Fastest Cutting Benchstone/Manual Reprofiling Method

Trout Hound

Trout Hound

Joined
Sep 28, 2014
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Title says it all. I've been reprofiling my Buck 301 in 420HC on a 250 grit King waterstone. (It had part of the factory edge left, with a 25 dps microbevel from a Lansky, and I wanted to just reset everything to 15 dps.) It is taking forever, as you can imagine. I don't have a place for a belt sander or bench grinder, not to mention that I sometimes want to lower edge angles on pretty small blades that a power sander would eat for breakfast. So, what's the fastest stone/tool/system for manual reprofiling? XC Diamond?Thanks!
 
It shouldn't be that slow, the king's are not breaking any speed records but it should eat 420 rather quickly. The problem you might have is the stone getting very muddy and scratching up the side of the blade and washing out the shoulder of the bevel.

A 140 grit Atoma diamond plate would be my recommendation though, chews up steel pretty fast and leaves clean bevel lines.
 
I'm getting a nice clean bevel. I might be going at it too carefully; that knife is one of my favorites and I don't want to screw it up.
 
The stone you have needs a little pressure to start cutting fast, it will start producing a ton of mud and dish equally. If you are not experiencing this then using more pressure might help, but will also cause some of the issues I spoke of above.

Things you don't want to mess up should be in a glass case ;)
 
My X coarse diamond was about equal to my coarse SiC (100 grit). Either one of these would give you fast results when reprofiling 420 steel on a 301 (as the blades are short). The XX coarse would be faster but the diamond stones are pricey and you can't use pressure. DM
 
Currently I still use the coarse side of my Crystalon with some mineral oil. It grinds pretty fast and burr formation is reasonably mild. It can dish, and if the mud gets too thick it can chew up the shoulder transitions, so I keep it pretty clean and work the surface evenly. Have even been known to lap it from time to time. I have a faster stone at about 80 grit, but do not use that for reprofiling - just for heavy stock removal.
 
The DMT XXC cuts the fastest of any bench stone I've used. But I haven't tried the highly recommended Atoma 140. Nor have I tried the ridiculously abrasive 24 grit Nubatama XXC Arate. Or the 60 grit Nubatama. I'd like to try the 24 some day; sorta like I'd enjoy driving a 650 HP car one day. Gotta be careful.... :)

Jason gave some advice in a video a while back that makes sense to me: If you're going to radically change an edge angle like you are, do it in two steps. First split the difference between them. Like take it from 25 dps to 20 dps. Then in your second round, bring the edge the rest of the way down from 20 to 15 dps.

Brian.
 
Trout Hound said:
Title says it all. I've been reprofiling my Buck 301 in 420HC on a 250 grit King waterstone. (It had part of the factory edge left, with a 25 dps microbevel from a Lansky, and I wanted to just reset everything to 15 dps.) It is taking forever, as you can imagine. I don't have a place for a belt sander or bench grinder, not to mention that I sometimes want to lower edge angles on pretty small blades that a power sander would eat for breakfast. So, what's the fastest stone/tool/system for manual reprofiling? XC Diamond?Thanks!
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A 'Coarse' or 'Fine' diamond would be enough (plenty, even) for re-bevelling those relatively small blades. I used 'Fine' DMT hones ('credit card' and 6" Dia-Sharp) to thin & convex all 3 blades on my Buck 301; a back & forth 'scrubbing' stroke is very fast in removing metal. XC diamond hones will leave them ragged, and remove more steel than necessary, most likely. I've also noticed XC and coarser diamond hones will clog faster on such steels.

Edit:
As has been mentioned, don't worry about scratches & such. 420HC is also very easy to clean up, in that regard. Wet/dry sandpaper works great for that, on 420HC. This is also a good reason to avoid XC and coarser diamond hones on soft, low-wear steels; just more work to clean up the deep scratches.

A simple hardware-store SiC stone (like a Norton 'Economy' stone) would also work very quickly, using a scrubbing stroke.


David
 
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Haa, yes 'can dish the stone and can chew up the shoulder'. I've had to level mine several times in only 7 years. DM
 
I might grab a Norton Economy at the hardware store tonight. Do you guys use it dry for that? With oil? Tibetan rhino snot? What?
 
Trout Hound said:
I might grab a Norton Economy at the hardware store tonight. Do you guys use it dry for that? With oil? Tibetan rhino snot? What?
Click to expand...

Any which way will work (though I haven't tried the latter; no opinion there :D). Try it dry and/or with water (or dish soap + water) first; once the stone gets oiled, it's difficult or tedious to clean that out, if you later decide you'd rather not use it oiled. I have recently used one of my SiC stones with some honing oil, and the feedback was nice (& results were good too). But it'll work whichever way you prefer; I've come to like that about these stones.


