Hi Guys,
Ive got ceramic stones down to 0.6um what film grit should I go in at after the ceramics? They are expensive over here so I don’t want to buy them unnecessarily!
Thanks
Unless you’re focused on mirror-polished bevels, I don’t think you really need to go further than that. Those of us who are obsessed with the process seem to drift eventually to film-only, replacing the ceramic grits with film. The ceramics work very well, but the film produces more uniform results - at a substantial cost. In most instances, I will progress from 400 to 1000, then go to 6 micron and 3 micron films. It takes a very discerning eye to see the difference between a 3 micron polish and a 0.5 micron polish.
Gents, sorry for posting in a slightly unrelated subject in this topic, but again I cannot post new topics on this forum. The “captcha” option is missing when I try to post.
Until recently the only way in removing metal from an edge above, say 1600 grit, was to use a strop with a compound (or to use whet stones).
However, the diamond films have changed all that. Not only that: they are very efficient and consistent in removing material. So, to be honest, recently I have only used diamond films up to .5 mu (and sometimes .1 mu) for this purpose. I haven’t used strops for this purpose anymore. I do use strops <= .5 mu , but I don’t go this fine very often.
My question is: am I missing out something now? For example, the “old” WE pastes has a burnishing power that helped very well in creating mirror edges. Do the new pastes have the same property? Moreover, many of the mirror edges I see published here and elsewhere (for example, Clays’s recent post) still use strops and no diamond films. Am I missing something - are strops effective in ways diamond films are not? - or is this just tradition?
And oops, the diamond films seem to have disappeared from the site. An error or are they not available anymore?
I cant help you with your technical questions simply because Ive never used diamond film but they are still available on the site.
https://www.wickededgeusa.com/product-category/lapping-films/
Great question Mark! I’d be interested to know if stropping with a paste will produce a finer edge than diamond film on a hard platen. I don’t know if there was an “old” WE paste before it became diamond paste. So far as I know, it’s always been diamond paste.
I checked with my browser (Chrome) and I find that there is a second pull-down menu “Lapping films” under the “Accessories” menu.
I also see that there is no Captcha entry required - maybe after you’ve logged on? Or after you’ve cleared it once?
Thanks, I was mistaken…
Test
You’re right, Tom, it seems the captcha is gone (I did get an error this morning when I didn’t enter a captcha, but now I don’t.) Hopefully it’s for good, but it stays when somebody applies for the forum - which was the original intention, to reduce the amount of spammers. Hurray! I don’t know who to thank, but I suspect Clay and Chris. Thanks guys!
I haven’t found a method yet to properly compare stropping to metal removal with diamond films. I did however do an experiment in which I completely reprofiled an edge, then used all other diamond stones and all appropriate diamond films. I.e. 100 grit stones, 200 grit, 400 grit, 800 grit, 1000 grit, 1500 grit, 6 mu diamond film, 3 mu diamond film, 1.5 mu diamond film, 1 mu diamond film, 0.5 mu and 0.1 mu diamond film, but no strops.
The result looks quite like a mirror edge:
