Grit Progression

[Alcoholiday]

Ok, so for the time being I am sharpening with DMT Diafold hones and a Lansky angle clamp. The DMT hones are about two weeks old now, and I am still struggling a little with them, however that's a story for another day. I have the XC, C, F, XF, & XXF hones, which, according to DMT are, 220 mesh (60 micron), 325 mesh (45 micron), 600 mesh (25 micron), 1200 mesh (9 micron), and 8000 mesh (3 micron), respectively. I also have some DMT Diapaste in 6, 3 & 1 micron sizes.

I was initially concerned about what seems like a large jump in size between the XF and XXF hones, and thought stropping with 6 micron DMT paste would fill the gap nicely, however I was advised by some helpful people on here to just finish with the XXF hone, then strop with the 6 micron, followed by the 3 and 1. This has worked just fine so far. However...

I would really like to buy a bottle of HA 1 micron Boron Carbide paste, and use only that to strop with. My question is, can I make the jump from the XXF hone directly to the HA 1 micron paste without any issues? I would really like to avoid having to buy additional stones, pastes, etc. if I don't have to. Any ideas?

Also, any recommendations for compounds below 1 micron? Thanks!

 

[BluntCut MetalWorks]

I would really like to buy a bottle of HA 1 micron Boron Carbide paste, and use only that to strop with. My question is, can I make the jump from the XXF hone directly to the HA 1 micron paste without any issues? I would really like to avoid having to buy additional stones, pastes, etc. if I don't have to. Any ideas?

Nothing wrong with a big jump from 3 to 10 micron toothy sharpened edge to 0.5 to 1.0 micron strop. My progression nowaday is XXF (3micron but effectively more like 5micron) -> 1.0 diamond/cbn -> 0.1 polydiamond -> plain leather. Sometime, to keep extra toothy I skip 1.0um step and use abit more pressure on 0.1um to convex/round the teeth.

Also, any recommendations for compounds below 1 micron? Thanks!

Just pick a smallest abrasive you want to try - 0.5, 0.25 or 0.1um of CBN/Monodiamond/Polydiamond, get it/them from Chefsknifetogo or Unitedstatesproducts. Any format - paste/compound, spray, slurry,suspension - will work fine on a strop.

 

[Alcoholiday]

Just pick a smallest abrasive you want to try - 0.5, 0.25 or 0.1um of CBN/Monodiamond/Polydiamond, get it/them from Chefsknifetogo or Unitedstatesproducts. Any format - paste/compound, spray, slurry,suspension - will work fine on a strop.

I was going to give the 0.5 HA Chromium Oxide a try, but I am really leaning toward trying a spray for my sub-micron compounds. What do you strop with? I am having a bit of trouble getting the hang of the bare MDF strops I made, so I am considering glueing some leather or balsa to them. Would you recommend CBN or Diamond spray, and why?

 

[BluntCut MetalWorks]

I was going to give the 0.5 HA Chromium Oxide a try, but I am really leaning toward trying a spray for my sub-micron compounds. What do you strop with? I am having a bit of trouble getting the hang of the bare MDF strops I made, so I am considering glueing some leather or balsa to them. Would you recommend CBN or Diamond spray, and why?

0.5um HA Cr2O3 is awesome stuff for low alloy steels (low in VC & WC), it abrades/cuts fast & yields clean edge. I don't know when I would use up my 2oz bottle, since a 8x3 strop only needs 2 beads/drops of this stuff. Naturally, I over charged my balsa strops with avg 5 drops - powdery green, it works fine; some CrO just fluffs off. Maybe I should handout CrO charged balsa strop to strangers instead just friends.

For high alloy steels, get either CBN & diamond 0.5/0.1um spray, both work well. Polydiamond is friable (most are) so the strop is slowly transforming into a finer finish but not 100% finer since some polydiamond particles won't break-down. For these sub-micron abrasives, I use horse-butt leather back with any thing seem convenient balsa/mdf/hardwood/packed-shipping-paper/etc.. I experiments alot, so I bought various bulk diamond suspension to splatters them around.