Can you sharpen S35VN with an Arkansas Stone?

J

jayjaygee

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Mar 13, 2023
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I've never used a modern steel, and I'm looking at a couple of knives that I like the design of, but I'm not sure about S35VN. I have one of those stones on a triangle, and you go from coarse down to very fine, and then sometimes I polish up on the underside of a coffee mug.

I don't really want to buy new sharpening equipment or change my routine. I like it too much.

Is S35VN a good or a bad idea for a stick in the mud like me?

Thank you!
 
jayjaygee said:
I've never used a modern steel, and I'm looking at a couple of knives that I like the design of, but I'm not sure about S35VN. I have one of those stones on a triangle, and you go from coarse down to very fine, and then sometimes I polish up on the underside of a coffee mug.

I don't really want to buy new sharpening equipment or change my routine. I like it too much.

Is S35VN a good or a bad idea for a stick in the mud like me?

Thank you!
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Time to climb outa that mud and get some good diamond sharpeners . ;)

Then you will fear no steel again , no matter how super hard . S35VN is far from the worst of them . :eek:

I mostly just use diamond on everything now, anyway , because it's just so much faster and easier . 😎:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Natural stones (Arkansas [Nocaculite/Chert], Japanese, and many other rocks) will work on all but the hardest/most carbide rich steels, they just cut steel slower than diamonds/ceramic, and need regular re-surfacing in my experience. S35VN will definitely take longer than most of the carbon steels you’re used to.

To get rid of a chip might require a lots of time without diamonds or something coarser like sandstone.

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If you want to properly enjoy S35VN in use and sharpening, please upgrade to better stones for it. It's far from the worst steel to sharpen but modern abrasives (I do recommend diamond) work best with the modern powder metallurgy steels with decent vanadium additions.
 
Alberta Ed said:
My DMT diamond hones have lasted for decades with no decline in performance. (I clean them regularly with BreakFree CLP.)
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I’ve worn out a Dmt extra fine after about 5 years. I am a psycho when it comes to keeping my knives sharp.
A good set of diamonds are the way to go for all modern steels
 
and you can Still hand sharpen your knives the old fashioned way..... by hand, no fixtures.
I just recently got a diamond bench stone, and Yes.... My grinds are still Wonky.

They are just a bit faster getting that way!
 
If you were stuck in a situation where Arkansas stones were all you had, you can put an edge on S35VN that will get work done. However, the soft nature of the abrasive will lead to sub-par edges will fail to live up to the potential of the steel, and you're likely to glaze your stone in the process, requiring reconditioning to restore proper function to it, which will generally require the synthetic abrasives that are better suited to use on S35VN anyhow.
 
I tried using Arkansas stones on CTS-XHP.

While it did work, there were some pretty major negatives that followed.

1. The stones took a lot of damage, and had a bunch of premature wear, which shortens the lifespan significantly.

2. The edge created did not last as long as expected. I am assuming the carbides were mostly tearing rather than being cut.

3. It took way longer than I ever want to spend sharpening.

I love my Arkansas stones, but now only use them for steels with much less carbides. My diamond plates work much more efficiently, and create a better edge.

This is only my personal experience.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
If you were stuck in a situation where Arkansas stones were all you had, you can put an edge on S35VN that will get work done. However, the soft nature of the abrasive will lead to sub-par edges will fail to live up to the potential of the steel, and you're likely to glaze your stone in the process, requiring reconditioning to restore proper function to it, which will generally require the synthetic abrasives that are better suited to use on S35VN anyhow.
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👆 100%
 
I recently sharpened S35VN for the first time. This blade was short and nearly straight, the easiest shape for me to sharpen. I don't call myself an expert, but I am a decent freehand sharpener.

I started on a well-known hard Ark, and got very slow progress. That tells me I need a more coarse grit, so I can keep the total number of strokes low and the bevel crisp. I cycled through a soft Ark and then the hard Ark again, tried a couple of different strops, and got very uninspiring results. It would cut but not much better than my lawnmower blade. The lawnmower is sharp, but come on!

I switched to DMT diamond stones and zipped through the job like I knew what I was doing. The process was suddenly completely normal, and the edge got very respectable. I needed a reasonably low number of strokes, so I maintained a neat, crisp bevel, and I got a very uniform scratch pattern. A good looking edge, and it shaved hair and cut receipt paper reliably.

I could have gotten by with my beloved Arkansas stones, finishing up with a Japanese stone, but it would have taken way too long, and there would be too much wear on the stones. I think sharpening the hard steels on naturals might be a sign that we are passing the age curve, where technology and the rest of the world curve off to the right, while we stubbornly swerve off to the left. You can do it, but you probably should be thinking about a little flexibility.

I checked prices on stones recently. Good quality diamond stones are a lot cheaper than luck-of-the-draw natural stones these days. I believe the guys who say it only takes them a few more minutes to sharpen something like S35VN on natural stones, but there is probably big difference in their skill level! It won't work like that for everybody!
 
The 'Sharpening LIfe' gets much, much easier once you realize that certain kinds of steels really like certain kinds of stones, and vice-versa. Even the cheapest diamond hone will cut a high-wear steel much, much more easily than will an expensive, quality natural stone that has to struggle with carbides in the steel that could be 3X as hard as than the hardest grit in the natural stone. And as those carbides effectively polish or 'glaze' the grit in the natural stone, its ability to cut anything at all, steel-wise, will slow exponentially. The stone will struggle to get anything done on any steel, unless or until it gets resurfaced again. Odds are, most hobbyist sharpeners will get very tired of doing that over and over just to make that favorite old stone continue to 'work' (sort of) with much more modern steels.

Natural stones are a beautiful thing when matched up to the steels they were originally intended to sharpen. Stuff like basic carbon steels (1095, CV, etc.) and low-alloy stainless like 420HC can respond nicely to natural stones and won't be significantly damaged (glazed) in doing so with such steels. And for somewhat more wear-resistant stainless steels like 440C, etc., a decent synthetic stone in aluminum oxide or silicon carbide (SiC) can be a beautiful thing. Then along comes a steel like S30V/35VN or any other with more than maybe 3-4% vanadium content, for which a diamond hone will make sharpening seem stupid simple in contrast to all the struggles that'll come with trying to sharpen it on a natural stone.

On anything very wear-resistant, I've sometimes liked a hard Arkansas stone (black hard, or translucent) functioning solely as an edge aligner like a kitchen steel, or as a burnisher, which basically moves steel around in sort of a plastic manner without actually cutting it, to thin an edge. But that's as much as I expect from a natural stone on such steels. If much has to be ground away from a very dull or damaged edge on a high-wear steel, something other than the natural stone will be called to duty.
 
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Because of this dynamic, ease of maintenance is a factor to be considered when choosing a knife. Plain ol' carbon steels may be worse performers on paper than more modern types, but do hold an advantage in being fully compatible with natural stones, so while you may have to touch them up more often than high-carbide stuff, you can do so with a wider range of suitable abrasives. A damaged 1095 knife brought to sharpness again on a river rock will be more effective than a blunted and dinged up knife in Cru-Wear in the same situation, and there are some circumstances that will blunt any knife. High carbide steels are great in lots of settings, but there are still some contexts where softer and less wear-resistant steels still earn their keep.
 
Back in the late seventies: I owned a Buck 112, and a Schrade Uncle Henry. The Schrade was so soft that you could dull it with a sharp glance. But a half-dozen passes on a hard Arkansas stone would bring it back. The 112 would hold an edge longer than an ex-girlfriend could hold a grudge; but it took more than an hour to bring it back to sharp...
 
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