Couple sharpening questions for a newbie

[Brad Richardson]

I'm gonna get a couple more grits of sandpaper and work on my skills with that. Brad, I actually have a DMT diamond diafold (course/fine) and I really dislike it. I dont know if it has a break in period or not but it just scratches up my blade and gets it duller. I'm probably gonna throw it up in the pay it forward thread.

at first they are way too course after you have smoothed them out a bit you will get much better results. use your imagination for taking off the rough ,a smooth piece of granite or plane o'l concrete will work.

 

[vickmacky]

at first they are way too course after you have smoothed them out a bit you will get much better results. use your imagination for taking off the rough ,a smooth piece of granite or plane o'l concrete will work.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Lately I've just been using some Ark. stones or my Doublestuff but everybody keeps praising the DMT stuff so I would like to get on the train too.

 

[zyhano]

I've read all of Dr. Verhoeven's writings I can find but I've not found that . Not that I doubt him writing on that subject matter . I can see the edge leading stroke reducing burrs but just thinking about it I thought the trailing stroke would reduce debris at the edge . DM

it's in Verhoeven: experiments on knife sharpening
a freely downloadable pdf

quote page 22: "All of the sharpening done on the waterstones moved the blade along the stone in the direction into the blade edge causing the abrasive debris to move away from the edge. It was theorized that moving in this direction would reduce the bur size at the edge by preventing the debris from being deposited along the edge. To see if this theory was supported by evidence an experiment was done on the 6000 grit waterstone where the 10 4-stroke cycles were all done with the blade edge moving away-from rather than into the stone surface. The results are shown in Fig. 27. Comparing Figs 25 and 27 one sees that moving the blade away-from the edge, as in Fig. 27, does seem to produce a significantly larger bur than moving it into the edge, as in Fig. 25. The larger bur is also accompanied by an increase in edge roughness, as shown in the face views."

 

[vickmacky]

it's in Verhoeven: experiments on knife sharpening
a freely downloadable pdf

quote page 22: "All of the sharpening done on the waterstones moved the blade along the stone in the direction into the blade edge causing the abrasive debris to move away from the edge. It was theorized that moving in this direction would reduce the bur size at the edge by preventing the debris from being deposited along the edge. To see if this theory was supported by evidence an experiment was done on the 6000 grit waterstone where the 10 4-stroke cycles were all done with the blade edge moving away-from rather than into the stone surface. The results are shown in Fig. 27. Comparing Figs 25 and 27 one sees that moving the blade away-from the edge, as in Fig. 27, does seem to produce a significantly larger bur than moving it into the edge, as in Fig. 25. The larger bur is also accompanied by an increase in edge roughness, as shown in the face views."

Man that is some great info. Thanks for posting that.