Recommendation? Which Stones For Hapstone V7

G

Georgeib

Joined
Feb 4, 2019
Messages
30
Hi all!

Thanks in advance for any advice you guys may be able to offer. I'm essentially new to knife sharpening, and only graduated from pull V sharpeners a little over a year ago (ouch, I know). I bought a Harbor Freight 1x30 belt grinder, some 400-1000 grit silicone carbide belts, and a leather strop belt and proceeded to sharpen all the knives in the house. Was pleased with my results as I was able to get a couple of my cheap Kershaws edges polished, and hair popping sharp. Nonetheless, I realized that holding an angle consistently by hand is not something at which I'm great.

Recently however, I splurged and bought a couple nicer ZT knives, a pair of 0566, one in S35vn and one in M390. I decided to buy a better sharpener, one that would allow me maintain a consistent angle, and that would stop the edge from becoming convex: a Hapstone V7.

I'm looking for recommendations on which Edge Pro format stones to buy for it to maintain my current blades, and any future ones that get added to the family. I've looked at the various Gritomatic offerings, and frankly am feeling a bit lost. I do like the idea of a polished edge, but I read somewhere that s35 prefers a somewhat toothier one, so that one may be an exception.

Here's what I'm looking to sharpen:

VG-10 (a SOG Vulcan tanto)
s35vn ( ZT 0566CF)
M390 (ZT 0566CF M390)
SK-5 (a Cold Steel Kukri)
Elmax
CPM-20cv
less expensive pocket knives
kitchen knives

Am kinda leaning towards Shapton Pro stones in the Edge Pro format.

Thank again, and sorry for the long post. Just wanted to give a little background.

-George
 
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Silicon carbide or bonded diamond stones.
Edge pro make some bonded diamond stones worth looking at. They should fit hapstone without issues. Other than that alot of other bonded diamond stone brands and types are available.
 
Mo2 said:
Silicon carbide or bonded diamond stones.
Edge pro make some bonded diamond stones worth looking at. They should fit hapstone without issues. Other than that alot of other bonded diamond stone brands and types are available.
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Thank you. What grits should I be looking at buying?
 
With sharpening systems, I have always skewed heavily to using as few stones as possible in order to hasten the process. Originally, I started out as one of those guys that does every single stone in a series. My Shapton SG progression literally went 220, 500, 1k, 2k, 4k, 8k, 16k. Each stone was of a different thickness, requiring constant angle measuring. They were all waterstones fixed in an inverted position, which made a massive mess, required constant respraying, and tended to scratch the primary grind in the lower grit range. It was enough to drive a man mad.

I would be hesitant to ever go beyond 3 stones again. And I am too pragmatic to concern myself with perfect mirrors anymore. I would much rather hit the edge with a 1k, then slap an 8k micro on and be done with it. As much as I love sharpening, a tight time-to-results ratio was always a primary consideration for me.

TL;DR Heavily consider how important a mirror-polished show-edge is to you (in my own two-cent opinion)

What stones to buy?
I couldn't be more heavily in agreement with above statement: rock some bonded diamonds/CBN, man. :thumbsup:
 
In my opinion, bonded diamond/cbn is the way to go for guided systems. No slurry, no water, no mess. Perfect for the novice, since you don't need to worry about spraying the stones etc. You can use them dry and concentrate on the sharpening. Also, they will eat any steel so you will never have to upgrade them to something else if you will get some of the more serious steels. I would recommend resin CBN and a few strops.
 
M-S-T said:
In my opinion, bonded diamond/cbn is the way to go for guided systems. No slurry, no water, no mess. Perfect for the novice, since you don't need to worry about spraying the stones etc. You can use them dry and concentrate on the sharpening. Also, they will eat any steel so you will never have to upgrade them to something else if you will get some of the more serious steels. I would recommend resin CBN and a few strops.
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The guy from edge pro recommended to keep them wet. Just sayin. Not sure about required. I don't use water all the time with my venev bonded stones though.