David
 
I remembered after I posted that I read a thread over on Spyderco Forums recently about using a 50/50 mixture of Simple Green and water with an India stone. Said it cut much faster and left a finer polish than oil. Will probably give that a try.
 
Trout Hound said:
I remembered after I posted that I read a thread over on Spyderco Forums recently about using a 50/50 mixture of Simple Green and water with an India stone. Said it cut much faster and left a finer polish than oil. Will probably give that a try.
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I had tried Simple Green with water, and I'm sure it could work too. I used the stone over a water-filled sink, dunking it into the water, and then spritzing the SG on the wet stone. I'd periodically dip the stone into the sink to flush away the swarf as I worked, then re-spritz it with the SG. Simple Green is pretty strong stuff, designed to cut grease & oil; I noticed it really dried out my hands after working with it, which confirmed it's grease/oil-cutting capability. It's also slightly caustic (MSDS lists the pH @ 9.5 ± 0.5), so you'll want to make sure non-stainless blades are rinsed thoroughly (it left some rust spots on a 1095 knife I'd sharpened with it). Having said all that, I'm sure it works great as a cleaner for the stone. But in my case, I decided to try other options. Part of the reason I'd recently tried using some honing oil on one of mine was, at least the oil doesn't dry out my hands like the water or soap/cleaner & water options will. I frequently use mineral oil-based hand lotions to keep the dry skin under control, so the honing oil (i.e., mineral oil) made sense to me, albeit for something other than the usual reasons.


David
 
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This comes up a lot - based on my experience, I'd stick with a light mineral oil. HD usually has the can right next to the stone, both made by Norton. If anything worked better, Norton would put it in a can and sell it. Regular pharmacy mineral oil works great too - is only a few centistokes higher viscosity and does a great job suspending most of the junk off the stone's surface.

Other stuff can be used, especially on different stone compositions, but silicon carbide breaks down faster and cleaner when used with oil. The abrasives stay in better shape and continue to cleanly remove steel with less pressure. This and the added tiny bits of abrasive moving around on the stone surface help a lot with reducing burr formation in the first place. Another good reason to use oil is that water-based fluids will swell the skin on the finger pads, potentially reducing their ability to feel out the burr or three finger sticky test.

I have used my SiC stones and other vitreous stones with soapy water, plain water, oil, alcohol and water etc. Have consistently gotten the best results from using with oil, and in the long run is no messier than any other fluid one can use. They can be used dry, and SiC tends to tolerate this a lot better than most AlumOx stones, but is best when done for light work only. Feel free to experiment, it won't harm the stone. If going from oil back to water-based you just need to add a few drops of soap or other surfactant and it'll flow over the surface just fine.

The larger SIC stones sold at ACE would be my choice for a reprofiling stone over the Econo stone, the coarse side has visibly larger abrasive grains and cuts very quickly - the fine side is not as fine as the Econo stone either, but is not a real issue if you're going to be working through a progression.

Here is a link to a recent video I did with the newer Mexican made Econo stone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF2Y7Hha0MQ
 
Imagine that - oilstones work best with…oil. Appreciate you boys keeping me squared away on here.
 
Norton economy stone , coarse and fine or Norton India coarse-fine.420hc should be easy to reprofile with any low grit stone.
 
Heavy, yes it comes up a lot and we have to keep saying it. Well stated. I'm convinced mineral oil gives the better results. All the written posts on it being messy is hog-wash. DM
 
Not to be misconstrued in my earlier comments:

My own sharpening results, with the Norton Econo stone in SiC, and an ACE 4" SiC stone (on which I tried the oil) are essentially similar across the board with oil, water or dry (meaning GOOD results on all). As I mentioned, the thing I like about them is that they've been pretty consistent tried any way, oiled or not, with other aspects being 'different' (mainly feedback, but also how the grit is handled or contained or rinsed off). Whether any of that translates to 'works better' is subjective, depending on the user, and how they adapt technique to a particular stone. This is why I always recommend trying any/all options. In my own case, the 'advantage' of oiling the stone had much more to do with my own 'convenience of use' preferences (mainly for the sake of my hands), and much less to do with any significant difference in sharpening results, which were nil. In particular, between DRY and OILED, my results were essentially identical, both being very good; only the feel of blade-on-stone was different, with the stone feeling a bit more aggressive when used dry. Sometimes I find that advantageous, as it makes it easier to feel the stone 'bite' at the apex, when feeling for flush bevel contact.


David
 
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