S35VN with a coarse finish?

halden.doerge

halden.doerge

I'll Sharpen Your Knife
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I posted this in the Maintenance forum as well, but I thought it'd be worth posting here, too. Hope that's ok with the powers that be.

I do quite a lot of sharpening, and I sharpen and use a lot of S35VN. Generally I've always done a high-polished finish, working my way up to 0.6 micron cermics and finishing with 1 and 0.5 diamond strops. And this has always proved to be a great, easily maintainable, attractive edge for use.

However, lately I've really enjoyed the results I got on S90V by finishing on a much more coarse grit (400 diamond stones). I'm curious if people have any experience running S35VN with a coarse finish, how well it maintains, cuts, etc. Obviously it has a lot less vanadium in it than S90V, so I'm curious if it would "like" a toothy edge in a similar way or not. Thoughts?
 
I tend to cut a lot of synthetic materials throughout the day. In fact, almost exclusively as I work in air conditioning. Personally I like the toothy edge much better on my s35vn CRKs and my s110V manix. A high polished edged seems like it slides through the material more and it doesn't have that bite that a toothy edge does. I don't run them way coarse, but not high polished. Usually I finish on 600 grit diamond stones and do about 50-100 back and forth swipes on a cermaic rod.
 
I do a similar.
Silicon carbide at #320 or #400 (Congress tools moldmaster) and then strop with 1 micron diamond paste.
I get a toothy edge which can gravity cut soft tissue paper.


Edit: I guess it was a exaggeration.
 
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I sharpen a little toothy, it seems to make a better working edge but it depends a little on the steel.

1095 and AUS8 600 grit Aluminum oxide
154CM and D2 600 silicon carbide
S30v and M390 1200 diamond.
 
I like to finish on either the Spyderco medium ceramic or a 600 DMT with most steels. Sometimes I will go to the 1200 DMT.

For giggles I sometimes will go finer but I don't usually feel it is worth the extra effort and often the edges don't work as good for my uses. Going with a quick two stone sharpening using a diamond stone followed by some edge refinement with the medium Spyderco is just so quick, so easy and so effective. I see folks sharpen through an extensive progression of grits and it produces a beautiful edge but it also seems like a labor of love.
 
miso2 said:
I do a similar.
Silicon carbide at #320 or #400 (Congress tools moldmaster) and then strop with 1 micron diamond paste.
I get a toothy edge which can push cut soft tissue paper.

Click to expand...

Cmon, that's obviously not push cutting. Push cutting requires the knife to cut the material supporting itself, not holding the material taut. A cheap stock kitchen knife could do that.

Look up the Worksharp demonstration video, that is proper push cutting. And as you could tell, that would be extremely difficult with soft paper.
 
Haha Jeebus, idk.
Just in bewteen most medium and fine grit stones is what I like for the 35vn. Not crazy toothy but not mirrored just hazy with a bright reflection. Then I hit the 1 mic strop, diamond or CBN only. None of that rouge stuff.

I think that works best for 35vn in my experience with the Hinderer xm18,CRK large Inkosi and ZT 0450 that I owned.
I tried other stuff but that was my favorite.

Now for S30V. I drop the grit go a more toothy finish to really accentuate the raw aggression the ol' dirty 30v takes at the edge I think of it a a more blue collar steel that should focus more on cuttin' endurance versus 35vn should be given a little more polish to highlight it's slight attributes over the dirty 30.
If you put the same edge on s35vn as S30v then S30v will come out on top. It's only when you give it that a little bit of polish that the S35vn starts to shine a little more ;) haha
 
Like you I find the toothy edge works great for a daily user and it's easy to maintain.

I use 16 Micron CBN it is equal to 1000 grit ... and I like to finish most my EDC S35VN blades on a 600 or 800 stone and strop with the 16 Micron CBN ... I don't strop alot to polish just bring the edge out a bit.
 
Toothy seems to work well on high carbide steels like D2, S30V/S35Vn, CTS-XHP. I usually hone these on DMT red and don't bother with the ultra-fine green.
 
Stopping at 600 DMT followed by 1 micron cbn or diamond paste on leather yields a toothy and durable edge.
In my sharpening "travels," so to speak, I've found that as long as your edge is properly apexed and deburred, stopping after a coarse DMT 325 followed by 1 micron cbn or diamond on leather will yield a very sharp yet super "grabby" edge as well.
 
Those knives in the youtube were hardly sharp. If the knives I make have that much trouble cutting a tomato I would start sharpening them all over again. I use a Wicked Edge and go to the 1000 grit stone then run it down the ceramic rod twice to remove the wire edge. Falls through a tomato almost by itself.
 
S30v to s125v all seem to do well woth a toothy edge. I have heard it said that s30v doesn't accept a polish as well as some other steels and seems to do better (whatever that means) with a toothy edge.

In my experience my s35vn is way more able to take a polished edge than s30v. However from my experience that does not mean it can't rock that same toothy edge its s30v brother looks so fashionable in.
 
i agree with deadboxhero. I find my s35 does really well by ending with my spyderco fine stone, but still does fine ending in the medium. My s30v seems to lose a bit of its nice performance when i move past the spyderco medium stone. So for s30v i will stop at the medium and then do a few strops with green compound just to ensure all burr is gone. When i really want to be sure of a clean burr-free edge, i will put on my headlamp to make any deficiency shine like a beacon.
 
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