Recommendation? KME on the way

fatheadhill

fatheadhill

Joined
Mar 30, 2008
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I've got a KME on the way as a Christmas gift, and I'm really looking forward to it. It comes with the 140-1500 grit diamond stones, but I've also ordered the Chosera 1000, 3000, and 5000 grit water stones.

Will this be enough to get me to a decent polish or should I add strop/CBN emulsion as well? I've got the 4 and 1.5 micron and two strops in my cart now, I'm just not sure if I need it at this point. I've already spent $220 for the sharpener and another $180 on accessories.

Thanks for any advice!!
 

it's a decent polish, i'd highschool grade rate it with A- for efforts and B- for results. He admitted that he could/would spend even more time energy efforts and improve the result but since he started out with a rough diamond stone 50grit there is absolutely no way that he could surpass a B+ results grade even with the best realistic efforts - this claim holds true for mean flat surfaces of say at least 1inch width, and the Mora bevel is pretty wide.

CHOSERA5000 will leave a decent polish. But even after 0.1micron leather stropping one can see the unidirectional nanoscratch lines caused by the 0.1micron particles under certain viewing/lighting angle combos with bare eyes ("sunshine glare"). Those lines would almost vanish if you did circular motions with the leather; while you can do circular motions with a CHOSERA5000 on the KME, you prolly wouldn't do it with a KME leather strop.

Imho no need to buy CBN emulsion/strops at this point. You could try diy methods first like the guided PTS method which i introduced to the world.
 
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Kreisler, thanks a bunch for the informative post. The video was very helpful! For what I'm looking to achieve, I think I'll go ahead and add the 4 and 1.5 micron strops to start(although it may cost me significantly more once the wife finds out!!!). Thanks again!
 
Oh..,I watched the video and saw the results he got on the Mora(which I would be satisfied with.., for now) with the strops and was fairly impressed. I took this as a recommendation for the strops/CBN emulsions.

I think I'll work through the diamonds and the Chosera stones that I have on order then add on from there if needed.

I'm still a bit confused on the difference between the strop/emulsion combo vs. the lapping films. I get the difference in what they are, but not why someone would choose one over the other or why both even need to exist. In my mind they they both perform a similar functioni, but lapping films will wear out faster(5-7 knives) than the strops thus making the strops more economical. Is this accurate?
 
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