The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

Nathan the Machinist Nathan the Machinist What grit would you recommend taking your knives to?

Would it vary by size/design? I mean for instance would you take a chopper to say 400-600 grit and then lightly strop? Where as you might take a DEK 3 to 1000 Grit, then strop? I just did the latter on my FK2 and holy cow that thing is a razor slicing paper, but time will tell in real world use.

Seems like lately I’m trying to take the edges on all my knives as fine as I can and polish the heck out of them. They slice the heck out of paper, but no rough use with toothy ones yet.
 
220 wet ceramic with a white Arkansas stone micro bevel then stropped with a fine diamond shmoo with some not-so-fine particles added to the mix. Diamond polish compound is not like this, which is one reason I make my own. Once I perfected my shmoo, I threw everything else away.

Exactly same process I use on the race knives.



This has a good combination of cutting characteristics that wins almost every cutting competition we attend. Watch him on the rope slice part. The other competitors aren't like that.

It's polished but toothy and it's durable.

Too polished it's necessarily better.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
220 wet ceramic with a white Arkansas stone micro bevel then stropped with a fine diamond shmoo with some not-so-fine particles added to the mix. Diamond polish compound is not like this, which is one reason I make my own. Once I perfected my shmoo, I threw everything else away.

Exactly same process I use on the race knives.



This has a good combination of cutting characteristics that wins almost every cutting competition we attend. Watch him on the rope slice part. The other competitors aren't like that.

It's polished but toothy and it's durable.

Too polished it's necessarily better.
Click to expand...
Can't wait to talk to you a little about sharpening at the gathering I love to learn!
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
220 wet ceramic with a white Arkansas stone micro bevel then stropped with a fine diamond shmoo with some not-so-fine particles added to the mix. Diamond polish compound is not like this, which is one reason I make my own. Once I perfected my shmoo, I threw everything else away.

Exactly same process I use on the race knives.



This has a good combination of cutting characteristics that wins almost every cutting competition we attend. Watch him on the rope slice part. The other competitors aren't like that.

It's polished but toothy and it's durable.

Too polished it's necessarily better.
Click to expand...

I’ve been using this Worksharp Professional sharpener station, and has the dry stones. 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, fine ceramic, and a green polish strop it came with. I purchased an extra Green loaded leather strop replacement for your Shmoo diamond polish and sprayed it on it. That Shmoo definitely works well and polishes nice and quick! Just gotta watch that overspray lol. I don’t recommend doing it over your sink lol.

Just using the dry stones, in my case. What would you recommend for the finest grit dry for me to use before the Shmoo polish?

Thank you for your insight.

78O7ZAD.png
 
Cwilliams563 said:
I’ve been using this Worksharp Professional sharpener station, and has the dry stones. 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, fine ceramic, and a green polish strop it came with. I purchased an extra Green loaded leather strop replacement for your Shmoo diamond polish and sprayed it on it. That Shmoo definitely works well and polishes nice and quick! Just gotta watch that overspray lol. I don’t recommend doing it over your sink lol.

Just using the dry stones, in my case. What would you recommend for the finest grit dry for me to use before the Shmoo polish?

Thank you for your insight.

78O7ZAD.png
Click to expand...

Ditto, except I didn’t think that we could buy Shmoo from CPK
 
The last lines of the most recent sale:
Nathan the Machinist said:
I'm starting to sell some of the high concentration diamond stropping shmoo that I use to strop every CPK and also the competition choppers with an unprecedented number of Blade sport wins including multiple championships. It's special, it works and I'm going to start selling it on our website. information here: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...ion-diamond-shmoo-stropping-compound.1986024/


It's $50 if you want to add it to your order.
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To be just a smudge more informative than the Cap'n. :p
 
His link doesn’t work that was posted

Nathan the Machinist

Thread 'Nate's high concentration diamond shmoo (stropping compound)'

Ever wish you could have some of the delicious delicious stropping compound that we make here at the shop? The magic compound with multiple championship titles on it including the current national and world Bladesports cutting Championships.

I have tried about every kind of strop, buff and mold polishing compound out there and finally made my own.

Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Most stropping compound is some form of an oily paste or (worse) wax based. I have found these to have some disadvantages. Particularly when temperature control is important and you can't just turn up the...
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We have lots of schmoo. I just made more

Be aware it's almost impossible to spray this stuff. I found little spray bottles where the tip doesn't pop out when you use it, so far this is the best I've been able to come up with but, just be aware they do clog up, especially if you don't use it much.

For the love of glob, don't let your bottle sit there and settle out for months at a time. No amount of shaking will get it back into suspension.

Don't get frustrated at me. Please?

I've tried thinning it out a lot and it does spray better but then it doesn't work as well. The mist and the droplets dry on your strop and form a structured abrasive that cut very quickly for their grit size.

This is what works best

But clogs can be frustrating.

I use my sprayer daily and sometimes it doesn't give me any trouble at all but if I let it sit a while it can be a problem. And sometimes I'll get a tip that's just not very good.

When it clogs, I'll loosen it a little bit and spray compressed air down the tip.

If that doesn't work I'll take it out and put it in a bottle with soapy water and spray it out to get it flowing good again

If that doesn't work I'll just use another tip. Right now we're shipping these with two spare sprayers for this purpose.

Worst case scenario, you have to pour it out and spread it out like other stropping compounds. This works, but it's not as good as the droplets.

It actually works fine. It's just slower.

Anyways. It's an imperfect product that works very well. Kind of like Ford trucks. Use it, enjoy the benefits of it, and if it screws up, forgive me. It's what I use and I want to share the love (This isn't particularly profitable, that's a lot of diamond for the money) but it's not a perfectly refined product, we're not making a lot of it and I can't put the time resources into designing and building a custom sprayer for it. If somebody has any suggestions for sprayer options that work better, hit me up. I've tried a bunch of stuff but I've not done an exhaustive search. It needs to spray a fine mist of a crunchy gel that hardens into concrete, without blowing the tip out. I'm out of ideas, what I'm using is so far the best I've found.
 
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HandAmerica used to make a green chromium oxide compound that worked great. It was the inspiration for this. Once I tried that and knew how good that kind of compound could be (hard dry powder), and they stopped making it and I couldn't find a substitute, I went on a mission to find something as good. What I came up with is better. At least for the steels that I use with all that vanadium carbide in it.
 
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