sharpening PERSPECTIVE: S30V time spent, skipping grits,VG10, 01

Wowbagger

Wowbagger

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I really don't know what to title this thread.
This is a quote from "some where else" in a chat room far, far away by a wizard behind the curtain .
NO ! ! ! DON'T LOOK BACK THERE ! ! ! !
​
Here's the back ground : I was searching away here and dale to find info on MAXEMET and I was trying to decide if I should just put to rest (but not into the grave) my obsession with the Carbon fiber handled 940 and just buy a Para 2 with MAXEMET (easier said than done; who knows when there will actually be enough of them made for me to actually get one shipped to me) . . .

So I'm reading along and learning that MAXEMET is sorta kinda like REX 121 . . . OK that helps and I'm reading about that and we are back to this industrial mold steel used on rollers and not edges but then it was used on edges and made M4 look weak. All in one sentence I lost interest and got my interest back in spades ( I can do without S110V . . . I love M4 and can't live without it).

When BLAMMO !

we are off on a rat hole about S30V (OK I been wondering if I shouldn't just get a 940 in green/S30V and relax).

This is some of the best sharpening info I have read, at least in a while, and it confirms some stuff I have EXPERIENCED =don't skip grits on the higher alloy edge steels. Also, and I am adding this (it isn't in the quote) if I am going to be sharpening on this cantankerous steel thing, using every grit in the list, I can save time and do it better if I have a guide that is going to keep the stone right on the edge for EVERY stroke rather than taking a chance on the wasted motion of hand sharpening.

PS: I recounted in a recent thread that my "Little Monster" kitchen knife in ~= 01 still had a hair whittling edge after many months of careful use on a plastic cutting board.

hhhmmmmmmmm
hhmm
hhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm
Should I cut out a 940 shaped blade from one of those little Japanese kitchen knives and put it in a Carbon Fiber handled 940-1 ? ? ? ?
I'm kind of thinking ? ? ? yeS ? ? ? !

anyway nonsense and fantasy aside THIS vvvvv is worth reading :

S30V has two common problems, one which can't be avoid and one which can and if you get two of them it can be the perfect storm of edge sharpening frustration.

It is a high vanadium steel and vanadium carbide is actually harder than most sharpening abrasives. In general, unless you use decent stones and/or are experienced with high vanadium steels this can cause problems itself.

It takes longer to grind, this often makes you want to use more force which over stresses the edge, makes heavy burrs or makes the edge just crack apart as you try to refine it. It also can make you skip steps and move ahead too fast in grits and end up with a too fine grit which can't do anything as there is too much material to be removed.

The first thing you should do is that when you sit down give yourself at least twice as much time on S30V as you do on VG-10 and at least 4-5 times compared to steels like O1. If you know that going in it gets rid of a lot of the issues. Now you can also compensate by using higher end stones, the Sigma Power Series for example easily grinds steels much harder to work than S30V - but if you have basic stones, be prepared for more time.

The second is don't skip grits until the work is done, how you know this can be determined in any number of ways. The method I use is very simple and I have described it in detail elsewhere. But it is critical you don't skip grits on hard to grind steels.

The killer though is when you get the other problem, the steel doesn't have a really nice hardening. If the steel has non-martensite phases, then the edge can be very hard to set properly as it will be gummy, not want to form crisp and just be troublesome. There are ways to deal with this (minimize burr formation methods) as well.

In general the first thing I would recommend is applying a relief grind, what ever angle you are going to sharpen, cut a few degrees off of it and grind the edge to that angle. Stop just short of it being sharp and then sharpen as regular at your normal angle. This relief angle you only really need to do once (unless you have extreme wear) but it will almost eliminate many of the problems noted in the above.

In general though, just realize that under it all, all you are trying to do is form a point of a wedge, at a basic level it is very simple. It only gets complicated when you let it, a little physics goes a long way as always in solving the problems.
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I'm sure that's fine advice for sharpening S30V if you have trouble making it "really sharp".

My problem with S30V is I think it's a waste of time steel. It takes way longer to sharpen. It gets 85% as sharp as many "lesser steels" when you do it right. But then it's edge holding is awful. It holds the "razor edge" for LESS time than lesser steels. Then it drops off to this kind of sharp, but not really sharp, but it'll cut cardboard and stuff level, for quite a long time.

