Course stone question

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Tjstampa

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I recently acquired 2 knives in s35vn for free because the owner could not grind out the chips in the blades. I have been using my course dmt bench stone but it is taking forever. Would a sic stone work or do in need an extra course diamond.
 
If you want to make any kind of speed I'd use diamonds myself,look at the Venev bench stones the coarsest dual sided one they make would work great.

The 80-150 will make short work it for sure,I have S35VN and I always use diamonds on it,it's not as bad as trying to sharpen S30V but it's a steel in my opinion that you want to use diamonds on for heavy work at least.

The 800-1200 OCB stones are great stones for giving a more polished edge that seem's to give all the steels I use a really nice edge that performs great.

https://www.gritomatic.com/collecti...monds/products/8-x-3-dual-side-bonded-diamond
 
If you haven't tried it yet, using some mineral oil on the diamond hone will help it work faster. It'll keep the surface of the hone from clogging & slowing down, which happens very fast on a dry diamond hone.
 
Coarse silicon carbide will work just fine, and will allow you to use higher pressure to speed the rate of removal. It'll be at a hardness disadvantage compared to diamond, but going coarse/high pressure enough more than compensates for the light touch you have to use with diamond. It'll still be bit of a pain trying to hog metal off a high-alloy blade, but it'll at least be a little faster.
 
Tjstampa, I'm not familiar with s35vn steel, but some time ago got frustrated with how slow it was to hog off metal reprofiling freehand with grits around 100-140 (SiC and diamond), which many people think are already very low. So I went as low as 50 grit, using stones, sandpaper, and emery cloth. There are legitimate cautions about going this low, especially if apexing, so attention should be paid to that. I dislike grinding for any longer than I have to, so it's worth it to me to save time, frustration, and boredom, and I prefer toothy edges, anyway. I actually finish at the same grit size, or near it, that you are grinding with!

If you want to go that low and speed up the grinding, I've read good things about the 60 grit Baryonyx Manticore. I feel better using an abrasive specifically designed for my purpose than generic sandpaper or emery cloth.
 
That dmt coarse is not coarse enough and you have to use light pressure. Getting a more coarse SiC will speed up your work a lot, because it's more coarse and you can use pressure. I've tried the dmt X coarse and it was still slow because I couldn't use a lot of
pressure.
It's doubtful you can find a ACE Hardware stone in coarse SiC. Just get a Norton coarse (120 grit) JB 8 and apply oil & go to it.
I think you'll be happier with the results. DM
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Coarse silicon carbide will work just fine, and will allow you to use higher pressure to speed the rate of removal. It'll be at a hardness disadvantage compared to diamond, but going coarse/high pressure enough more than compensates for the light touch you have to use with diamond. It'll still be bit of a pain trying to hog metal off a high-alloy blade, but it'll at least be a little faster.
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I am going to try your manticore and see how that works. I don’t want to spend the money on another diamond stone right now.
 
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If you ever do want a faster cutting diamond stone I would look at the coarsest Venev stone they make,I really enjoy my F60 Metallic CBN stone and out of any stone I have nothing cut's as fast as it and just blows threw any steel you throw at it.

Tjstampa said:
I am going to try your manticore and see how that works. I don’t want to spend the money on another diamond stone right now.
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wade7575 said:
If you ever do want a faster cutting diamond stone I would look at the coarsest Venev stone they make,I really enjoy my F60 Metallic CBN stone and out of any stone I have nothing cut's as fast as it and just blows threw any steel you throw at it.
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I know sharpening pressure is difficult to describe with words but, given that limitation, how would you describe or compare how much pressure can be used with the F60 Metallic CBN stone? Can you lean into it as much as you could with a coarse silicon carbide stone?

I don't like to spend any more time freehand reprofiling or sharpening than I have to and bought a couple of expensive, coarse (120 and 140 grit), coated diamond plates some time ago, expecting from what I read that they would quickly hog off metal. I was disappointed to find out I couldn't use much pressure on them and they cut considerably slower than I thought they would. I like diamond abrasives but don't want to make a mistake like that again.

Thank you....
 
M MtnHawk1 I find you don't need to use hardly any pressure at all with the F60 and F120 CBN stones,when use them with my TSProf I mainly just use the weight of the stone and a bit of pressure but not much extra at all really.

I don't know if it takes the metal off faster because of the fact that a guided system can hold the angle you want the edge to be apexed at more consistently or what it is,I know what you mean about normal diamond plates like DMT Atoma's and the Gold Series,I have had them all and I find out of all of them the Atoma's were the best until I got the Metallic CBN stones.

I find the F60 is just plastered with CBN particles and it really cuts fast and like to use the F120 after the F60 if I have to use the F60 for whatever reason,the F120 really seems to clean up the edge after the F60.

I find with most of the better PM steels like M4 M390 S35VN S30V S90V I can reprofile a brand new knifes edge and reset the angle in about 4 to 5 minutes without using any extreme pressure with F60,I find with S110V the CBN stones cut with no problems at all but they do slow down a tiny bit on S110V but nothing I'm going to complain about.