But otherwise they are great in that they are good for novice users. They should last a very long time too. Refreshing them is the only thing that's an extra step and it's fairly easy to do as described in the thread linked above.
 
I have never used a stone that didn't do better with a lubricant, and that is usually water. Even plated diamond stones like some water. The Matrix stones really need to stay wet, they will work better and be much easier to keep clean. I am sure the Venevs would do better with water too, I know phenolic diamond wheels on a surface grinder do much better with water. It is easy to keep your sharpening from making a mess by wiping the swarf up with a paper towel between grits, which is a good idea to reduce contamination of the finer stone to be used next.
 
Thank you for all the suggestions. I have no issue using a lubricant, be it water or oil on a set of stones, so please don't let that be a detriment to any of your suggestions.

That said, what do you guys think of the Naniwa Chosera stones? Would they work on the hard powdered stainless or carbon steels? What about on the softer stainless?
 
Georgeib said:
That said, what do you guys think of the Naniwa Chosera stones? Would they work on the hard powdered stainless or carbon steels? What about on the softer stainless?
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s35vn ( ZT 0566CF)
M390 (ZT 0566CF M390)
CPM-20cv
Are the steel that would recommend diamond.

Chosera stones would work perfectly fine on the other steels. Though how expensive are they and is it worth it for the cost?
 
I have a little different opinion. There is a popular idea floating around that for everything that is over 4% vanadium you need diamond abrasive. I would disagree. You can sharpen all the "mid-class" steels like s30v, m390, 3V, m4, etc. with basically any waterstone. Synthetic or natural. Chosera, Shapton or any other brand will do just fine. Just keep in mind that splash and go are not the fastest cutter so if you will want to seriously reprofile a blade it will take some time. Things change when you step into 10V class ( s110v, s125v, vanadis10, 15v). And while you will still be able to sharpen them it will be a major pain the butt. Reprofiling will take a few seasons of walking dead. And I'm only talking about standard factory knives. Custom HT M390 at 62 hrc with all the bells and whistles are so much more difficult to sharpen than a standard Spyderco m390. So keep that in mind. The CPM technology is moving fast and I feel that traditional Japanese waterstones start lacking the cutting power. That's just the way it is. Modern abrasives are the future. The price difference is not that big, so why limit yourself?
Another thing that I don't like about the Japanese waterstones in the guided applications is that they are designed to lay horizontally with the water and slurry on top. In the guided application the stones are flipped. The water and the slurry drain down very fast. In the summertime, the stones dry up in seconds. Especially the high grit ones. And while it is not a big problem with coarse and medium stones. 5k and 10k choseras loads badly when dryish. And that is not a big problem if you doing a knife or two a time, but if you are doing long weekend sessions, you will find yourself with towels around your sharpening station.
 
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Again, thank you all for the suggestions. I have been educating myself a bit more in the past few days on what a lot of these things mean.

I'm concerned about the scratching that diamond stones are reputed to leave on powdered steels, so have been leaning towards CBN or Shapton Glass.

Can anyone tell me what the practical differences between metallic and organic bonded CBN stones are, please?
 
Also, what are some of the things I should watch out for in using CBN stones? Maintenance, etc?

Thanks!
 
Georgeib said:
I'm concerned about the scratching that diamond stones are reputed to leave on powdered steels, so have been leaning towards CBN or Shapton Glass.
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Elaborate on this please. What scratching are you talking about.
 
Mo2 said:
Elaborate on this please. What scratching are you talking about.
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From Grimomatic's website regarding using diamond stones:
Diamonds have substantial advantages to traditional abrasives: they are universal, can be used dry, and have a long life. Unfortunately, there are disadvantages too: microchipping and deep scratching (especially on powder steels), weaker feedback. It's recommended to flatten and lap diamonds, so we don't recommend diamond bundle to inexperienced users.
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But I've also read it elsewhere. That diamond stones tend to leave scratches on the edge.
 
That seems out of context. But yea.
Here's how to lap bonded stones...
Same as what this guy's doing. Though he's using a different type of stone...


