I've done a few touch-ups in similar fashion and had good luck. My main observation was that if I tried going straight to the Spyderco Ultrafine, as I often do with other steels, the apex didn't crisp up as much as I wanted. When I gave it a few strokes on the fine stone, followed by ultra fine and then a quick couple passes on a 1 micron strop it was back to hair whittling with very little fuss. To me the ultra fine stone seems to burnish more than abrade for these harder steels. I like using a slightly more course abrasive followed by the ultra fine to burnish the edge, then finish with a diamond or CBN strop with a minimal number of passes.
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Maxamet
- Thread starter Blues
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I think I might just want to finish on the medium Spyderco ceramic and call it good...with or without additional stropping. Gives it a slight bit of toothiness yet quite a bit of refinement without going to great length.
I'm a big fan of that brown bench stone...(even if others call it gray).
I'm a big fan of that brown bench stone...(even if others call it gray).
That's reasonable. Honestly I have no practical reason to refine the edge as much as I can/often do other than my own amusement. The edge off of the medium stone is a nice mid-ground of toothy but semi-refined. Very useful for actual EDC tasks rather than just being showy doing cigarette paper push cutting and hair whittling.
On these high vanadium alloys, I like to strop them a little just to "refine the teeth" somewhat even if we're talking 4-9 micron CBN or something in that neighborhood. But I'm talking maybe 5 passes per side, if that. Not polishing really, just cleaning up any teeth left from the ceramics and lightly abrading any carbides which might be poking their little 2-4 micron heads out so they line up more tightly with the existing bevel.
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I have been using ceramic on S110V for a few years now and never had a problem. I have had a Maxamet LW and PM2 in rotation for the past couple of months and haven’t had to sharpen either yet.