I'm very frustrated with all my S30V blades. I'd honestly rather have 154CM or even something like 440C/8Cr13MoV instead. I should really get a Para2 in S110V and see what a REAL super steel can do.

S30V is just a waste of time.

Brian.
 
Does cutting a few degrees off refer to increasing or decreasing the angle? If decreasing, then increasing, it sounds a bit like the second and third steps of plateau sharpening where you grind the edge short of apexing before increasing the angle to finish the apex (micro bevel). The recommendation can also be read as increasing the angle on the edge before dropping the angle to apex. I don't see a problem either way :) .
 
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However, I don't buy the recommendation to not skip grits. Skip what grits in what system? Scary sharp sandpaper? Suehiro Cerax? Wicked Edge? What if you only use Ardennes-Coticule Belgian Blue? Fast cutting stones preclude the need to stay within a rigid grit progression. A better way may be to delineate the process in terms of microns. 30-15-7-3 μm and none must be passed over. But even then I don't buy it as I am absolutely passing over #1200 (9.5 +/- 0.8 μm) when I come off of #1000 (11.5 +/- 1.0 μm) in the SPS II system :)
 
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When I work my s30v blade patiently on a Norton SiC stone it stays sharp a good while. What bgentry describes I notice the same with 01 and D2 where it loses it's sharp edge rather quickly. Where as 440C and 154cm seem to hold that real sharp edge longer. I really like that characteristic about those steels. When they get dull you know it. As for skipping grits, I usually go the 1 or 2 grits and strop. This always gives me a good edge. DM
 
Wowbagger Wowbagger : I would also like to add that your continued pursuit of excellence and acceptance of different sharpening methods and styles within the confines of the Edge Pro system is refreshing.
 
For S30V:

Thin it to 30° inclusive or less, more ideally down to 25° or so. Then, as opposed to worrying about skipping grits, finish it with ONE grit of your choosing, somewhere between ~ 325 - 1200. Finish it with a diamond hone, period. Don't waste time trying to refine it with anything else, in terms of the abrasive type selected. That's what suddenly turned my perspective of S30V on it's ear, from 'difficult' to no-brainer easy. I haven't had any issues with it staying shaving-sharp since, when treating it this way.

The caveat with some knives in S30V (or at least, some of the ones I have) is that many of them seem to come as sharpened prybars from the factory, with THICK grinds and obtuse edges, and never will get very sharp as such (but, this is true of most any knife, in any steel, arriving in the same shape). The thinning part does take a good while, with S30V; but, once it's finally done, it becomes dirt-simple to maintain, as I've described above.

I don't know that S30V has ever lived up to it's hype, regarding wear resistance. But, at least as I've learned to maintain it, it's no longer any worse in terms of edge retention, than most anything else I've treated similarly, after which I can easily live with it.


David
 
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I sure don't want to be that little dog that barks when the big dog barks.

I don't see many people using diamond stones but I see a LOT of people having a tough time sharpening.
Yes the classically trained hone meister is a skilled craftsman. But today you have options that were not around even 10 years ago.

I sure wouldn't use a bucksaw when a table saw is in every store.
Same for hones. GOOD diamond hones are readily available, and if you think about it... Modern steels? Modern hones? Ken, and Barbie (IMHO)
 
bgentry said:
I should really get a Para2 in S110V and see what a REAL super steel can do.
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I have been EDCing that EXACT animal for about a month now exclusively as a work knife and I can tell you it is very much as you described the S30V.

I prefer 440C. But I am addicted to mirror, hair whittling,
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
Thin it to 30° inclusive or less, more ideally down to 25° or so. Then, as opposed to worrying about skipping grits, finish it with ONE grit of your choosing, somewhere between ~ 325 - 1200. Finish it with a diamond hone, period.
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Not to doubt this can be done but I tried that with my first S110V blade Manix LW using ~300 DMT aligner stone free hand / hand held and was never able to get anywhere near shave sharp. I tried light, super light, firm you name it. Granted it was a fairly new stone and not broken in. With no further "breaking in" I have been able, using the full set of aligner stones, again hand held and later in my Edge Pro to get the latest S110V blade Para 2 hair whittling by using all the grits (as I was able to do on the original Manix).
 
adamlau said:
But even then I don't buy it as I am absolutely passing over #1200 when I come off of a SPS II #1000 stone
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Yes.
He did say he detailed all this in another text.
We have to be a little practical here. In the old days I mixed and match several brands but I could tell by the scratch pattern and what the stone did to the previous scratch pattern what I needed to buy next and if it didn't do the job (example Ice Bear 10,000 was less fine than Norton Water stone 8,000 so I dropped it from the line up) I was able to get an effective progression. That was pretty much all on A2 way back in the day. My ~six stone line up of Shapton Pros don't do much if any better sept maybe when I get to the 15,000 but the stones in the pretty colors and nice symmetrical boxes are fun to look at.