I also like using the new Venev OCB stones after the CBN stones,I find the OCB stones leave a nice scratch pattern on the 400 800 or 1200 and all those stones seems to give you a really nice edge wether you stop at the 400 800 or 1200,the 1200 gives a mirror like performance to edge without having to spend a lot of time polishing the edge like mad.

You should look into getting a used Edge Pro or something like that and use a guided system to set your bevels and do repair work then move to free handing the rest of the way.
 
If you have deep chips, you might need to change your technique. A while back I was working on a bunch of abused blades. Some had chips that were 1/8" or more deep (3mm +). I was using a Worksharp Ken Onion belt grinder with a 200 micron belt (~80 grit).

What I found was, the belt was removing steel, but the chip wasn't being totally removed. I theorized that the abrasive particles were "hooking" in the chip and continuing to grind it deeper. It was getting smaller, but not as fast as the rest of the steel was being ground away. The chip was "hanging on".

The solution was/is to grind the edge of the blade almost directly (90 degrees) into the stone (or belt in my case). This grinds out the chip rather quickly and lets you shape the edge in an nice even curve with a consistent height and shape.

However, you will have a totally flat edge that's wider at the edge than a butter knife. It won't cut anything at all. At that point you will need to cut in new edge bevels almost from scratch. With the Worksharp Ken Onion, this wasn't too bad, but it took some time. With a bench stone I think this would take a lot longer, but you could do it. Assuming you have a very coarse stone.

But again, I'm talking about deep bad chips. If you're talking about 1/16" or 1/32 or something, then doing it by hand will be a lot easier.

For the record, the DMT XXC, at 100 micron (~100 grit) is a *beast* of a stone. It removes metal very fast. I have not used a 60 grit stone (or lower) like other posters have described. But the DMT XXC works quite well.

Brian.
 
For what its worth, I picked up this one at woodcraft:

https://www.woodcraft.com/products/...196e69702d6593000317,5797916769702d61c10004f1

The 120 side is very fast even with a light touch. Does a good job on everything I've tried so far, even gummy stainless. Picked it up to use with my existing DMD stone - is the exact same build only with 120/180 instead of 400/1200.

Never stop looking for a better coarse stone...
 
wade7575, thank you for your thorough reply about the CBN stones! That was very informative. Very impressive about the reprofiling time, too!

The problem is that I only use benchstones. I didn't realize these only come in sizes used in guided systems. Much of my knife use is in the wilderness, where I only carry minimal sharpening supplies to keep the weight down. I like to do all my reprofiling and sharpening at home freehand so I can keep in practice.

I appreciate your post and will check with Gritomatic once in awhile to see if they have started to make these stones in benchstone sizes.
 
HeavyHanded, do you know how the WoodRiver stone compares to a DMT 120 or Atoma 140?

Thanks...
 
That's interesting since the dmt X coarse plate is 220 grit and their XX coarse is 120 grit.?? If you want s fast cutting diamond plate that would be it. My x coarse leaves deep scratches that I have to work out. Whereas, my coarse SiC not so much. DM
 
M MtnHawk1 Check out the Venev coarse stone I also have 80 grit stone they make and they also make a 80-150 grit combo diamond stone,the 80 grit diamond that I have is also a very fast cutting stone and works really well.

If you get the 80-150 I would suggest getting the 240-400 OCB stone as well,the 400 side of the 240-400 combo stone is their new resin called OCB and I have the 400 800 and 1200 in the OCB resin and my OCB resin stones give a really nice edge,the 400 and 800 OCB give your edge a polished and toothy edge performance you get the best of both worlds in terms of edge performance from those stones.

If your cutting up meat and stuff that 400 would be great,it's rated in FEPA so the 400 would be the same as a 1K Japanese rated water stone,the Venev stones also stay flat for a very long time,every so often I will give them a light scrub with a King Nagura stone just to remove any glaze,I don't remove the glaze right away like some do,I find you can do about 20 or 30 sharpening's before you need to do that and sic powder works as well.

I'm pretty sure you'd be happy with the Venev as well I really like both the CBN and the Venev stones and those are the stone I use the most for all my knifes and I only use Japanese water stones if I'm polishing an edge.

https://www.gritomatic.com/collecti...monds/products/8-x-3-dual-side-bonded-diamond

MtnHawk1 said:
wade7575, thank you for your thorough reply about the CBN stones! That was very informative. Very impressive about the reprofiling time, too!

The problem is that I only use benchstones. I didn't realize these only come in sizes used in guided systems. Much of my knife use is in the wilderness, where I only carry minimal sharpening supplies to keep the weight down. I like to do all my reprofiling and sharpening at home freehand so I can keep in practice.

I appreciate your post and will check with Gritomatic once in awhile to see if they have started to make these stones in benchstone sizes.
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