Clay,

I also have the pitting issues on the ceramics I recently received. Let me know if I need to send you pictures.

Will

Hi Clay

welcome back

thanks for looking into this issue. hope you take time to enjoy the weekend.

Mine are from an older batch.
Looking at them yes, there are pits, I can even put a pen tip in them easily.
Does it effect them, from my experience ... not really.
Once again, I thihink there is enough surface area to compensate, especially with verical and horizontal motion, and it should not effect the performance. Kinda like my beat up strops
Yes, I do need to rub them together ocassionally and also soften the edges, but I expect each and every sharpening medium to have its quirks.

I do a lot of sharpening on belts also ... all are not the same ... I think an answer may be that you have to adapt unless its extreme. If its past adaptability, another story.

One of the things with the WEPS, its so far to the acurate extreme, that you notice oddities that would be ignored using other systems.

I used to go crazy over 1/2 a degree difference between sides ... now, not so much.


Just my 2 cents.

zig wrote:


Zig,

Let me bring the total to 4 cents. If pitting on the ceramics is not supposed to be ... then it is a defect ... plain and simple. Even Clay has indicated that his very old and heavily used ceramics do not show any signs of pitting. Perhaps with all the pressure which was being placed on the supplier to get these ceramics to Clay to fulfill the large number of long term back-orders which existed led to shortcuts or other unknown variables in the production process. Anyway, we are not talking about a simple difference in something like color ... we are talking about a defect (whether it be minor or potentially major). No one should have to adapt to accommodate a defect, regardless of whether something is major or minor. In any event, I am sure Clay will get to the bottom of this.

DennisHibar wrote:


Dennis, as a defect, I agree totally. I was assuming pits are the norm. Adaptability as in I work with diamond paddles diffrently than ceramics, not the same game.
If pits are not meant to be there and is a negative, than pits are not supposed to be there period.

Hope this helps:
(Click on the link parts below to see the video series composed of three parts)

part 1

part 2

part 3

Am I mistaken in thinking that these ceramics should be quite a bit harder than steel? I just picked one of mine up and used a swiss army knife to easily shave a small nick off the end of the 1600. Tried the same thing with my sharpmaker stones (on the corner) and all it did was add a new nick to my blade.

I purchased two sets of the 1200/1600 ceramics. I experienced a lot of dusting (with both 1200 & 1600) on the 1st set. Both sets are very porous (no magnification required to see this). The 1st set was noticably softer than the 2nd set. I have only sharpened 4-5 knives (total) with the two sets.

I have not tried, but I believe both sets could be easily scored with a butter knife. There is no comparison of these 1200/1600 ceramics with the Spyderco Sharpmaker ceramics. The Sharpmaker ceramics are much harder. I am anxious to hear Clay's comments regarding the quality of these. I am not in a hurry to send them back because of waiting so long for these.

I thought I understood from another thread on this forum that the Coorstek Ceramics should be available by now.

In the meantime the Shaptons and Choseras do an excellent job. At this point, I prefer the Shaptons (much quicker, IMO)

Ralph

Hey guys,

I haven't formulated any solid opinions yet though I have spent the last two days testing the new batch vs the old and comparing them with the new Coorstek stones (yep, they're in and I'm checking them out, so far I'm very pleased but we're still experimenting with adhering them to the handles since they are much less porous than our other ceramics.) I've also spent a fair amount of time on the phone with the owner of the company that manufactures our ceramics, bringing him up to speed on all the comments and issues. He has also read through the forum posts to see what's going on. I'll be posting his responses once he gets them emailed over. He did brief me on their QA/QC procedure and equipment and educated me as to why there is more or less pitting depending on each batch: the pitting occurs most on the blue stone and happens as a result of the burnout of the cobalt that is used for coloration. There is a fair amount of variation of the burnout between the batches which reflects in more or less pitting. He also explained the initial powdering of the surface of the stones though I'll wait for his technical explanation before posting it. I'm most concerned with performance and longevity of the stones which is why I'm testing a new set against my old set. My first step has been to work on breaking in the new set. I've got a little more work to do there before I will flatten both sets and study the finish they produce and their wear rates.

So far I've found that the new Coorstek stones definitely need to be broken in - the first few edges were rough and somewhat chipped but that has since calmed down and the edges are looking really nice. The Coorstek stones are much harder than the Superfine ceramics though I don't yet see a performance advantage yet to the extra hardness. If anything, I like the friability of the Superfine stones.

Ken from the manufacturer of the Superfine stones recommends using either oil or water on the stones, which I agree with - I like using a little spray bottle of water with a drop of dish soap to keep the stones lubricated during use. If you use water, make sure you use filtered or distilled water to eliminate hard minerals.

So far, I'm not as worried about the stones as I was a couple of days ago; I'll keep posting as I learn more.

Here are some quotes from the manufacturer of the stones:




I'm getting ready to flatten the old and new stones and do some side-by-side comparisons. Images and results to follow.