King H2O Stones

Here's the latest. Over the weekend I dug out my Norton combo waterstones to see how they compare to the King ones I own. I've used these once or twice in the last 8 years or so, and for the same reasons I use my King stones so rarely - I just can't seem to get a nice edge with them. Pulled another victim out of my box o old knives (this one is an old CRKT m16 in Aus8 as well - I thought it was Aus6 but double checked this morning and was corrected). Using pretty much the identical technique as I use on my oil and diamond stones, I set to work at 1000 grit. Was able to raise a burr within 100 or so light strokes, flipped it, sprinkled a few drops on the stone, gave it another 100 and then alternated every three or four passes till the burr was invisible to the naked eye. Lightly stropped it and despite showing good, fine scratch pattern to the apex, and no light coming back when viewed dead on at 15x, it still wouldn't reliably shave arm hair, and could only just crosscut newsprint. Scratch pattern looks to have overprinted the previous rather thoroughly.

Open question to the waterstone aficionados - what peculiarities of waterstones could be accounting for these mediocre results? Are there specific "best practices" re slurry formation, amount of water on the stone, flushing it off, letting it go somewhat dry toward the finish, could they need a lapping to improve the surface characteristics? I'm totally convinced/open to the idea that this a technique issue with me, but I am still clueless. There isn't another media that I have this kind of trouble with, and having it stay constant from King to Norton leaves me even more off guard.

HH
 
This happens on my King 1000 grit side. I think there is still a burr hanging on there, no matter how invisible it seems. Stropping may not remove it. Try increasing the angle for 1 or 2 very light strokes, maybe 5 degrees per side. You may also try a different steel, or maybe raise a burr, then cut into the stone to remove it, and repeat this several times. This gets rid of any damaged metal at the edge that may be there from previous rough use, and will frequently help remove damaged material from rough sharpening at the factory.
 
When I had troubles I took the advice and knowledge of Murray Carter and when finishing on any grit of waterstone my last few strokes are always edge trailing. Sharpen as normal but with your last say 10 strokes do edge trailing, you should see the edge improve quite a bit. Check out his view on YouTube too.
 
Do you find this works on stones other than water stones? I have had it work a couple of times on my 1000 grit side, but I haven't tried in a while.
 
Seems to work best with waterstones and my sic stone. Diamond or ceramic it doesn't seem to make any difference.
 
Quick update, I tried a knife in Aus 6 on my King 1200 and it produced a nice, arm hair shaving edge with no heroic efforts or particular technique. Used my usual fore and aft stroke and stropped on black compound. I'll have to do a little more looking into this with different metals - I can't believe there's that large a difference between A6 and A8.

HH
 
Further update - used both Norton 1000 grit and King 1200 grit on the same Aus8 knife that was giving me fits and they both produced a very nice arm shaving edge. I have absolutely no idea what the problem was, maybe the stones had become coated with something while they were in storage (wrapped in a rag on a shelf in the basement)?

I dunno, but order has been restored to the galaxy and that's all that matters.

HH

PS, waterstones rock.
 
I'm just getting good results with the waterstones, though I suspect there may be issues with my stones that a quick lapping will take care of. I think they produce a real nice edge with the least amount of burr formation, and in the shortest possible time, and with a very good cutting quality. There are good reasons why pretty much all of the straight razor forums recommend Norton waterstones up to 8000 grit more frequently over every other media out there.

That said, I don't believe there is anything more forgiving, versatile, and effective for most uses than sandpaper. It works on any steel, can be used to V grind or convex, grinds with very little burr formation, requires no lubricant of any kind, is light, rolls up small, and is easily replaced if damaged or worn. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't seem to produce as nice of a V grind as some other media, though by a small margin and that's just my personal opinion.

Short answer is "I don't know", but I'll be using them for my V grind edges for a while, and I suspect they may be my new go-to. I like diamonds, but the edge, for me, just doesn't have the same qualities as I get from SiC (or what I think I'm seeing from the waterstones).

HH
 
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