S30V: How toothy is right for it?

singularity35

singularity35

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Mar 1, 2010
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I have read a lot of posts here saying that S30V performs better when it's not polished but is kept toothy. My question is, what grit size is, in your experience, good for S30V? thanks.
 
Benchmades S30V works really well for me using my Norton 1K. I had a Smith's Diamond sharpener that was at 750 that made a good slicing edge for rope, but didn't make very clean cuts as far as that went.

Still I think 1K is a relatively low grit.
 
It's going to depend on what task you want the knife to perform best at. If you want it to slice really well for coarser cutting (more EDC tasks)but still be hair popping sharp, a 1200 mesh diamond hone works nicely. If you plan on skinning/processing game I'd probably stop at a 1 micron polish. Its more of a range of grits with most steels though, some perform in a tight range and some in a very distant range. For S30V I wouldn't drop below 1k and I wouldn't take it over a 1 micron finish, below 1k the effort/force needed to make the cut increases greatly and the simply cuts like a duller knife. Above 1 micron the edge still get sharper but tends to go flat and roll, making cutting ability a total loss as the knife will simply no longer cut.


My usual care of my EDC S30V blades is either a 1200 diamond followed by a few passes on a strop or a 8k diamond and stop or make a few passes on the strop. Stropping after my 8k diamond depends on how good I'm doing that day :p
 
Thanks. what grit is the DMT EEF at? should I stop at the EF? It's probably different for different geometries. For example, my S30V military is quite hair whittling if I finish it with the EEF while mu chinook 3 gets splits hair best if finished with the EF only. the 'nook 3 seems to cut less efficiently when finished with EEF. I am really suspecting my technique though.
 
IDK, I like a polished edge over "toothy".

That said, S30V seems to micro-chip on me (~59 RC) so it seems to become "toothy" by itself.

It really has everything to do with your intended use I think.

DMT EEF is 3 micron/8000 mesh. I usually go a little more polished than this, but not by much.
 
I like a toothy edge on S30V. I stop at either the "fine" DMT stone, or after using the flats of the brown Spyderco rods. When I ran a side-by-side manila rope cutting edge retention comparison with S30V sharpened this way, it considerably out-performed the best melt-alloy steel in my inventory.

To me, polishing the blade made from a steel that gets its super performance from carbides defeats the purpose of the carbides. If you polish and cut through them until they don't stick out beyond the steel matrix, then they aren't able to do their job.

YMMV.
 
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