Little question plez

James w

James w

Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Messages
951
Hey all


firts of all I'd like to say thank you to the community here at MTE y'all have been great help as I continue to get sharper and sharper blades....


2nd I hav a little tiny question I have a paddle strop but no idea what compound to put on it https://www.amazon.com/Woodstock-D2...489272272&sr=8-1&keywords=sharpening+compound

this was recommend to me but there is 11 :eek: yes 11 differnt types or colors maybe? I guess is there a better one? If not what should I go to right after my norton stone as a finishing step. Like which of the 11... also buying them all is not an option ;)


thx in advance,
James W.
 
Depends on your knife steels.

Regular carbon steels you can use regular compounds (I like Bark River black and white), more modern super steels you need diamond or cbn in them to actually do anything to them - otherwise a regular (non-diamond or cbn) compound only sharpens part of the steel structure, not the vanadium and other good stuff that make up a "super steel". ( I think, not an expert- I have used regular Bark River black and white compound to strop already sharp CPM3V knives, and I have gotten then noticeably sharper)- It may be I am not getting all of the steel matrix sharp, but it may not be that noticeable, or make a difference to most people.

There is a lot of useful info on this site about stropping- searching for the type of steel you have and stropping should yield a bunch of good results as well.
 
Well, you certainly don't need a 1lb bar. It'll last you forever. ;)

Black, Green, White compounds seem to be the most common, with Green being the most common single compound used.

I started with a 4oz bar of Elkay Green Compound. It worked well enough but I switched to diamond paste.

I got the DMT Diamond Paste set (9 + 3 + 1 micron tubes) on sale and pretty much settled on 3 micron.
 
When the option is there you always want to go for diamond or CBN.

After using many compounds and with the rising cost of custom formulations I too have gone back to DMT paste. Like TravisH, I too like the 3 micron compound. That's only of recent though, for the past nearly decade I have used 1 micron diamond exclusively.
 
Like a few others have already commented, diamond is really nice! I used a "regular" green compound for years and thought it was good. then I picked up some 3.5 micron diamond paste to polish scratches out of a watch crystal. I loaded up some diamond paste on my well used leather strop, and was amazed by the difference. I wish I would have started using the diamond paste years ago!
Bruce
 
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