Gearing up to freehand sharpen S110V and high vanadiums

[RichWentFishing504]

Times change and so do popular steels. I'm looking into gearing up to freehand sharpen S110V, S30V and other high vanadium steels.

So far I'm looking at getting the Atoma 140, 600 and 1200 plates to set the bevels. After that, what's the next step to really polishing the edge? Shapton glass stones? CBN emulsions? Fairy dust on leather strops?

Thanks

[JD Spydo]

I think your selection of diamond stones is a good one for high vanadium steels. Because even the older 440V (S60V) is truly a monster to sharpen and I've only had good luck using diamond and finishing the job with Spyderco ceramic rods or Spyderco ceramic 302 Benchstones. I do find ceramic does do a little better finishing job than diamond stones do IMO.

But there is no steel that makes you want to yell out curse words like 440V and other high vanadium steels :D

[Blerv]

I'm a sharpening n00b but I understand most of the people here finish their high carbide steels with a fairly aggressive grit. 400-600 or so. That type of edge combined with the carbides makes for a seriously aggressive cutter that holds an edge a long time. Unless I'm wrong, which happens quite a bit. :)

[VashHash]

All i use is a dmt extra coarse to set the bevel and fix damage and finish on a dmt coarse. Shaves fairly easily and cuts aggressively. As far as polishing goes you can go up to 20K for sure probably higher if you want a ridiculous Polish.

[Chumango]

I start with a DMT fine (I don't let the edge get very dull) and finish with a DMT extra fine. That roughly correlates with 400 and 1000-1200 grits.

S110V gets sharp without trouble but if you want to put a very fine edge (easily shave, or whittle hair) it will take noticeably more patience than say S30V or S35VN.

[Steel_Drake]

Rich,

If you are already familiar with waterstones and enjoy using them, you could always get some Sigma Power Select II waterstones for this application. The SPS-II line is made up of silicon carbide abrasive with very little binder and thus unlike typical waterstones made with aluminum oxide abrasive and more binder, SPS-II waterstones should have no trouble cutting s110v. Actually, I have sharpened a ceramic knife on my SPS-II 1000 and it was able to cut it, albeit slowly. In light of that, I doubt it would have any trouble with any steel whatsoever. Just note that the Sigma Power Select II's in 400, 1200 and 13000 grit are not silicon carbide as the rest of the grits are, and you should avoid them for highly wear resistant steels.

I own the Atoma 140, 400, and 1200 plates and can tell you that they are very good, and much more evenly graded than the equivalent DMT plates. Nonetheless, I typically use waterstones for shaping my edge bevels and mainly use my Atoma 140 for flattening my waterstones and re-profiling edge bevels, while I occasionally use the 1200 for creating and touching up microbevels.

[RichWentFishing504]

Can you provide a reference for the sigma power water stones? I see them at Leevalley's put there is not a lot of true technical information on them.

I'm almost dizzy right now with all the options out there.

[Spook410]

It's not hard to sharpen these steels. Decide if you want to sharpen knives to do the chores knives do or if you are interested in experimenting with sharpening perfection. I like diamond stones because they're convenient and since I'm kind of past being fascinated with hair whittling, my DMT fine gets the most use.

[Steel_Drake]

Rich,

Stu from Tool's From Japan is the best source of information about these stones, and has the best description of them here, though I discovered through a subsequent email exchange with him that it would be more correct to say the SPS-II stones have almost no binder, rather than none at all. It was through the same email exchange that I confirmed that the 400, 1200 and 13000 stones in that line are not the same type of stone as the rest of the grits.

You could also check out the video I made here sharpening a ceramic knife with my SPS-II 1000 and you can see a video here of me using my SPS-II 1000 and a suede benchstrop with 30 micron CBN emulsion to take an Endura 4 in HAP40 from butterknife dull to doing crossgrain pushcuts on newsprint in 5 minutes flat.

[RichWentFishing504]

Very impressive. Yes I'd like to get all my folders to do crossgrain push cuts without having to spend hours at a time.

Where did you find that CBN emulsion and why suede as opposed to regular leather or balsawood strops?

Thanks

[NJMS]

I have the sigma power select II stones for my edge pro. My folders at a minimum are S30V and I've sharpened everything up to maxamet. The 240 is one I'd also recommend. My set is 240, 400, 1000, 3000, 6000 & 13000. The 240, 1000 & 3000 see the most functional use. They are great stones.

Good luck in your search. There are some amazing stones available to us from many brands.

[Surfingringo]

Lansky makes an inexpensive 300/600 combo diamond bench stone. It's all you really need to sharpen these steels to their optimal level of performance. If you are into polished edges that's cool but honestly, there are better steels out there for that game.

[Steel_Drake]

Very impressive. Yes I'd like to get all my folders to do crossgrain push cuts without having to spend hours at a time.

Where did you find that CBN emulsion and why suede as opposed to regular leather or balsawood strops?

Thanks

Unfortunately, it seems the 30 micron CBN emulsion I have is not presently available from anywhere as the source I purchased it from no longer caries them. On the other hand, there are diamond pastes easily available in the 20-24 micron range which should behave similarly when applied to a strop (the diamond pastes are less finely graded than the CBN emulsions and don't sink into the strop as much so ~20 micron diamond paste acts like ~30 micron CBN emulsion).

As for why I use suede for my strops: The general principle with strops is that the degree of compressability of the material and how much force you use determine how deeply convexed the microbevel created by the strop is. Since I use fairly low edge bevel angles (in the ~7-9 degree per side range), I want my strops to be very compressible so they create a LOT of convex in the microbevel. Thus, I use suede and tape the strop to a wood backing. If I was using edge bevel angles in the ~15-20 degree per side range, I would glue leather to a wood backing to create a much less compressible surface.

As an alternative to strops, a Spyderco M benchstone or rods on a Spyderco Sharpmaker can be used to create and maintain a microbevel that can also do crossgrain pushcuts on newsprint. I'm actually quite fond of a Spydero M microbevel over a 1000 grit waterstone edge bevel finish for my EDC knives.

[RichWentFishing504]

Just an update. I got my Atoma plates in and tried it on some s110v.

I made a few swipes on the 600 grit to fix up the heel and immediately progressed to the 1200 grit. About a dozen swipes on each side and I was done. Wow that was fast.

I'm now looking at several CBN emulsions and possibly some other synthetic stones to refine the edge a bit more.