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Lately I've been going back to the basics with sharpening. Ever since a post that MadRookie made mentioning how he felt it was very important to leave the edge as perfect as possible off your first coarse stone, I've been seeing just how sharp I can make an edge off my 400 grit stone (or rather Atoma diamond plate).

I can't really speak much on edge retention because as of late I'm finding that I rarely get to use my knife at work anymore as my responsibilities are shifting more towards an office type job and I get less time to get dirty and cut things up, but as for sharpness I'm finding that I really love these toothy aggressive edges and I'm really wondering why anyone would need anything more than this because it will push cut phone book paper just as easily as my 16k edges do. I'm wondering if my "need" for higher grit stones has been a result of not being able or not spending enough time to bring out the best in the lower grit stones, and that left me with only being able to get a good edge from the higher grit stones (likely due to not paying enough attention to burr formation, etc).

The only downer to this is I already miss my polished bevels, but I guess I can always go back to that and use the 400 grit for a micro bevel, it's just that those micro bevels quickly take over and become primary bevels lol.

In related news, I'm REALLY loving these Atoma diamond plates and I think my next purchase will be for the rest of the set up to the 1200 plate. I'm curious how "polished" that plate will make the bevel and I suspect that 1200 grit will be a great middle ground between coarse and polished edges and will make a great all around EDC edge.

My final thought with this is to put out a challenge to all you sharpening junkies, especially to those who lean on the higher grit stuff. Limit yourself to just 400-600 grit for a while and see what you can do with it. If you've never played around with the lower grit stuff, you may be surprised. My next step is to go down to the lower grit Shapton glass stones and try to get the same results.

I almost exclusively use coarse microbevels on my polished edges.
1. Its faster to touch up
2. It cuts longer
3. It slices better
4. It still pushcuts
5. When dull, on most steel, it will still bite.; with a polished edge, most steels lose bite when they go to the working edge.


SOmetimes I play with perfect polished apexes but, meh, the working edge feels dull :P

I stopped using UF and fine stones for my folders about a year ago. I found that finishing with very light pressure on medium rods can make the edge to push cut magazine paper or shave the arm. I still using fine and UF stones on my kitchen knives.

Have you guys seen Cliff's 24 grit brick video? He sharpens a kitchen knife on this crazy 24 grit stone and it slices newsprint with ease. The sound of the blade on that stone is enough to make you cringe though. Murray Carter also sharpened on a cinder block in one of his videos but he also stropped on newspaper afterwards..

I also prefer the medium stone for my microbevels for all the reasons Travis stated. I do like the nice UF finish on my Santoku, but the toothy edge of the medium stone will still allow me to slice transparent tomatos.

I use around 800 grit for most of my knives. That's not particularly coarse IMO, but it's certainly not fine.

Evil D wrote:Have you guys seen Cliff's 24 grit brick video? He sharpens a kitchen knife on this crazy 24 grit stone and it slices newsprint with ease. The sound of the blade on that stone is enough to make you cringe though. Murray Carter also sharpened on a cinder block in one of his videos but he also stropped on newspaper afterwards..

I would like to see his video, can you upload it here?

For quick touchups often used knives, I use a blue DMT(coarse). Edge is quite aggressive.

jaybraueir wrote:I would like to see his video, can you upload it here?

[video=youtube;mSt2mCWGFII]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... St2mCWGFII[/video]

jaybraueir wrote:I would like to see his video, can you upload it here?

[video=youtube;5At3NtNKHFA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5At3NtNKHFA[/video]

This is even more coarse than a normal brick.

I have polished bevels on my light users, but for most of my users up to 600 grit on the wicked edge and then a few passes on a 3.5 micron strop and its a very toothy edge with good retention and sharp as ****!

Cliff Stamp wrote:[video=youtube;5At3NtNKHFA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5At3NtNKHFA[/video]

This is even more coarse than a normal brick.

Cliff what exactly is that brick for? Is it for sharpening or is it like a pumice stone or something like that? It reminds me of the things used in food service to scrub grills with. It must wear extremely fast being as porous as it is.

rg02 wrote:I have polished bevels on my light users, but for most of my users up to 600 grit on the wicked edge and then a few passes on a 3.5 micron strop and its a very toothy edge with good retention and sharp as ****!

I don't use strops anymore (except for sometimes just polishing a bevel before I put on the final edge) but I have experimented with course bevels and then use my 16k stone to very lightly hit the edge just to clean it up some. It's not abrasive enough to remove or really alter the teeth left by the lower grit stones but it should work in the same way that a strop does, but with a more consistent surface and at a much better (controlled) angle since I use an Edge Pro.

Evil D wrote:Cliff what exactly is that brick for?

It is sold as a sharpening stone. It does not wear in the conventional sense, which is the problem with it. When you get it, the surface is very coarse, 24 grit is not an exaggeration. However over time the grit will wear and smooth out and it will not release fresh abrasive, you have to recut it to get it to abrade again. But here is the kicker - anything you use to cut it is going to be finer than 24 grit (most likely). I asked the seller about it and he suggest to buy two and use them against each other however I don't even think that would work. I think you would actually need to recut the surface with a diamond saw or similar.

It does work well as a flattening stone, and it works well to grind back tips, cut out recurves and similar because it is so hard. But in terms of general aggression, after a short period of time it will quickly lose cutting speed and be slower than a 240X Sigma Power.

I used it in the video as it was the most extreme stone I had, even more so than the brick. It was mainly to illustrate a point about sharpening in terms of what can and should be achieved with lower grits before continuing as one of the main problems people have is skipping grits long before blades are sharp.

Evil D wrote:I don't use strops anymore (except for sometimes just polishing a bevel before I put on the final edge) but I have experimented with course bevels and then use my 16k stone to very lightly hit the edge just to clean it up some. It's not abrasive enough to remove or really alter the teeth left by the lower grit stones but it should work in the same way that a strop does, but with a more consistent surface and at a much better (controlled) angle since I use an Edge Pro.

I have the strops for the wicked edge so they are controlled like your setup on the edge pro. Works well.