I am not getting the sharpness I want off of my diamond stones when I free hand.

S

Squashfan

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Jun 6, 2012
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Still playing with freehand but I am not getting clean arm hair shaving sharpness off of my stones. The stones are diamond and the knife is a Victorinox pairing knife. I raised the burr with the coarse then switched to the fine diamond followed by the ultrafine. Normally, I would have done the medium in between but since this knife will be abused (not buy me) I skipped the medium to save time.
After that grit progression the knife would shave but it wasn't pleasant. I had to go the the black compound copy paper strop to get it to shave cleanly. But, boy howdy, would it shave after the black compound!

The only other thing I can think of is that I am terrified of using edge leading strokes to finish the knife. I had to resort to edge trailing strokes. But I did eliminate almost all of the burr.



Thanks in advance for the help,
Squashfan
 
For what you say, I think you're doing pretty good, possibly there was a little bit of burr left on the edge out the stones but you cleaned it up on the strop, so the apex must be clean.
It takes a lot of time and practice to be able to completely clean the burr off the diamond stones, specially with softer steel like victorinox use. And then there is days and days. One session everything goes smooth as silk and others you cannot get the f****** thing sharp ;)
 
If your stones are broken in, then all you need to do is a very LIGHT edge leading stroke on your last stone. No pressure on the blade, just a light swipe is all that is necessary. Then on to your strop for a polish finish.

Blessings,

Omar
 
For very soft(ish) steels like the Vic's, as well as for simple carbon steels like 1095, CV, etc., I no longer even use a coarse or coarser diamond hone on these. In fact, on a very small & thin blade like the SAK's, starting with a Fine or EF is all I've needed; even for complete re-bevelling. Anything coarser is big-time overkill, as it will remove much more steel than necessary, and is very hard to minimize the roughness left by it, on the edge. These steels are like butter on a diamond hone, and coarse diamond won't usually be productive, in terms of shaping or refining at all. A Fine or EF will still remove steel very fast, and then finishing with an extremely light touch on an EF or even EEF will leave the edge in better shape.

I've had better results using a back/forth 'scrubbing' technique along the long axis of the blade (heel-to-tip and back), when setting new bevels on small blades like these with a diamond hone. I've found it's easier to maintain a steady angle this way, and the resulting bevels are always more even and flat. I keep the pad of my index finger along the side of the blade, near as possible to the edge, while scrubbing, to monitor the contact feedback from the blade. I've also found that using mineral oil or similar lubrication on the hone enhances the feedback and also keeps everything smoother (therefore easier to control).


David
 
I agre3 eith david.

I prefer 4000-8000 grit only and only use 400-1000 to repair.
 
I don't use diamonds at all for any steel less than S30V. Water Stones are far superior. IMHO, even a two sided India stone would be better than a diamond hone for soft steels.
 
Too soft and too thin. The diamonds are simply overkill for the task.

You will likely find better results using the coarse diamond then the strop.
 
Pretty wide array of responses here, which prompted me to try another option.

I just picked up one of my Vic SAKs and my 4" Ace Hardware stone (coarse/fine silicon carbide oil stone). Used a 'scrubbing' motion as I described earlier, on the DRY hone (I ordinarily would put some oil or other lube on it). Used maybe a total of 20 back/forth strokes on each side of the blade (probably twice what was needed), using the FINE side of the stone only. This had it roughly cutting hairs from my forearm, and I could feel the burr with my thumbnail quite easily.

I then gave the blade about 5 passes per side on a balsa stropping block with 600 grit SiC compound (arbitrary choice; this was just conveniently laying nearby), which cleaned up most of the burr. Better shaving still.

I then stropped the blade on the sueded side of my leather belt with green compound (maybe another 5 strokes per side), then lightly stropped it on my jeans (mainly just cleaning up the blade of compound/mineral oil). The blade was cleanly and smoothly slicing phonebook paper after that. That's my litmus test for blades I sharpen; if I can slice through the whole sheet (top to bottom & side to side) with no snags or slips, it's good to go. Start to finish, less than 10 minutes of very relaxed work.

This all reminded me of the same thing that crosses my mind, every time I sharpen a SAK blade: it's much too easy to overthink it and overdo it with these blades. Almost all the troubles I've previously had in sharpening these have come from 'too much' (fill in the blank with) pressure, abrasive grit, too many strokes, etc. Virtually any abrasive you use with these is going to work very fast; in part due to the soft & simple steel, and partly due to the fact that these blades are so thin. Just don't have to remove much steel at all to make a big change. Both LESS and LIGHTER always seems to win, with these blades.

(BTW, I'm inclined to believe Ben's suggestion of the India stone should work well also; I just don't have one yet to try that out, though I'd very much like to. ;))


David
 
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I sharpen on the same Norton 4k/8k for both my knives and my straight razor. I completely agree with an above poster that this is plenty for sharpening. I restored a pretty dull 154cm blade for a friend the other day and the 4k ground in a new edge far faster than you might expect. The lowest grit I will even use is 1k and only for getting out chips.
 
Before I get tarred and feathered for using the diamond, I should point out that this was a test. I have a Lansky two sided stone that I would normally have used for this. But I have had trouble in the past turning out consistent bevels with the diamond. If I can't turn out a shaving sharp edge with the diamond now, I won't be able to do it on a harder steel later. So this was a test run and, in that aspect, the bevels were very nice by my standards.

Now, I have tried the scrubbing motion but I haven't used it enough to get good with it. I put an extreme convex on the bevel with the scrubbing motion. If that was what I was aiming for it wouldn't be a problem. But I want a V edge. So this time I tried going in circles and it worked pretty well, again, IMO.
 
It sounds like you are beginning to get better results from your set-up. Just keep at it and it will get better with practice and experience. You talk about "my standards" and "in my opinion", which is key to what you are trying to accomplish. In the end, it is you that needs to be satisfied with your results, not a bunch of forumites. Not sure that is a real word.:confused: Hang in there and good luck!

Blessings,

Omar
 
I literally do 10% of the number of strokes that I do for most of the "common" enthusiast steels (e.g. S30V or ZDP-189). My first time sharpening a SAK after being used to sharpening other steels was a surprise--I couldn't get the thing sharp no matter what I did.

It was very frustrating, so I put it down and came back the next day since it seemed like everything I had no effect at all. It really only takes a few strokes per side on a SAK to sharpen it.
 
OHALLUM said:
It sounds like you are beginning to get better results from your set-up. Just keep at it and it will get better with practice and experience. You talk about "my standards" and "in my opinion", which is key to what you are trying to accomplish. In the end, it is you that needs to be satisfied with your results, not a bunch of forumites. Not sure that is a real word.:confused: Hang in there and good luck!

Blessings,

Omar
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words, Omar. I have learned somethings from this thread. So I sat down last night to sharpen my Opinel on the Lansky stone. I absolutely could not raise a burr on any part but the belly. After about 30 min I began to suspect something was amiss. The primary bevel is bent. That is going to be fun to sharpen.

One more thing. I think what surprised me is that I couldn't shave hair comfortably with the Vic pairing knife. I am fairly certain that I could get a comfortable shave off of the fine diamond stone on my Lansky guided system. But, that is a guided system on a different steel so all bets are off. In retrospect, I should have payed more attention to what my fingers were telling me about sharpness.
 
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