Chasing ultimate sharpness

[3D Anvil]

I finish my razor with a .25 micron diamond spray on smooth leather. Is that likely leaving a microscopic wire edge??? Clean leather to finish then or something else?

Yeah, I think clean leather, or denim or linen is a good idea after stropping on diamonds.

To be honest, though, I don't think it's possible to score a 40 BESS reading if you have a wire edge. If you have wire edge it would crush on the test media and give you a score WELL in excess of 100. That's according to the late, great Dr. Kraichuk of Knife Grinders Austalia.

 

[3D Anvil]

If you want to try the hi-tech route, you might consider the Swiss company “Rahven”.
They recently introduced a new material called High Impact Ceramic, (aka flexible ceramic).
No idea about composition or grain size, however I purchased a Barracuda model when they first came out several months ago. I touched up the out-of-box edge (hair scraping) to shaving, and it’s still sharper than factory without any further sharpening/stropping and regular kitchen use.

Wow, I'd not seen these before! Just watched Pete's cut test and the Rahven knife he used performed significantly better than even Sandrin's tungsten carbide. Makes Rex 121 look like a piker!

What did you use to touch it up?

 

[scdub]

Very light stropping strokes on sintered diamond films with WD-40 as lubricant. I only spent about 3 minutes total on a couple of sheets. Can’t recall the grits but it was fine. Maybe 1 micron and 0.5 micron sheets. Actually re-profiling the edge would be much more time consuming and require lower grit diamond plates/rods I expect.

It’s held it’s edge so well so far (zero chips/dings which is amazing to me), I will probably thin out the edge at some point to maybe 18-20 dps.

 

[3D Anvil]

Very light stropping strokes on sintered diamond films with WD-40 as lubricant. I only spent about 3 minutes total on a couple of sheets. Can’t recall the grits but it was fine. Maybe 1 micron and 0.5 micron sheets. Actually re-profiling the edge would be much more time consuming and require lower grit diamond plates/rods I expect.

It’s held it’s edge so well so far (zero chips/dings which is amazing to me), I will probably thin out the edge at some point to maybe 18-20 dps.

Thanks for the info. I ordered the serrated knife to give it a try. Seems like a good application for that astounding edge retention, because sharpening serrated knives sucks. Also, I need a good bread knife.

 

[Diemaker]

I finish my razor with a .25 micron diamond spray on smooth leather. Is that likely leaving a microscopic wire edge??? Clean leather to finish then or something else?

I am still playing with this but at this time I think most steels will leave a foil burr with diamond. Again, at this time I really like bare leather to finish most steels. It really does a nice job of burnishing the last .002"-.005" of the apex. While you don't see this with the naked eye you do notice it with your fingers or what you are cutting.