wickededge wrote:
The stock progression is definitely next. For the microscope positioning, I leave the scope in the stand. Then I tape photo paper to the bottom of the stand to add some extra light via reflection. I trace the knife’s outline on the paper so I can get it back in the same position every time.
I’m also having difficulty getting the scope back to the exact same position on the blade.
Clay, help.
[quote quote=“holymolar” post=2181]wickededge wrote:
The stock progression is definitely next. For the microscope positioning, I leave the scope in the stand. Then I tape photo paper to the bottom of the stand to add some extra light via reflection. I trace the knife’s outline on the paper so I can get it back in the same position every time.
I’m also having difficulty getting the scope back to the exact same position on the blade.
Clay, help.[/quote]
I’m sorry I forgot to shoot that picture today! The setup goes like this:
I tape some photo paper to the base of the microscope stand. Then I lay the knife down on its side, in a way that it rests naturally, bumping some portion of the knife up against the edge of the stand so that there is a natural stop in the heal-to-tip dimension. If adjust the knife side to side until I find the bevel in the scope and micro-adjust until it’s just where I want it. At that point I take a fine line pen and trace the outline of the knife as accurately as possible. I then tighten down all the adjustments on the scope stand so it doesn’t move. With that set up, I can take the knife out, sharpen it, put it back in the same spot. I just bump the knife back up to the edge of the stand, align the edges with the pen marks and it’s good to go.
I hope that helps explain it a little better.
I get it now..
I thought that the stand you were talking about was the WE clamp.
It is the base of the scope stand that you posted a picture of earlier.
I can see what you are talking about now. Not having that same stand, right now anyway, means that I can’t duplicate that method. I have been trying to use the scope on the knife blade still mounted in the WE clamp.
I am not as good at this as you (obviously), or at least haven’t yet figured it out, but I am not confident that I can get the blade back in the clamp precisely time after time. Especially with knives with a curved or sloped spine (Spyderco) it seems that there is room for error because of rocking on the depth gauge and my imprecision at getting the knife back in clamp in the same exact place between the pivot and tip, using the length gauge. This, of course will introduce errors in the way the stones hit the blade..
or so I believe.
Thanks for the explanation!
Phil
Thanks Clay,
I, too, was trying to use the scope while the knife was still in the WE vise - which just isn’t practical. Taking the knife out of the WE vise and placing it on the base of the scope stand is the only way that I can think of to do this.
Here are before and after photos using my smaller scope stand to mark the position of the knife blade on paper, etc. I tried it several times and it worked.
When returning the knife to the scope stand after sharpening, if I wasn’t exactly on the same spot on the blade, I was < 1 mm off. So it was easy enough to slightly move the blade to find the spot - as long as I had a landmark on the blade (such as a deep cut or something) to look for.
Drawing the blade outline with a lead pencil onto a post-it note stuck to the base of the scope stand
After removing the blade and showing the lead pencil outline of the blade
That looks perfect. Thank you for capturing and sharing it. Your edge has a nice gleam to it!
Clay, the samples are on the way 
Ken
[quote quote=“wickededge” post=2119][quote quote=“KenSchwartz” post=2118][quote quote=“razoredgeknives” post=2116]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[/quote]
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.
Ken[/quote]
You’d have to send me some samples :cheer:[/quote]
Got my Dino in!!! Will be posting pics soon of diff. grit strops on split grain (rough side out) cow hide leather strops…
Please do! Really interested!
This threat has become the host of many topics, but I would like to return to the initial question posed by Josh and the pictures posted by Tom. Tom’s pictures clearly showed that, although the WE diamond stropping pastes on leather strops did result in a very nice edge, the stropping pastes were much less abrasive than stones with diamond particles of comparable (micron) sizes; the stropping pastes produced only tiny scratches that were much smaller in size than the stones do.
I set out to see whether I could reproduce the results by Tom. I also wanted to test the hypothesis that the compounds on leather were not so abrasive because the diamond particles got hidden in the “valleys” of the leather (since leather is quite textured). To do so, I also stropped with the diamond pastes on balsa: diamond particles of 14 micron (or 3.5 micron, for that matter) cannot hide in the spaces between the filaments of the balsa.
