Stone to follow dmt fine

R

raynchk

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Dec 14, 2011
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Trying to improve my sharpening skills and I'm in the process of moving on from a Worksharp guided system with the upgrade kit. I bought a dmt *fine stone and it seems pretty good, but I'm not really familiar with diamond plates. This one shows some small identation on the ends and the edges seem to have worn after just a few knives. Maybe that's normal, but it doesn't feel right.

Originally the plan was to use the dmt and then strop. But after reading a lot of threads here I'm thinking about going to either a Spyderco *fine ceramic or else a dmt *extra fine, then on to the strop. The hardest steel I'm working on is CPM 20 cv on a benchmade 940.

I'm using green chromium oxide on the strop and probably should make another one and try diamond paste on it, but honing on the bench stones seems the way to go for now. And at this point I'm overwhelmed by the choices between ceramic/diamond and brand and obsessive compulsive disorder.

I was looking at the Shapton Japanese ceramic stones, but it looks like they need to be lapped occasionally and I'm not thrilled about that. Seems like sharpening the sharpening stone..
Suggestions?
 
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Any stones that aren’t electroplated diamond plates need to be flattened periodically. It’s just the way it is.

The dmt fine is capable of producing a very sharp edge. If your not achieving this it is for one of two reasons. Either a) your technique is letting you down; or b) you are not starting with a coarse enough stone.
 
Not sure about the "indentation" you see on your plate. But the wearing of the diamonds... well that could be a few things.

Diamond plates, when you first get them, have a bunch of extra diamond stuck on that sluffs off as you do the first few blades. Plates that feel overly rough or inconsistent or like they have dimples on them, smooth out really quickly as these odd shaped diamonds on top break off. It happened with all of my DMTs.

But, if you can visibly see wear, or you can feel that one part of the plate is slick and does not catch your finger nail like the rest... well that probably means you've been pressing hard and worn the diamonds all the way off (or mostly off) in those spots. My DMT C has that problem because I pressed way too hard at first and wore the coating off of a few spots on the ends, where I was pressing the hardest. As for followup stones: You may or may not know what you want. You might be thinking that finer and finer is obviously superior because "that will get my knife sharper". The truth is that you can achieve really good (excellent even) sharpness from a DMT C. The DMT F should produce a darned impressive edge. It should cleanly slice newspaper, push cut the paper in most directions (maybe not against the grain), shave hair (but not super duper cleanly), and do well on most every day tasks.

A polished edge will do more sharpness tricks, but it won't necessarily produce an edge that works better for every day tasks. This is a topic I really enjoy, so it won't be a huge surprise that I've made a few videos about it. I put up my latest one on youtube just a few days ago:


Note that the "toothy edge" in that video was done with a 180 grit belt. Even if we assume that the sander gives an apparent increase in grit of 2x, it's still only about half as refined as the DMT F (which is about 600 grit).

Brian.
 
Try cleaning your DMT with BreakFree CLP -- I've used that for decades and it removes the swarf build-up very effectively, restoring the hone's effectiveness. I haven't found that stropping has much effect on high alloy steels with significant amounts of hard carbides; a light steeling seems to work better.
 
Stropping the higher carbide steels usually works best with a diamond spray or emulsion. But it depends on what you’re looking for in a finish. I like a bit of shine on mine just for looks. Reality is , a good toothy edge for edc and work can be had with stones only.
 
OP, sounds like you have a couple different things and questions going there in your post.

On the question about what abrasive to use AFTER your DMT fine: in general on these high vanadium carbide (VC) steels like your 20CV, to get the best possible results you want the abrasive to be either diamond, or cbn. This applies whether you're talking sharpening stones, or the sprays, pastes, etc, that you can apply to strops.

Two alternate ways you could go, after sharpening on your 600-grit DMT fine:
1. Sharpen on higher-grit diamond stones, probably something in the 1000 - 1500 grit range. For example, DMT has an extra-fine, and Ultrasharp also has one in that range.
2. Or, you can go straight to a strop as sickpuppy1 sickpuppy1 said, skipping the need for any other stones beyond your DMT fine. For most everyday user knives, that actually works great. That's typically what I do: sharpen on a DMT coarse, maybe if necessary refine further on a DMT fine, and then straight to a strop. The strop setup I've gotten best results with: a 12x2x2" basswood block sanded smooth and square, on 1 side I apply 4 micron Bark River CBN solution, on the opposite side I apply 1 micron Gritomatic CBN paste.
 
As others have said, anything that is not Diamond or CBN is going to need to get flattened at some point. That being said, unless you are chasing that mirror polished look, you are probably just fine with going to a strop right after the DMT fine. You dont even have to make another one if you dont want to. Get yourself some Diamond compound and just clean the green compound off your existing strop. Ive found that if you dont mind the smell, getting some WD40 on there with a rag that you can throw away will get 90% of the old compound off of there. you can get sand paper to get the rest off and then apply your diamond compound. That should easily clean up the edge coming off of a DMT fine.
 
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