KME sharpening help. Fine scratches up the blade.

[Roikyou]

I use the loop quite often. I find new knives with greater than 20 degree per side, I tend to like to bring them down to 18. My habit has been when it's 20 or greater, grab the 50 and go to town. Moving forward, I might continue but not worry about the apex or of course not the burr. Take the sharpy off, move to the other side, take the sharpy off. Move to the 100 grit, sharpy both side, sharpy remove both side. 140 grit, get the burr on both sides, into the edge to remove the burr, work up the remaining grits. Here's where my mirrors have been lately, moving to chosera stones, work the 400 up. I think once the edge is set, (and I work on S30V/S35VN or softer) to resharpen, I just skip the gold and start with the 400 chosera. I do have the venev stones also. I am going to try the SIC stones also.

I think my downfall lately is getting stuck on the 50 grit, spending way too much time (and yes, probably taking too much metal off) trying to get the perfect apex with the 50 grit.

 

[Mo2]

I use the loop quite often. I find new knives with greater than 20 degree per side, I tend to like to bring them down to 18. My habit has been when it's 20 or greater, grab the 50 and go to town. Moving forward, I might continue but not worry about the apex or of course not the burr. Take the sharpy off, move to the other side, take the sharpy off. Move to the 100 grit, sharpy both side, sharpy remove both side. 140 grit, get the burr on both sides, into the edge to remove the burr, work up the remaining grits. Here's where my mirrors have been lately, moving to chosera stones, work the 400 up. I think once the edge is set, (and I work on S30V/S35VN or softer) to resharpen, I just skip the gold and start with the 400 chosera. I do have the venev stones also. I am going to try the SIC stones also.

I think my downfall lately is getting stuck on the 50 grit, spending way too much time (and yes, probably taking too much metal off) trying to get the perfect apex with the 50 grit.

One thing about using anything other than diamond or cbn on steel with 4% or more Vanadium is that the abrasives like sic and alumox are not hard enough to abrade Vanadium. This seems to be hotly debated. It's said that sic should be fine up to 1000grit since it's a bit coarse and will just plow through... Seeing that the Vanadium is on the micron level. Others suggest it's pulling them out or not abrading the Vanadium. Either way you can achieve mirror edges.

When I use the kme I just use diamond through out or SiC and strop with diamond paste. S30v and s35vn are no big deal because they have 4% or less Vanadium. So you're course of action sounds solid.

Ive not tried the chosera stones before. But the idea is solid, use diamond to set the angle and move onto the main stones your going to use. I'm no expert though. More experienced guys would be best to take advice on for that.

 

[Roikyou]

Even with my limited experience, the chosera stones provide a really nice mirror, I have the whole set, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000 and 10000, I've gotten better results than lapping films with the chosera. But of course, you won't be able to use on really hard steels. And of course, if you go through the whole gold set and chosera set, that's a lot of steps to go through and time. The 400 should be enough to get a burr.

My recent mistake is if you don't set the chosera to the exact angle or really close to the gold stones, you'll have this thin toothy ledge between the mirror and the blade. Just another learning step. I tried using the angle cube on the gold and match it with the chosera, got that result. I have the stone thickness guide that I might switch back to instead of using the angle cube between stones.

 

[coltc11]

Did another one tonight. Taped it all up with electrical tape, used soapy water on the stones, and had no issues and no scratches.

The soapy water thing was nice.

Thanks all.