I did a knife for a guy and it would not cut paper. After looking at it under the scope
it had lots of chips that seem to come from what looks like corrosion in the steel?
Anyway like a dummy I did not take a photo. It was a cheap Titan OTF knife.
Anyone have pics of bad blades/steel? If I can get the blade back I will and take some pics.
I thought it was me but after looking through the loop/pc magnifier I don't know ,,looked like the moon surface haha
It would shave the hair on my arm though..
Pics of bad steel would be great.
Thanks Jdee

I'll see what I can dredge up

Jdee wrote:

I got the blade back, here are a few pics. It is a cheap blade so
We did not expect much.
I made a little resin insert to help hold it in the vise.
UV cured doming resin works real fast over the super flexible tape.
Jdee

Thanks for the pics - the pits in that steel look awful! I like the doming resin idea, can you provide more specs on the resin and tape?

Jdee wrote:

I use Blue fine line tape.
www.amazon.com/3M-Scotch-Plastic-Stripin...tech-data/B002MOH96K
You can get different resins, you would probable use one that cures with a black light.
Some types like I used use an expensive high output light.
These guys have some different types.
www.epoxies.com/clear.htm
Jdee

I did have to sand the dome down.

I think Solarez might be better.
solarez.com/productsnew/products.html
I used this cool little sander.
www.amazon.com/Proxxon-28594-12-Volt-Pen...3&sr=1-3-catcorr
Jdee

This is a fun topic! The pictures immediately make clear why some knives never take a good edge.

I ended up taking it down aways with 50 grit stones.
It came up ok for the kind of blade it was not bad.
I think I got by lots of the bad stuff.
Jdee

I thought I had some poor quality steel, AUS 8, on my SOG Flash II when I sharpened it today but I was wrong. My technique was poor the first time I tried sharpening it. I decided on a 17 degree main bevel and a 19 degree micro bevel. I did a full progression with WE diamonds 50 through 1000, then Choseras 400 through 10,000, then leather strops with diamond sprays 1.0 thru .125 microns, and finally a micro bevel with 5000 Chosera. Here are two photos of the edge:





Yikes! That looks awful. I suspected those cuts were from the 50/80 coarse diamonds and that I hadn't stayed with the finer diamonds long enough to remove those. So I re-did the progression starting with the WE 100 diamond and spent more time on each stone. Here's a few photos after my second try:







That's more like it.

Conclusion. It's not always the quality of the steel but may be a problem with the technique.

I think I just needed more time to get past a corroded layer and hit better stuff.
I also had to tweak the resin piece I made the knife was not setting straight enough.
I need a Cube soon....
Jdee

I love my old SOG