Thank you Cambertree what you say makes allot of sense concerning the Atoma for fast stock removal. I actually purchased the SIC powder when I purchased the Hapstone 7 it is a nice kit with different grades of powder and a round glass plate for lapping.
Truthfully I never used it. I just put the lowest grit 120 Stone to work and being familiar with the Wicked edge was astonished how little aggression it truly had and stopped using it within minutes as I was getting no where quick with S90V.
Here is something I wish to point out as an owner of two premium sharpening systems and share some thoughts.
The WEP3 and the Hapstone 7 sharpen much differently.
The clamp system WEP3 is extremely accurate with a digital angle cube but, but.... It locks your sharpening into very acute angles you can not get wide bevels when using this system and if you get down into low angles what happens is you get very funky grinds.
Imagine a steeple /\ going towards apex it will apex perfectly with a narrow bevel but you will wind up with a thick ugly ledge leading to the flats of the blade. I know because I attempted to drop the angle and match the un-even bevels on the S90V Military shown earlier.
Here is a bigger picture This shows the condition of the 100 grit WEP stone and yes I had to trim the stupid plastic off to get in tight where the blade stops on almost all Spyderco knives.
You can see there is some unevenness in the grind towards the tip something still to be worked out. Now this was done on the Hapstone 7 and you can see the wide bevels which I like because this is thinning things out behind the edge as the angle is dropped without an abrupt step as occurs with the WEP3 clamp system.
Honestly thought the bevels are wider than I would have done on purpose this knife was that badly screwed up by the previous owner that it required such wide bevels to try and even them out.
With the Hapstone 7 the more you grind at a set low angle the wider the graduated bevel becomes as it is working off metal heading in the direction of the spine. This is also true of the WEP3 Clamp-system but it peters out and you get a step or ledge where the grind become flat which can be pretty severe. Yes all FFG Spydercos come from the factory this way there is thin ledge a bump and then the flats.
I can think of several reasons why this is but none of them can lead to optimal cutting if that step were blended into the flats. The factory grinds are not that abrupt some of the shared pictures here are and so are the lower angles reground on the WEP I consider this must be from the clamp system and the way it achieves perfect angles.
I have shared a picture of this in the past and it was compared to a Scandi grind which I guess is more of what it is now but in the end I intend to do a 15% Back Bevel.
Recently I started doing another Military in CTS 204P and decided to go down to 10 degrees. This time having the low angle adapter for the WEP3 I see a little different thing happening but not much bevels are a bit wider but I still see the abrupt step from bevel to flats forming.
So I stepped back again saw some very good posts on free handing by Vivi and got some wedges to train myself to freehand sharpening.
Here is a set up I did using my Spyderco Medium stone. It works great.
I will consider the Atoma plate for swift stock removal for sure. After watching allot of Big Brown Bears Videos I am getting a better idea of how to thin a knife behind the edge and why it is so important. Problem is I do not think stones are a particularly affordable or practical way of doing this with steels like S30V, S90V, S110V.
The WEP 100 grit shown is shot its opposite side 200 Grit has more cutting power and at around $80.00 it is hard justifying buying stones for heavy re-profiling which I will not do very often when I have the Ken Onion with blade grinding attachment a variable speed motor and it uses Norton belts.
All of this has been bought and paid for long ago but not used as I kept my attention on learning the characteristics of each steel, discovering the ones I like best and going down the rabbit hole of Spyderco collecting and then selling unused and duplicate models to dig myself back out.
Lol, Now my focus is turning back to sharpening after discovering what I do like and prefer.
I believe even though the Ken Onion is not a heavy duty hard use knife makers machine it will be more than adequate for my needs of heavy stock removal as long as I follow BBB's advice and feel the blade for temperature and keep a bucket of water nearby to cool it before it gets too warm to preserve the temper.
In fact I am considering using it to see if I can finish cleaning up the bevels on this knife and then use Veneve to further refine the apex and polish things out.
So I am thinking next step will be using a low grit Ken onion belt to shape the bevels up a bit and maybe drop the thickness behind the edge a little more.
After that Sand down the flats to get rid of the slurry scratches.
After that fingernail polish the flats and the spine to prevent more slurry scratches.
After that use venve stones to finish up in different grit progressions.
Ok so this ends this long post. If there is an error in my theorized procedure for this military please do point it out and hopefully offer a better solution. :)
Thanks.
