Your technique is getting down right scary. We can only hope to achieve a small bit of your knowledge oh Zen Master. Great work

Scary indeed! Clay, since we're talking about number of strokes per grit, this is on topic... What do you think the point of diminishing returns is for general use, in regards to number of strokes per side? You mentioned 50 just now, and some other info I've seen (perhaps your results, I don't recall) ranged from there to several times that. I know from some of the recent pictures that even ten whacks with a strop can have a pretty huge effect on the steel.

Mind you this is venturing into technical non-answer territory since it depends a lot on how big the jump between grits is. Stepping from 3000 grit to 5um diamond paste isn't a huge gap, whereas a plain 1000 grit diamond stone on the other hand leaves much larger scratches that take longer to strop out. Just another "sharpening 101" sort of tidbit, I guess

ApexGS wrote:


Great question Tom, it always reminds me of this commercial:
.
I guess it depends on the steel, both hardness and abrasion resistance, width of the bevel either due to angle or thickness of the blade and the jump between grits. That said, I think 50 strokes from each strop is a good place to start. From there, I check with a little 60x, handheld, lighted loupe to see how I'm doing.

Hmmm. Sure sounds like a lot of smarty talk to me. I am new to this forum and I would love to be able follow along. Is there someplace in the forums I can read up on the basics so I can understand? Thanks.

Yes, check the index for the various topics

Welcome Alejandro, thanks for joining in. The guys are right that the index is a great place to start. It's also helpful to just ask any old question that comes up, there is no such thing as a stupid one. What you'll find is that one or many people will answer it pretty quickly with a great deal of friendliness and lots of experience. It's a wonderful community.

AlejandroOrtega wrote:

Thanks Clay! These photographs are awesome! The best edge photo’s I’ve seen in my life! (And the best ones I’d seen before that were yours, too .)

And very revealing. No more guessing and dubious interpretation. Now we can see without a doubt how effective stropping is. Man, I didn’t know it was *that* effective.

Finally towards a scratch size comparison chart? . Based on the objective effect stones/strops have on the edge rather than on some “specfications” by manufacturers according to different standards that are hard to verify?

Definitely! My goal is to do a comparison chart with photos of the results of each grit like we already have but at the new, higher resolution and starting with a completely clean slate. The current chart shows the grits progressing from one to the next, getting finer as it goes, but the potential problem is that we might still be seeing scratches from a previous stone. If I start with a totally polished sample for each grit, then we'll know for sure that we're only seeing the scratches of that particular grit. Of course such a chart won't teach much about the effects of the strops after the stones, so maybe I'll create a library of different grit jumps and put it in a permanent place so it doesn't just get buried in the forum.

mark76 wrote:

wickededge wrote:


Great!!

Alejandro

In the forum index about sharpening techniques.
www.wickededgeusa.com/index.php?option=c...atid=6&Itemid=63

At the bottom of the home page there are some sharpening videos also under "Demos"

If only interested in stropping, search on it.