I have a dmt aligner kit and have a stone that is 3 micron. when i use it i dont feel like its workinga lot. for higher grits are waterstones better. i just saw a listing for a naniwa 12k grit waterstone and im thinking of picking it up to put a higher polish on my knives before stropping
-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is available! Price is $250 ea (shipped within CONUS).
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/
Diamond Vs waterstones?
- Thread starter snorkem
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2009
- Messages
- 7,951
Once you get into the higher grits/lower microns it wont feel like much is happening because they take off so little material, but they are doing what they are suppose to
Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2007
- Messages
- 11,196
The EEF stone takes a while to fully break-in, when broke-in though the finished edge will be extremely sharp. For me I found its final sharpness to be deceptive of its visual finish, the finish will look coarser than it should be but the edge feels like one that is already stropped.
Diamonds also work better on steels with higher wear resistance, for example, the best finish I have achieved with the EEF stone has been on S125V. The "softer" the steel the deeper the diamonds will dig into the surface hence the reason pressure is so important with the use of diamond stones.
Water stones I love for their finish but just cant seem to get the edges as sharp as with other methods, with some steels and bevel grinds its a different story though. ZDP-189 and scandi grinds are my main reasons for keeping water stones around.
The 12k is a very good stone and leaves a near perfect mirror polish on most steels. If finishing with this stone you will probably find its good enough to not need stropping unless your obsessive
Diamonds also work better on steels with higher wear resistance, for example, the best finish I have achieved with the EEF stone has been on S125V. The "softer" the steel the deeper the diamonds will dig into the surface hence the reason pressure is so important with the use of diamond stones.
Water stones I love for their finish but just cant seem to get the edges as sharp as with other methods, with some steels and bevel grinds its a different story though. ZDP-189 and scandi grinds are my main reasons for keeping water stones around.
The 12k is a very good stone and leaves a near perfect mirror polish on most steels. If finishing with this stone you will probably find its good enough to not need stropping unless your obsessive
I don't use a lot of high-grit waterstones, I just stop at 1K.
However I really like diamond stones because they don't require flattening. I have a Smith's 750 grit "fine" diamond hone that doesn't seem to polish as well as my 1K, but the edges it gets are just as capable at cutting so I can't really remark on that. However, I can say that the 1K waterstone seems to cut a lot faster, but on the other hand requires much more maintenance, and can be tempermental if not entirely flat.
So for me I'm going to go down the diamond route instead of waterstones when I go up to higher grits. The results they get are pretty on par with each other for my needs, but the waterstones are too tempermental in needing to be flattened to achieve those results. So in a way getting the same results is easier with the diamond hone, even though the waterstones seem to cut faster.
However I really like diamond stones because they don't require flattening. I have a Smith's 750 grit "fine" diamond hone that doesn't seem to polish as well as my 1K, but the edges it gets are just as capable at cutting so I can't really remark on that. However, I can say that the 1K waterstone seems to cut a lot faster, but on the other hand requires much more maintenance, and can be tempermental if not entirely flat.
So for me I'm going to go down the diamond route instead of waterstones when I go up to higher grits. The results they get are pretty on par with each other for my needs, but the waterstones are too tempermental in needing to be flattened to achieve those results. So in a way getting the same results is easier with the diamond hone, even though the waterstones seem to cut faster.