Dmt xcoarse stone edge performance on opinel6 carbon

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lonestar1979

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Mar 2, 2014
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I sharpened couple of my opinels yesterday from dull to shaving sharp with xcoarse dmt.Both were carbon versions,and then used one of the knives to cut up bunch of meats,vegetables,some rope and branches in backyard.At the end the knife was still taking hair off and had bite.That was my new opinel 6 that was losing edge rapidly when new after sharoening on sharpmaker.I guess x90carbon holds toothy edge better when not polished ,also i maybe got to fresh steel.What are your experiences with carbon and stainless opinels and toothy edges?I think I polished my carbon ones more than needed before .This edge gives very good performance and is still very sharp on that particular knife after all this use.
 
No doubt the XC DMT probably took a lot of steel from the original edge. If any softer or heat-damaged steel was there, it's likely long-gone now.

I've not liked using ceramics for polishing soft(ish) steels, as both the steel and the ceramic are prone to generating burrs (read: weakened steel) at the edge, if overdone. That might've had something to do with the weak performance of the edge after using the ceramic to polish it. For polishing the edges on softish blades in carbon or low-alloy stainless, I've preferred using a denim strop with something like white rouge or Flitz/Simichrome polishes. They clean up any burrs very, very fast and polish such steels easily, without generating new burrs and possibly weakening the edge in the process.

I have used a medium (brown/grey) ceramic very minimally after sharpening such blades on an India stone, for example. This includes the No. 08 Carbone Opinel I have. With minimal passes at an extremely light touch, the medium ceramic enhances the already-good edge coming off the Fine India.
 
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Coarse edges have greater edge retention in slicing tasks vs. polished ones, while polished ones have greater edge retention in pushing cuts. Chances are you've been using a polished edge for slicing work and been getting poor edge retention as a result.
 
I am mostly liking and using stainless opinels and have few blades in carbon so i dont have too much experience with soft carbon like opinels.Have few other knives in carbon but their heat treat is way harder and performance is amazing,even when sharpening on sharpmaker.It might be bad steel from factory.When i touchup on sharpmaker i make light touches mostly to take burr off from stone and sometimes to touch it up.Always was getting pretty good results on any steel and edge holding is not bad at all .Will be getting some diamond paste to try it out,have green compound but found that it overpolishes the edge and then the tooth is gone or most of it.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Coarse edges have greater edge retention in slicing tasks vs. polished ones, while polished ones have greater edge retention in pushing cuts. Chances are you've been using a polished edge for slicing work and been getting poor edge retention as a result.
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I had sharpmaker brown stone edge on new opinel carbon and it was new from factory,at first was slicing agressively but lost tooth and sharpness very fast.Its bad steel from grinder i guess.
 
The Sharpmaker is extremely fine. The aggressive slicing was likely remaining toothiness from the factory edge work, or just due to the gliding action affected by a highly polished push cutting edge even when drawn through material. A coarse edge is much more likely to last in slicing work. Polished edges very rapidly lose slicing aggression.
 
I find brown sharpmaker rods somewhere in middle and the edge they give is pretty agressive but edge off dmt stone or sil carbide is on another level,even slightest pull goes right into soft material especially meat(cut myself with this edge few times opening packages,it was efortless...).white stones on sharomaker produce finer edge thats not agressive ,but still cuts well.I use light strokes to take off burrs or sometimes to touchup edge fast for kitchen work.But edge off the stone is on another level and lasts longer.Will be getting some diamond compound to try it out,seen few videos on youtube and i guess it produces very agressive edge.I like dmt stones very much and mostly use them,and norton sil carbide coarse and medium stones.Spyderco double stuff is nice field sharpening stone and maybe will get that in future.
 
If you think the brown rods are somewhere in the middle then you don't know where the middle is. They're still QUITE fine compared to even standard fine stones. :)
 
Brown stones arent bad when fast touchup is needed,especially in kitchen.it says 600 grit for brown and 1200for white
 
Unless I'm mistaken they don't specify a grit standard, so comparing that against other grits becomes meaningless without knowing that. If I had to guess I suspect they're using the FEPA (European) grit system for the description, but could be totally wrong. If correct, that would put the brown at about a JIS (Japanese) 1500.
 
I'd suggest trying something around an ANSI 400 grit to ANSI 220 grit and see how it does for you. You'll almost certainly find that your slicing aggression lasts much, much longer.
 
I'm with FortyTwoBlades' advice above^, in suggesting something up to ~ 400 ANSI or so. That's why I mentioned the Fine India earlier (ANSI ~ 360 - 400), because I keep finding it to be a very good all-around working finish for steels like these.

The brown Spyderco ceramic emulates something like ~ 1200-grit wet/dry sandpaper (FEPA-P standard), in the finish it produces. Kind of a very fine satin, with what I consider the last noticeable remnant of 'bite' coming off a ceramic; anything finer than that starts getting into polishing territory with most of the tooth going away, for the most part. I used to do a good bit of sandpaper sharpening, and noticed the similarity in finish and 'bite' between those two pretty early on; it kind of stuck in my head. Not sure where that puts the Fine or UF, but those would obviously be finer.
 
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