When I talked to Clay about suggestions on where to go with my kit after initially buying, one point he stressed was that wearing in the diamond stones will continually improve the finish over time. Having some experience with polishing stones for gunsmithing use I have seen that in other applications, but one particular knife this week sort of drove the point home:



I mentioned in a few threads here that the standard Pro Pack was giving fantastic results for sharpness, but the brand new stones were still rough enough to make a really polished shine difficult on the 5/3.5 paste strops. After a couple weeks of wearing in the stones, you can see the results!

Knife: Buck Knives, Vantage Force ATACS in S30V (also the first S30V I've gotten to work with!)

Nice... especially given that S30V doesn't always polish up that well.

Now the big question... how does it cut?

Well you can see a little bit of dirt and fuzz on the blade in a couple spots from my usual paper tests. I know testing sharpness is a whole other can of worms, but I'm always up for good, quick tests I can use beyond the old paper and feel checks. I haven't tried a hanging hair on any of the blades I've done thus far, it seems like most of the HHT results folks post are far finer edge refinement than just a 3.5um strop.

But initial results? Great! The only spot that isn't just about perfect is the very, very tip. I'm still working on my technique for getting that tiny portion, especially on drop points like this where the tip is a little harder to reach.