The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
appreciate the support, i do fully understand where others are coming from too so its an odd crossbar to balance on. im going to look into a pot for sure and see how much material i can get to settle tighter. i might try to post a YT video later of one of them eating at some steel. the damn rain and sun here in the midwest has me mowing weekly, but id love to show what they can do and post some shots
definitely am, and to be honest its such a nitche market i wasnt planning to ever sell anything or i would keep anything i have r&d on to myself, if the market was larger id love to work towards that but im just the type to perfect something till im happy with the result and then move on, most the costs im just eating with the excitment of seeing the original out the gate results. most sellers on ebay, well lets be honest really theres only one guy/company in india selling powder on ebay. he runs the market there. his prices are not bad either. plus you can buy lesser amounts. id guess the amount of powder on the EP stones is about 15 or 20 grams which is 100 cts at 20 grams. he has material listed for about 100 bucks for 2500 carats and sells quantities down to like 100 cts. 2500 carats will damn near make 25 of those sized faces of 1.6mm or whatnot. so im here to just play around and maybe get otherd to as well. id love to see some killer ideas made by other makers here
awesome find. i have some reading to do!
ok, ive only got 3....well..er..5ish
...stones under my belt, but it sounds like your abrasive settled to the bottom. you can remove the excess epoxy any number of ways, dremel, loose abrasive on float glass, grinder, belt sander etc.
I think there could be a little market right here for some “home brewed” stones.
its addicting once u see potential... im still rocking the collection ive made... im just waiting to waste 300 bucks on some 60 grit diamond powder. thats the cheapest i can find for more than 500 carats. 300 bucks is about 1kg or 2.2 lbsso..just for funnies I made a "stone" out of what i had on hand, which was jb weld clearweld 5 min 2 part epoxy and some random abrasive out of a rock polishing kit.
its a white powder + some fairly large AlOx (100 grit?).
Poured onto a al blank...and....its not freaking terrible. it cuts decently with an ok scratch pattern...wow..lol
imma order some cbn or diamond
its great fun
sharp things are less trouble lolhey jimmy. the trick for me was to use a silicone mold from hobby lobby. its very flat at the bottoms of the rectangle molds. because the abrasive at a certain weight sinks youll want to mix your medias pour into blank and the epoxy should settle on top. but of course since the abrasive is at the bottom youll want to flatten the bottom. because its a decent mold it wont take as long as say, removing all the epoxy from the top that settled and then trying to flatten. key is its already semi flat and will take less time to flatten. ill pull out a stone and post some video of how i flatten them... its similar to the other purchaseable matrix stones out there from die. you need to expose the matrix either with loose abrasive on glass.... or other course stones. i dont like using the SiC method only because it gives a false sense that the stone is ready to cut. it will cut into the face and pit it well making it seem agressive, but ive found it kind of masks the areas that havent gotten fully flat. using other stones 120 grit under running water really shows when your epoxy is fully cut from the matrix face.
lol isnt it awesome. some abrasive and something hard to suspend it in makes for a good timethis shit is so fun and cheap(so far) to mess around with. its so freaking fast and easy to make a little test stone. super glue even workedimma try ceramic car coating as the binder when my bling gets here.
it would be cool to sell dont get me wrong. lots of people would rather not have to experiment, ive always loved spreading information that could help the next guy, so i think thats ultimately where my post came from. i was sitting there thinking why not tell other sharpening fanantics what im stumbled into. thanks for reading. i do believe one member who sells the BYXCO line of stones does just that and mixes multiple types of abrasive together in his stones. ive found this is great for sharpening both hard steels and soft steels it just cuts a little slower on hard steels. as everyone says pure diamond matrix can cut slow on gummy steels but i still use my diamond ones the most and they still cut the gummy crap fast enough for me. plus its nice in my mind knowing the diamond is way harder than the blade material so if im not pressing like a psycho i barely lose powder from the matrix. one stone i made a little thin guy about 2" x 4" 1/4" thick weighed in at 70.9 grams. ive used it to cut copious amounts of steel possibly 40 sharpenings and when i rescaled its still 70.9 grams. because it keeps cutting even with a swarf covered surface i never have reflattened. i use a little dawn and water to break surface tension and wipe down with a towel when finished sharpening. its a good working system so far
yeah the diamond to epoxy ratio is odd. it seems like you can jam it till its just shy of sand like and then if u go overboard it will literally never settle flat. but that was the heavy abrasive like the 230 grit i used. as soon a i hit about 700 grit it started to stay suspended in the epoxy without sinking. then it became harder to keep adding past a certain point im sure as your experimenting your figuring alot out real fast haha. feel free to hit me up if you want to bounce ideas around. i still have alot of epoxy and a decent bit of powder sitting idle.ok, ive only got 3....well..er..5ish
i mixed approx equal volume of abrasive to epoxy on the last one i made and its pretty loaded, might could go up to even 1.5 abrasive/epoxy. this was maybe 300 grit AlOx
so far my most used is the Mas epoxy brand, their deep pour. havent tried their new deep pour x. i also have made a couple from their table top line which has some uv yellowing prohibitors and i think is supposed to finish a little harder for all those beer bottles haha. ive got two others ive played with one is quickcure 5 which i read somewhere years ago was great for gluing up knife handles. The other one is made by a company called polymerproducts and its their max clr hp. it with the help of a vacuum pot would supposedly produce super impact resistant epoxy. i never did have a vacuum to try it with so the original test left some very small micro bubbles suspended in the pc. this was just tested for strength. i never actually added a abrasive to the max clr hp. i just made a 1 inch solo cup sample so i could hit it with a hammer and test impact resistance. with the pot you could probably make a well bonded matrix stone, seeing that it was very strong stuff.Awesome.
What epoxies have you experiment with so far?
