Macro burr versus micro burr

It’s cold in Alabama and I got bored so I thought I’d run a little experiment. I had a piece of either basswood or balsa 1” square and 6” long on my bench. I decided to use it as something between a strop and a hone. To do that I sanded 3 sides flat to 180 grit on my surface plate and impregnated those sides with diamond paste of 5000, 8000 and 14000 grit. I applied the paste, smoothed it out and then used my heat gun and worked it into the wood with my finger tip. After that I just needed a knife. I found one that was sharp enough that stropping could restore the edge without re-sharpening. It would cut normal paper but wouldn’t shave and was tearing phone book paper. Anyway, it’s a fairly thick ground knife but I got it push cutting phonebook paper, shaving a little too well and making fairly clean cuts in paper towel. The cuts above the tip in the paper towel are where I stopped.

It definitely worked. I can’t say that I’m surprised because I’ve heard of people stropping on wood. In fact, I’ve heard some people swear by it. Anyway, It would have gone a little faster had I started at coarser grit but I didn’t have any coarser diamond paste. It took a minute to get the feel of it since the wood doesn’t give any. Looking at the edge with my strongest loupe I couldn’t see any discernible remains of a burr but then again I didn’t re-sharpen before the test. I’m not sure if this method is tremendously different than using hard backed leather strops but it certainly is viable. Whether it offers any advantages or disadvantages would take further testing and a level of magnification I don’t have. I doubt the end user would notice any difference in edge performance in the real world.

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I use to and still kind of go anal on sharpening knives on my personal knives. Then I realized in the real world 99% of my users would never be able to keep that up. I now recommend the use of the A4 wart hog V sharpener. No affiliation at all. A idiot can use it and make a kitchen knife sharp way above what they have been used to. Users are tickled to death having a sharp knife that they only have to sharpen once in awhile
 
I get macro burs from reprofiling fatory v edges to convex and I find them extremely difficult to remove with a strop loaded with regular white compound. Once that initial macro burr is fixed, regular sharpenings/micro burrs are much easier to deal with.

It's the one part of my sharpening that I haven't fully mastered and it pisses me off to no end. I hate burrs.
 
SwissHeritageCo said:
I get macro burs from reprofiling fatory v edges to convex and I find them extremely difficult to remove with a strop loaded with regular white compound. Once that initial macro burr is fixed, regular sharpenings/micro burrs are much easier to deal with.

It's the one part of my sharpening that I haven't fully mastered and it pisses me off to no end. I hate burrs.
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Are you freehand sharpening or belt sharpening? For freehand I generally see people recommend 8-10 alternating passes on the stone for burr removal. I use a guided sharpener and generally don’t have much trouble removing the burr. Steels don’t all behave the same either. I have had a few knives that put up a heck of a fight.
 
ScarFoot said:
Are you freehand sharpening or belt sharpening? For freehand I generally see people recommend 8-10 alternating passes on the stone for burr removal. I use a guided sharpener and generally don’t have much trouble removing the burr. Steels don’t all behave the same either. I have had a few knives that put up a heck of a fight.
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Freehand.

Problem is I use a really fast loose wristed rocking motion to reprofile, holding the stone pependicular to the blade. For whatever reason doing single slow strokes in that fashion feels weird... but maybe I'll try a stropping motion on the stones instead.

And yes! I've had a hell of a time with D2 and AR-RPM9.
 
SwissHeritageCo said:
Freehand.

Problem is I use a really fast loose wristed rocking motion to reprofile, holding the stone pependicular to the blade. For whatever reason doing single slow strokes in that fashion feels weird... but maybe I'll try a stropping motion on the stones instead.

And yes! I've had a hell of a time with D2 and AR-RPM9.
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You might try tightening up and slowing down your motion. I always felt that when I was free-handing I was still getting a convex edge even when I was trying to keep the edge bevel as flat as possible on the stone and making very deliberate passes. Unless you’re sharpening knives to do some type of chopping, I don’t personally believe the edge needs to be very convex to make a noticeable difference. But, that’s just my opinion. If you’re sharpening an axe it’s a different story.

Also, try sharpening one side at a time if you aren’t already. Light alternating strokes on the last stone generally always took care of the main burr for me while free hand sharpening.
 
Read some articles this morning by Dr. Marv on stropping. Very interesting. He is finding that stropping is creating a burr which goes against the premise of this thread...

And I did some more testing on knife edges without stropping and have zero keeness issues even after a decent amount of use so either I am removing or creating a functional burr or we are overblowing the stropping situation.
 
You’re more than likely removing the wire burr on the stones which is certainly a reasonable assumption. At that point you’ve generally got a pretty good edge and what most people would consider a sharp knife. Especially if you work up to very fine stones.

Stropping refines the edge further and generally removes what’s left of the wire burr since it doesn’t tear off in one piece. That can be seen clearly with a normal microscope or in some cases a good loupe. Could a burr be created by stropping? I don’t see why not if you stropped long enough. You’re basically doing the same thing you’re doing while sharpening albeit at a much finer grit with fewer strokes and much lighter pressure. I suspect it would just be a much smaller (SEM level magnification) burr.

At any rate you eventually go past the point of diminishing returns. I’ve gotten some of my knives scary sharp just for fun but it took a lot of time and ultimately got dull at about the same rate as a normal edge.
 
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