To my surprise...

[Rhodies]

I called Spyderco Customer Service this afternoon and was told that the supplied stones (med, fine grit) that come packaged with the Sharpmaker would be adequate for touching up s110v steels. She told me anything beyond that the diamond or CBN stones would be needed, she then went on to explain the difference between the two (because.... I asked).

 

[REK Knives]

She's correct, they work just fine for me

I called Spyderco Customer Service this afternoon and was told that the supplied stones (med, fine grit) that come packaged with the Sharpmaker would be adequate for touching up s110v steels. She told me anything beyond that the diamond or CBN stones would be needed, she then went on to explain the difference between the two (because.... I asked).

 

[wade7575]

What did she go onto explain to you,also are the Ceramic stones only good for touch up's or are they good if you need to go over the edge a bit to restore it I'm not talking about reprofiling the edge just a good touch up where the edge is a bit over do,I'm also referring to S110v.

I called Spyderco Customer Service this afternoon and was told that the supplied stones (med, fine grit) that come packaged with the Sharpmaker would be adequate for touching up s110v steels. She told me anything beyond that the diamond or CBN stones would be needed, she then went on to explain the difference between the two (because.... I asked).

 

[Rhodies]

Hello Wade - I believe the CSR was talking about touch ups, nothing too drastic. She explained the difference between the diamond and CBN stones. The diamond stones are more aggressive, I think we all knew that. She went on to say that the diamond abrasive that is on the stone is not dense. Whereas the CBN Stone is not as aggresive as the diamond but the abrasive is denser and more equally distributed on the stone vs diamond stone.

 

[Wowbagger]

My experience with Shapton Glass on S110V was not good. My theory was that it tended to extrude the softer steel in the matrix and or knock the vanadium carbides out. I got very sharp edges between easily shave sharp and up to hair whittling but the many, many edges that I produced this way (like seven) just would not hold up; they dulled quickly in a single day of fairly light use but on abrasive rubber goods.

THEN when I went to ALL diamond stones from 220 up to 8,000 in a several stone progression the edges lasted up to two weeks of five day work weeks cutting the exact same material.

One day I might fool around with SI C stones but I would never consider anything else.
Frankly the edges I get from Spyderco in Golden on S110V are far from adequate from the factory. From talking to her (great person and generally very satisfying customer service) they sharpen S110V with the same equipment they use for the other blade sharpening. Not good IMO.

 

[wade7575]

I'm with you Wowbagger the Shapton Glass really suck on S110v the whole problem with Shapton Glass stones is they are made from Aluminum Oxide and are held together with a very hard binding agent,I don't know why people seem to think that stones that are really hard are going to cut fast and in almost every case that's not true.

I find with most water stones the lower grits are softer and breakdown slowly releasing abrasive and the higher the grit the hard the stone becomes,with stones that breakdown a bit are always releasing fresh sharp abrasive,the hard stones that I have found that cut great are the Venev stones like you said and Metallic Bonded CBN and diamond plates as well but I really don't like them all that much.

I ordered some Sigma Power stones I got a Select II 6K 10K and a Ceramic 13K and a Suehiro G8 8K stone to try on S110v after I have used the Metallic Bonded CBN if I want to polish the edge after and remove all the scratch's,I got the Sigma Power stones because I read and heard from a lot of people they are the fastest cutting water stones you can buy and I got the Suehiro G8 8K because it is a Silicon carbide stone.

If you have a system that use's Edge Pro format stones you should look at the link the below he is supposed to have really good Silicon Carbide stones called Gritalon's that are supposed to be pretty good but how well they work I do not know as I have yet to try them but am considering them in the future and they are not the same stones sold with the K02 that breakdown really fast and seem to use a very soft binding agent that is a bit to soft for my liking to get much life from the stones.

The stones that have OA in the grit description are aluminum oxide and the rest are Silicon carbide these stones are very cheap but are supposed to be pretty good as well.

https://sharpeningstones.ru/cat/точильные-камни-для-apex/россия/gritalon

 

[tiguy7]

You can see from this chart that Vanadium Carbide is harder than either Aluminum Oxide (Corundum) or Silicon Carbide (Carborundum). Vanadium Carbide cannot be effectively abraded by something softer than itself. CBN or Diamonds are the ticket. You can also see why a steel hardened to 67HRC like ZDP-189 can be sharpened on Al2O3 (Shapton waterstones). Tungsten Carbide is 72HRC, and Chrome Carbides are softer than Tungsten Carbides.View attachment 850539

 

[Zenturio]

What wowbagger / tiguy7 says, is absolutely true. These steels won't hold up well when sharpened with other abrasives than CBN or diamond. The reason is that other abrasives cut the softer steel matrix and rip out the vanadium carbides or weaken the bond behind the carbides. Alumina oxide and silicon carbide won't cut vanadium carbide.