Hi yuzuha, Everyone,
yuzuha, thanks for your reply!
It is great to hear from you, and wonderful to have your photos recovered.
I'm not sure what the best way is, to make sure the photos never disappear. It seems that bladeforums.com does not allow one to attach an image or file directly to one's post. So for now I'll try using imgur.com.
Below is a reconstruction of yuzuha's original post to
www.foodieforums.com with the microscope images that she e-mailed me. Below that is her e-mail that includes the photos, plus some notes.
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Original Source:
http://www.foodieforums.com/vbullet...here-to-start-w-a-new-knife&p=23422#post23422
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Thread Topic: sharpening - where to start w/ a new knife?
Post Date: 12-13-2006, 09:22 PM
yuzuha
Super Foodie
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nebraska
Posts: 416
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To start, I doubt the knife's angles are the same as the sharpmaker's (that 40-30 stuff seems more appropriate for outdoor knives and the like anyway), so you probably are just scraping the side of the bevel somewhere with it. Are you sure it has the same angles on both sides? Some double sided Japanese knives come with 70/30 or some other ratio bevels, and you can't do those on a Sharpmaker anyway (I only use my Sharpmaker on my Wushof's and Hecknel's... the 30 degree setting sharpens those up nicely, though I think they come with something closer to 22-25 degrees).
Generally, what I do is grab a 2k or 5k waterstone (depending on how sharp it seems in the first place) and sharpen it up a bit using the existing angles (you can rock the bevel on the stone, or sometimes go by visual clues in the water, to tell when the bevel is flat on the stone and just use whatever angle that is without caring what it is). If the edge seems too fragile, then I may drop back to the 1k and raise the spine just a smidgen and give it a slightly thicker bevel, but mostly I haven't had to do that.
Grouch, I have a table of waterstone grits (Shapton, old JIS standard and current JIS standard, Norton and DMT
http://members.cox.net/~yuzuha/jisgrit1.html but bond makes a difference too since, while Norton says their 8k actually uses abrasive of a size equivalent to Shapton's 4k, everyone says it actually leaves a finish somewhere between the Shapton 5k and 8k), but it doesn't have sharpmaker rods in it... think that was CBWX34's spreadsheet.
Here is a photomicrograph of the Sharpmaker ultra-fine (comes with the medium and fine rods so I ordered a set of the ultra-fine too)
[Broken image link:
http://members.cox.net/pihughes/superf25.jpg]
(25x objective, about 1,400x total). There are some larger and quite a few smaller (plus the tips of larger grains poking out of the matrix), but the majority of the larger grains appear to be around 2,000 grit JIS. But they are rounded and held tightly in a very dense matrix so they do not cut at all like a waterstone. Instead, they burnish like an orange stick on modelling clay, and, also like smoothing clay with a stick, the rods seem pull loose little balls of metal and smear them over the surface and leaves a finish that looks like this:
[Broken image link:
http://members.cox.net/pihughes/surspyuf.jpg]
Leaves the burnished part nice and bright the surface isn't exactly smooth. Here is the same hunk of metal that I polished on a Naniwa 10k at a right angle to the sharpmaker that exposes the gouges made by the balls of metal the sharpmaker pulled up:
[Broken image link:
http://members.cox.net/pihughes/surnansc.jpg]
Anyway, while the UF rods are probably 2k-3k grit abrasive, they do seem to leave a 5k-8k finish in the smooth burnished parts (the gouging/streaking makes them unsuitable for polishing the sides of blades but that should be less of a problem on a thin edge bevel).
Pam
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Sue ikki
mi hatenu yume no
hotsure kana---Choko
(This final scene, I
I will not see to the end.
My dream is fraying.)
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E-mail from yuzuha to Lagrangian with recovered photos:
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From: yuzuha
To: Lagrangian
Date: 2012/05/23
Subject: spyderco stone pics
Hi got your e-mail. I left a note on bladeforums (OMG I actually remembered my password for 6 years! Now if I could just remember why I went into the other room!) My ISP trashed my web space including my web site, and the pics I was hosting on it, but I did find some of the pictures on my old PC.
Superf25 is the spyderco super/ultra fine rod at, I’m guessing about 1,400x
Surspyuf is the .25" x 1.5" surface of a .25 x .5 x 1.5 inch block of stainless steel that I polished on the rod
Surnansc is the same surface polished on a 10k Naniawa super stone (not the chosera) at a right angle to the spiderco to show the gouges left when the steel galled under the spiderco.
A knife bevel is smaller and the steel is a trifle harder, and carbon steel is not as gummy so I doubt you’d see tear-outs like that unless you were actually trying to polish the side of the knife rather than just sharpening it. Even then it is microscopic. The side of the block was a hazy mirror finish after the spiderco and a bright mirror finish after the naniwa but the gouges were not noticeable to the naked eye.
Glad to see there are even more crazy people in the world that think about this stuff J
Now I am going to have to read all those links in that thread you guys created. Anyway… hope the pics help.
Later,
Pam
[ Images attached to this e-mail are now at imgur.com in the album:
https://imgur.com/a/KVdMk#0 ]
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Sincerely,
--Lagrangian
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"What grit sharpens the mind?"--Zen Sharpening Koan