Round waterstone

FortyTwoBlades said:
Yeah--that's why I'm curious. I believe that the addition of small quantities of super-abrasive (diamond or CBN) to bonded abrasives has the potential to improve performance and yet the only bonded stones out there I usually see with diamond are those Venev ones, which are very thin because they're made with straight diamond.
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It doesn't make sense. As with your American Mutt, you don't need 100% diamond to get very good results. 100% diamond might not even work as well as a blend, certainly across a wide range of steels I'd be surprised.

Yet it becomes the limiting factor in how you formulate the binder just to control cost.

10%, maybe less, added to any waterstone would allow it to cut high VC steels like a champ and only increase price by a modest amount. I believe this sort of stone will eventually be common and will become the dominant type - is a good intersection of cost, performance, and longevity.
 
Actually calculating it out based on diamond powder costs I'm finding, it would increase the price by a significant amount, even at 3% per volume. A small stone like my field stones (5/8" x 1-5/8" x 6") would increase in cost by about $52. At a 1%, though, you'd only have an increase by about $17 though. I expect that bonded stones could probably get away with that small of a percentage and be fine, though, and the grit used could be very fine with the same grade used across multiple stone grits by only changing the primary abrasive grain. Since the job of the diamond would be pretty much exclusively for abrading the carbides, having them small would make sense, while also keeping the cost down since powders with single-digit micron rating are generally the most economical.
 
I believe HeavyHanded's analysis... that the stone has diamonds, but like FortyTwoBlades... when I saw this at a store, and saw "Diamond Wheel"... I looked it up on their website, and found no mention of it... (you'd think it would be in big bold print). Made me wonder about it. I also found a page somewhere, (that I can't find now), that said the stone was for "sharpening only", and "not adequate enough to fix damage". It's a weird "conflicting" bit of information.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Actually calculating it out based on diamond powder costs I'm finding, it would increase the price by a significant amount, even at 3% per volume. A small stone like my field stones (5/8" x 1-5/8" x 6") would increase in cost by about $52. At a 1%, though, you'd only have an increase by about $17 though. I expect that bonded stones could probably get away with that small of a percentage and be fine, though, and the grit used could be very fine with the same grade used across multiple stone grits by only changing the primary abrasive grain. Since the job of the diamond would be pretty much exclusively for abrading the carbides, having them small would make sense, while also keeping the cost down since powders with single-digit micron rating are generally the most economical.
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I think the cost is relative to the purity and grading. I'm coming up with prices as low as $.05 per gram. A 6" benchstone would only cost a couple more bucks to hit 10%.

At $.40/gram it would cost an extra $10, and that looks like an easy to hit price point if buying in bulk.

Assuming you could get a reasonable particle distribution, it would be pretty economical to blend it into a 10x1x3" for about $30 over the base price - still a bargain.

The price starts to climb as the distribution tightens up, but as you say - a relatively fine single size might well work across the board. About 6-10u would be perfect.
 
cbwx34 said:
I believe HeavyHanded's analysis... that the stone has diamonds, but like FortyTwoBlades... when I saw this at a store, and saw "Diamond Wheel"... I looked it up on their website, and found no mention of it... (you'd think it would be in big bold print). Made me wonder about it. I also found a page somewhere, (that I can't find now), that said the stone was for "sharpening only", and "not adequate enough to fix damage". It's a weird "conflicting" bit of information.
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There are a couple of OK videos showing it at work. I found if I graded it coarse it cut pretty darn fast, giving that wetstone sharpeners are not known for speed. For regular sharpening is fast enough as long as you don't swap the stone for a better finish.

I wonder if the company's links to Australia might help with access to cheap industrial grade natural diamonds. IDK...

Like I said, its a heck of a stone.
 
Regarding density, diamond is 3.53g/cm^3 while AlOx is 3.95g/cm^3 and SiC is 3.21 g/cm^3. I don't think that there'll be that significant of an impact on cost resulting from lowered density.
 
I've come across values as low as 2.7 for natural diamonds of low clarity (industrial). Apparently they are less dense than more pure samples, but are actually harder than higher density/higher clarity. I confess to having very little practical understanding re industrial natural/synthetic etc and differences in density, reflectance....

I agree in general, the volume difference isn't huge, but it is a factor. When I mix my compound, the amount of diamond powder per slug is a decent pile even though only eight carats per, approx 7%.
 
As a little update, I was using the Triton to sharpen a 1" chisel today. Every time I took it off the tool rest the angel shifted a tiny bit, it was grinding steadily but slowly.

I go fed up with it at about 8-10 minutes, unmounted the stone and used it manually. In 5 minutes I had the edge completely reset, in another 5 I had overground it on a Suzuki Ya 1k, microbevel on 8k and a few passes on CrO on two sheets of paper over Washboard. Treetopping arm hair in mass quantities.

Big round stones are cool!
 
It's difficult to stabilize diamond grain in waterstone. For example, Venev diamonds utilize boron nitride (which is strong abrasive too) to confine diamonds and increase abrasive power.
Following local industrial standards, Venev diamond net weight ratio is in range from 9% to 34%. Wholesale price of synthetic diamond powder of Venev is 55-80 cents/gram.
Diamond wheels of desired form has the name 6A2. Most of 6A2 wheels are narrow, but wide ones exist.
 
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