Best grit for mouse pad?

Walking Man

Walking Man

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I'm just wondering which would be the best grit of sandpaper to use on a mouse pad for convex and/or flat ground maintance sharpening. Or if you were going to use a convex knife and only have one mouse pad to sharpen it on, without letting the blade get too dull in between sharpenings which would you choose? Thanks.
 
Well if you are stuck with only one grit, and intend to use it for touch ups, I'd use the finest grit I could find.
 
depends on how much material you need to remove.....maybe 120 or 220

then 400 for the final and strop.
 
Choosing one grit is a very inefficient option assuming you are going to actually use the knife, a very fine grit is often the best choice for the edge finish, but it would be a poor choice to use only that for sharpening. It would be like Ben Dale shipping the Edge Pro with just the polishing tapes. Buy a variety pack of sandpaper.

-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Choosing one grit is a very inefficient option assuming you are going to actually use the knife.
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I think that's only true if I use a knife the way you use knives, Cliff. ;)
I'm not much of an outdoorsman, and I almost never cut anything tougher than hard plastic, not steel or concrete, and I haven't ever batoned a knife.
I'm talking about sharpening a couple small Busses for touch-up from time to time, so what I really want I guess, would be the equivlent to a fine stone. Also, what grit would be closer to a medium stone?
Thanks.
 
Walking Man said:
I almost never cut anything tougher than hard plastic, not steel or concrete, and I haven't ever batoned a knife.
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Batoning doesn't really blunt a knife significantly, wood isn't very abrasive and even a lot of batoning isn't a lot of cutting, as the edge doesn't actually cut its way through all the wood, it splits away from the blade, chiseling through knots is the only real concern.

You also don't need to cut concrete or steel to significantly blunt a knife, just ropes, cardboard and the like, especially used material, can quickly bring an edge down to where you will want a decent abrasive to restore it, corrosion can also be a factor with certain foods in particular.

I restored a Dozier K2 yesterday which had been used to cut some carpet, nothing really heavy, and I sharpened it with a very fine waterstone just to see. I checked the edge every 100 passes and it took a dozen or so before it started to shave and cut paper well.

With an x-coarse stone that would have been sharp in about 50 passes.

...would be the equivlent to a fine stone. Also, what grit would be closer to a medium stone?
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There are no standards, the DMT fine stone for example is the same as a very rough waterstone. Lee Valley sells two grits of sandpaper, 15 and 5 micron, these are a decent choice for a medium and fine finish, and if you combine it with some CrO paper you will handle most sharpening outside of restoring a visibly damaged edge.

-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
There are no standards, the DMT fine stone for example is the same as a very rough waterstone. Lee Valley sells two grits of sandpaper, 15 and 5 micron, these are a decent choice for a medium and fine finish, and if you combine it with some CrO paper you will handle most sharpening outside of restoring a visibly damaged edge.
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Do you happen to know if there is a sandpaper/grit equivalent?
 
If you don’t want to over analyze all the different grit sizes shapes, and just want some paper to touch up your knife I’d say for medium a 600 sand paper, and for fine 1200. What ever you end up getting my best advice is don’t press down hard at all.
 
Okay, I am planning to use 3M, which comes in grits of 400, 800, 1000, 1500, and 2000, I think.... I'm going to try 800 followed by 1500, unless I hear otherwise from the good folks.
Thanks.
 
I like 220 followed by a strop. It leaves a toothy edge :)

I use a belt sander so a fast 220 belt may be closer to a 320 or 400 grit by hand....
 
Walking Man,

You'll need the other grits even if you do overly-baby your knives. Steel fatigues over time and eventually just stropping with fine grit paper will lose its touch. When that happens, you'll need to reset the edge with more aggressive abrasives.
 
blgoode said:
I use a belt sander so a fast 220 belt may be closer to a 320 or 400 grit by hand....
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I thought the same thing for awhile and discussed it with Wilson who argued otherwise so I did more comparisons of freehand 100 AO vs belt AO, I could not tell any difference, of course belts on sanders wear fairly quickly if used for other things besides sharpening.

-Cliff
 
thombrogan said:
You'll need the other grits even if you do overly-baby your knives. Steel fatigues over time and eventually just stropping with fine grit paper will lose its touch. When that happens, you'll need to reset the edge with more aggressive abrasives.
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I was under the impression that you don't need higher grits to maintain a convex edge. What I understood was that with a convex edge, you basically sharpen the edge and the bevel at the same time.
 
Walking Man said:
I was under the impression that you don't need higher grits to maintain a convex edge.
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There are a lot of myths about the convex edge, this is one of them. Wood cutting axes have convex edges, so do many traditional long blades such as parangs, traditional sharpening abrasives have always been a mix of coarse and fine.Which one to use depends on how much use the blade has seen.

If any blade is used light enough you can maintain the edge for a long time with just a smooth steel, eventually it will break from fatigue as Thom noted. Stropping on CrO will do similar as well as induce loss of aggression from carbide rounding. Though how much of an issue this is depends on the steel type.

-Cliff
 
Pocketknife said:
In addition to the site Cliff posted, here's one that compares abrasive "grit" (U.S.) to various types of sharpening stones:
http://www.arbortech.com.au/articles/030.html
(chart is in part 2 of 5 parts)
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Interesting! It lists a DMT xtra fine 1200 mesh (9 micron) as being equivalent to a 5000 grit waterstone. Under a microscope it is easy to see that my Shapton 2000 stone produces a much smoother finish than my 1200 DMT. I dug around Japanese web sites for a couple of months 'til I finally found a Japanese abrasives manufacturer that listed the Japanese industrial standard grit/micron table (along with the maximum allowed error parameters) , and made a web page out of it http://members.cox.net/~yuzuha/jisgrits.html Steve's chart seems more accurate.
 
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