I sharpened a knife up to 1000 grit with stones (and later 1600 grit) and then did 500 stropping strokes with 14 micron paste and 10 micron paste, both on leather and on balse. I took photographs at 50, 100, 250 and 500 stropping strokes. And I got sometimes very polished edges…
In fact, I did every experiment twice (with consistent results), since a new microscope stand came in with which I could make much better pictures when I was nearly done with the stropping.
my blogYou can find the complete story on .
But for those in for quick conclusions:
[ul]
[li]I was able to reproduce Tom’s results. The 14 micron and 10 micron diamond pastes produce scratches that are much smaller than one would expect on the basis of the grit comparison chart.[/li]
[li]This is not due to the diamond particles hiding in the leather. We see exactly the same tiny scratches when using these compounds on balsa.[/li]
[/ul]
So the mystery remains. How come these pastes are so little abrasive compared to the equivalent stones?
I would like to throw in a second mystery. As the above picture shows, the pastes are effective. How can pastes with so little abrasive power be so effectie?
[quote quote=“mark76” post=2387]This threat has become the host of many topics, but I would like to return to the initial question posed by Josh and the pictures posted by Tom. Tom’s pictures clearly showed that, although the WE diamond stropping pastes on leather strops did result in a very nice edge, the stropping pastes were much less abrasive than stones with diamond particles of comparable (micron) sizes; the stropping pastes produced only tiny scratches that were much smaller in size than the stones do.
I set out to see whether I could reproduce the results by Tom. I also wanted to test the hypothesis that the compounds on leather were not so abrasive because the diamond particles got hidden in the “valleys” of the leather (since leather is quite textured). To do so, I also stropped with the diamond pastes on balsa: diamond particles of 14 micron (or 3.5 micron, for that matter) cannot hide in the spaces between the filaments of the balsa.
I sharpened a knife up to 1000 grit with stones (and later 1600 grit) and then did 500 stropping strokes with 14 micron paste and 10 micron paste, both on leather and on balse. I took photographs at 50, 100, 250 and 500 stropping strokes. And I got sometimes very polished edges…
In fact, I did every experiment twice (with consistent results), since a new microscope stand came in with which I could make much better pictures when I was nearly done with the stropping.
my blogYou can find the complete story on .
But for those in for quick conclusions:
[ul]
[li]I was able to reproduce Tom’s results. The 14 micron and 10 micron diamond pastes produce scratches that are much smaller than one would expect on the basis of the grit comparison chart.[/li]
[li]This is not due to the diamond particles hiding in the leather. We see exactly the same tiny scratches when using these compounds on balsa.[/li]
[/ul]
So the mystery remains. How come these pastes are so little abrasive compared to the equivalent stones?
I would like to throw in a second mystery. As the above picture shows, the pastes are effective. How can pastes with so little abrasive power be so effectie?[/quote]
I can’t see your pictures, but love the write up. A next study step would be to go from the 1000 grit to plain leather w/ no compound to examine the burnishing effect. That way you could tell how much of what you’re seeing is the abrasive and how much is the substrate. My theory is that the burnishing effect of the leather is significant and is greatly improved by the added ‘stiction’ that the paste provides. Ideally, it would great to test an abrasive free paste on the leather. That sounds like a very fun experiment. I think the reason the diamonds are making such little scratches is two-fold - 1) The diamonds press equally into the leather as they do to the metal so you’re not getting a full value scratch 2) The numbers of diamonds on the strop may be significantly less than those on the stones.
[quote quote=“wickededge” post=2388]
I can’t see your pictures[/quote]
Oops! That was a caching problem. The pictures nicely showed up on my computer, but not on anyone else’s. Solved it. And here is the picture I wanted to show in my previous post in this thread. It is the edge of a knife after the 1000 grit stones and 500 stropping strokes with 10 micron paste on balsa.
My thoughts :D. Hopefully up tonight.