I don't want to be too flippant here but I am also being perfectly truthful about the end result.
Super easy cutting of curls off a single hair with the old mutts and super easy cutting of curls off a single hair with the regimental guard of Shaptons.

Going fewer than at least three stones; say 700, 1000, 4000 and 8000 was a mistake.
That was four. See what I mean ?
Pretty much the 300 or the 15,000 was not ACTUALLY ever needed but fun to fool around with or if reprofiling. Those were the mutts by the way.
 
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adamlau said:
Wowbagger Wowbagger : I would also like to add that your continued pursuit of excellence and acceptance of different sharpening methods and styles within the confines of the Edge Pro system is refreshing.
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Heck I step outside the Edge Pro all the time (going hand held or stone on the bench) but I get lazy and duck back in.

As a machine tool analogy I like setting a machine to zero (think sharpy ground off at the edge), setting the "collars" to the amount I want to take off (think passes on the edge pro to get a burr) and "making a pass" (think removing the burr). As apposed to using a hand file (free hand sharpening). Doesn't mean I don't hand file or hand sharpen it's just that usually while I'm doing it I am telling myself not to be a fool and to take the time to set up the machine.
 
Do any of you use a loupe or a magnifying lamp to actually see what is happening to the blade?

I found that I can not work without seeing the patterns although they are 100% repeatable.
When you see it, you know when it is time to move on or stay in certain areas.

Going to 60x magnification was the real "key" for me.
 
Maybe it's just the Wicked Edge 130 (2016) that turned me off to guided systems. For every knife that went on the WE 130 (using their standard stones), I had to reference the alignment guide (after initially establishing optimum placement), apply tape to the spine to protect it from the clamp and remove the unit from the base before taking it outside the house to blow it out with compressed air. I also felt that I covered less surface area per stroke versus a stone. While there was an obvious improvement in consistency of the bevels, I did not note an outright improvement in sharpness. I do not strop. All in all, a sharpening session from dull to a quality edge was markedly slower from start (setup) to finish (cleanup) versus a progression through two or three (max) SPS II stones. Perhaps the Edge Pro solves some or all of the shortcomings that I noted with the WE 130 (recently gifted away) when producing the simple edges that I prefer.
 
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Zombie411 said:
Do any of you use a loupe or a magnifying lamp to actually see what is happening to the blade?
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I have an Eschenbach 1178-20 20X loupe I use from time to time. Mostly when I come across a new stone and want to roughly compare its finish versus another. I have been planning to pick up a USB microscope, but have not gotten around to doing so (the one I wanted was just north of $500 and I cannot justify spending that much for what would constitute a hobby accessory right now)...
 
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Zombie411 said:
I've been thinking about that myself.
I plan to open a sharpening service, and the option to capture images for customers is another good tool to have.
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Unless you're offering a high end or 'specialized' service... I think you'll find most customers will care less about a microscope shot. They just want a knife that will cut.

Like taking a car in for an oil change, and the mechanic explaining how the oil works.... most just want the car to run... they'll barely even pay attention to being shown the level. :)
 
Sharpening s30v with diamonds on the kme was a piece of cake and holds an edge just fine. Finished off with lapping films and strop.
 
cbwx34 said:
Unless you're offering a high end or 'specialized' service... I think you'll find most customers will care less about a microscope shot. They just want a knife that will cut.

Like taking a car in for an oil change, and the mechanic explaining how the oil works.... most just want the car to run... they'll barely even pay attention to being shown the level. :)
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Very true sir BUT...
I don't plan to use magnified images as part of a "regular service" type thing. More for my own education, and verification
I have to believe that the fanatical yet frugal crowd might find this a useful tool to better understand their hardware as well.

Also for advertising purposes... In store images of the sharpening process at it's different stages, and On-Line web site filler.

Most people understand a process better if they can see what happens.
For those that don't care... They save me both time, and money. I can go straight to work.
 
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