After Lapping them they should be great. That quote from gritomatic may not related to edge pro stones. But the venev which are slightly different.

Maybe D Diemaker can elaborate on this for the stones he makes.
 
Mo2 said:
That seems out of context. But yea.
Here's how to lap bonded stones...
Same as what this guy's doing. Though he's using a different type of stone...


After Lapping them they should be great. That quote from gritomatic may not related to edge pro stones. But the venev which are slightly different.

Maybe D Diemaker can elaborate on this for the stones he makes.
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Just read the entire https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/edge-pro-matrix-resin-bond-diamond-stones.1590536/page-5 "Edge Pro Matrix resin bond diamond stones" thread... Wow. This forum is going to be terrible for my bank account... :D

Wondering if I need the entire set to start with, or what. Any recommendations?
 
The idea is CBN crystals are 8 sided and naturally each side is more even in size, I think diamond are 6. It really depends on the quality of diamond crystals how even the facet size is, just like the more you pay for steel the better you get. I would bet no one uses the high quality diamond crystals for knife sharpening because they cost a bit more and you wouldn't notice the difference when sharpening knives. How they are bonded into a stone makes a much bigger difference. All that said I doubt you could tell the difference in scratches between diamond and CBN without an electron microscope, and maybe not even then. CBN typically costs about 10 times more than diamond for the powder, at least with the suppliers I have talked to, another reason to go with diamond.
I think how the stones are used makes the biggest difference in how refined you get the apex, ie least damage to it. With diamond I find the stones are more prone to microchipping so I only use edge trailing strokes once I start to form a burr, I only sharpen with a guided system. According to the Science of Sharp blog edge trailing strokes allow a keener apex than edge leading, by up to a factor of 10. My experimentation tends to affirm this. I also think edge trailing only strokes are better for diamond stones because when the diamond crystal encounters the steel it hits a gentle angle vs an abrupt edge with edge leading strokes. I think the gentle entry to the cut puts less stress on the abrasive. Diamond is insanely hard, it really doesn't wear from sharpening steel, the crystals break down from being overloaded. If you don't overload it your stones will last much longer, but if you push just a little bit it cuts sooo much faster, for awhile, hard to resist.

Oh, I see you have read the Matrix thread, that should answer most of your questions. Disclaimer, I make those stones so will be somewhat biased towards that type of stone.
If you can sharpen your knives with your current stones then I would suggest starting with the 2300 or 1100 first. If not then start with the 250 and work on up, but if you are going to do much reprofiling then you will need the 80. It removes metal much faster than the 250, which really isn't very good for reprofiling.
 
D Diemaker I've decided on the Matrix stones, and have been shopping around for the best price. I've noticed that one particular online retailer only has the 300 stone, and not the 250. And I've also noticed that retailers that carry the 250 don't carry the 300, and visa versa. I had been planning on the 250, and was wondering if there's any real difference between the two.

Thanks to everyone for helping me come to the best solution. I'm looking forward to learning how to use my stones.

Also, does anyone have any recommendations on where to buy the full set for the best price? Should I also go ahead and get the 240 grit leveling kit? Strops?
 
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Zero difference, I only made 2 of the 300, 67 micron, stones. This was part of the first samples I made, 1 each for me and 1 each for EP. The first and only batch of 300's I made were made with 80 micron diamond, which is what I use for the 250's. I appologize for this but my supplier had the 80 micron listed as 300 grit in my 15 year old brochure and as 250 grit in their new literature. After I made the first batch EP decided they liked the 250 better, the knives they got in to sharpen were different so that was what changed their minds. The difference was very minor between the two.

You do need the 240 grit AlOx to dress the 250 and up stones and may need some sand to dress the 80 or 250 grit stones. The 60 grit sic does not work for the 80 grit stone, the grit needs to be coarser according to the time I tried it on a freshly molded stone.

Personally I like leather strops, they get the edge noticeably keener on my knives. I also always finish with the 4k stone too.
 
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