[quote quote=“wickededge” post=2388]
I can’t see your pictures, but love the write up. A next study step would be to go from the 1000 grit to plain leather w/ no compound to examine the burnishing effect. That way you could tell how much of what you’re seeing is the abrasive and how much is the substrate. My theory is that the burnishing effect of the leather is significant and is greatly improved by the added ‘stiction’ that the paste provides. Ideally, it would great to test an abrasive free paste on the leather. That sounds like a very fun experiment. I think the reason the diamonds are making such little scratches is two-fold - 1) The diamonds press equally into the leather as they do to the metal so you’re not getting a full value scratch 2) The numbers of diamonds on the strop may be significantly less than those on the stones.[/quote]
This is the exact reason why I am interested in the lapping film… it seems a lot of work (i.e. time) to get down to the sub micron level when you are truly erasing all the scratch pattern from the prior grit. It seems like the lapping film would work better because it would be grit on a hard backing… although this is just a theory. =) I would love to see some edge results with them down the the .1m size like Ken has. You should compare those vs. leather, Clay, to see which is most efficient and effective =).
photos of my straight razor edgeOk, so check it out… I got the uploaded and captioned properly (at the bottom of each photo). They were done w/ the Dino Lite (230x), sorry they’re not super great quality. For the sake of saving space on this thread, I have put them into a slide-show format on picasa web albums for you to view… I have put photo numbers at the beginning of each caption in parentheses for your critique =)
My observations are as follows:
It is a perfect transition to go from the 1600 ceramics to the 5k/10k choseras. You then need to go to the 3.5m pasted strops in order to effectively remove the scratches from the 10k.
When you re-strop your paddles w/ a new leather, make sure you account for differences in thickness of leather… this threw me off quite considerably. I re-stropped my 5/3.5m paddles w/ leather that is almost 1/4" thick. This is a huge difference from the 1/16-1/8th" thick stock WE leather. So when I transitioned from my thicker leathered strops (3m) to the thinner WE leather strops (1m) I was getting all the scratches out but not realizing it since I was only hitting the very edge of the edge w/ the thinner strops (since it changed my angle.)
The .5m Hand American spray seems to create larger scratches than the 1m Hand american spray, and not as consistant (for some reason… I shook the bottle before I used it, its weird) - your thoughts on this please? I may be wrong…
Anyway, I got it to pass the HHT on the entire edge, although I was only a quarter inch from the edge when holding the hair. Haven’t shaved w/ it yet, probably will tomorrow =). I only polished it down to .5 microns since I had spent all day on this project lol. Those choseras are sure sweet though!!! I’m loving them!
Great looking series - it looks very much like the results I got on the other post about stone progressions, very similar especially in playing around between 3.5 microns and .5 microns.
Clay, I updated the OP w/ page references for those that just want a quick run down.
yeah they do look very similar! It just seems like, to me, the .5 is leaving much deeper scratches than any of the others. And it is almost a “dual” scratch pattern… really weird!
Great pictures, Josh! They really show the power of the use of a microscope.
What I still find difficult while making these photographs is the lighting. I used the automatic lighting from my (Veho) microscope. It has got two levels, medium and high, and depending on the external lighting conditions I pick one. But, like in your pictures, a very smooth edge sometimes shows up almost completely white and sometimes quite dark.
What is worse, depending on the lighting, I may completely miss certain types of scratches. I have made photographs in which after 100 stropping strokes the edge seemed very smooth, whereas after 250 strokes a lot of scratches in a particular direction appeared. I first thought I had contaminated the strops, but closer examination of other photographs revealed that the scratches were there already after 100 strokes, but did not show up on the pictures. (I also wondered whether this was due to the deeper scratches getting revealed as the bevel gets more polished, an effect that Tom has described, but that seemed unlikely, since it were the more shallow scratches.)
How do you deal with these lighting issues, Josh? Also interested in the way you get your pictures so consistent, Clay. I already read that you photograph the edges while the knife is lying on a piece of white paper. Do you use the lighting from the microscope, Clay, or an external source of light?
