kinda crumble off of the edge. I bought some steel hardness testing files that work pretty good so that I can get an idea of the hardness of a blade before I decide to sharpen it.