When I look at the edge, I see that the (supposedly) .5 micron scratches are present not in a completely regular pattern. Also, the spaces between them are relatively large. I would not be surprised if this were contamination. (Contamination really is an issue at these micron sizes. I managed to get scratches on an edge using blank leather and blank balsa strops I had just removed from their plastic packaging.) What you could do is repeat the exercise with a new set of strops loaded with the .5 micron spray. If you see the same pattern, it could be the spray. If you don’t, it is likely contamination.
Clay also got some unexpected results below 1 micron. I guess the only way to find out is to do more experiments.
Yes, more experiments! I’m doing some today too on the difference between lapping film, leather and balsa strops.
For lighting, I just use the lights of the scope itself and I rotate the scope until I get the lighting angle desired and then keep it there for the entire series. I do the photography with the knife blade flat on a piece of photo paper onto which I’ve traced the outline of the blade so I can get it back in the same way every time.
[quote quote=“mark76” post=2419]Great pictures, Josh! They really show the power of the use of a microscope.
What I still find difficult while making these photographs is the lighting. I used the automatic lighting from my (Veho) microscope. It has got two levels, medium and high, and depending on the external lighting conditions I pick one. But, like in your pictures, a very smooth edge sometimes shows up almost completely white and sometimes quite dark.
What is worse, depending on the lighting, I may completely miss certain types of scratches. I have made photographs in which after 100 stropping strokes the edge seemed very smooth, whereas after 250 strokes a lot of scratches in a particular direction appeared. I first thought I had contaminated the strops, but closer examination of other photographs revealed that the scratches were there already after 100 strokes, but did not show up on the pictures. (I also wondered whether this was due to the deeper scratches getting revealed as the bevel gets more polished, an effect that Tom has described, but that seemed unlikely, since it were the more shallow scratches.)
How do you deal with these lighting issues, Josh? Also interested in the way you get your pictures so consistent, Clay. I already read that you photograph the edges while the knife is lying on a piece of white paper. Do you use the lighting from the microscope, Clay, or an external source of light?
When I look at the edge, I see that the (supposedly) .5 micron scratches are present not in a completely regular pattern. Also, the spaces between them are relatively large. I would not be surprised if this were contamination. (Contamination really is an issue at these micron sizes. I managed to get scratches on an edge using blank leather and blank balsa strops I had just removed from their plastic packaging.) What you could do is repeat the exercise with a new set of strops loaded with the .5 micron spray. If you see the same pattern, it could be the spray. If you don’t, it is likely contamination.
Clay also got some unexpected results below 1 micron. I guess the only way to find out is to do more experiments.[/quote]
Well, to answer your question, I have found that there are two main light views (as seen in my pictures) and I utilize both to my advantage (as one will show things the other will not). For me, it is just a matter of how I hold the microscope. I also have found that I don’t like to put it right on the edge due to it damaging the very edge (when I’m down to about 11-12*/side it will do this against hard plastic).
That is a good observation on the contamination… I may try that. I really need to order more strop paste soon as well, lol… I’m getting low. I will probably reface all my strops with top grain cow hide leather and start fresh.
[quote quote=“wickededge” post=2423]Yes, more experiments! I’m doing some today too on the difference between lapping film, leather and balsa strops.
For lighting, I just use the lights of the scope itself and I rotate the scope until I get the lighting angle desired and then keep it there for the entire series. I do the photography with the knife blade flat on a piece of photo paper onto which I’ve traced the outline of the blade so I can get it back in the same way every time.[/quote]
I do the same as far as the scope, Clay. When I was doing the razor, I actually found that, to alternate sweeping directions, I would actually rotate the entire WE system around so that the “point” of the razor was pointing at me… that way I could be sweeping away the entire time. It sped things up considerably. I would then rotate the base back around to take photos so that way you can see the alternating direction easier (otherwise it would get quite confusing).
Clay, what I would REALLY like to see is some experiments on the lapping film and also the nanocloth or the kangaroo leather that Ken had mentioned. I know you have the settup and the materials, so if you get time, I’m sure we would all love that! (but I also know your busy too… just whenever you get time, I’m putting in a request now lol).