Thread: calling all honemeisters

Well, I won't ever claim to be a master honer but the the couple years I've been at it I've managed to keep my 30 or so razors pretty sharp but now I come to an interesting problem.

I decided to venture into a diamond pasted strap. So I got some .25 diamond paste from classic shaving and did up an old strop and it works great on all but one of my razors. I can use this strop when the razors need a touch-up and save time however when I used this strop with my TI damascus to my horror it actually dulled the razor. Those of you that have one know the work involved in getting it to shave properly. I just finished spending an hour with the 8k and a 12k hone to bring it back to the way it was.

So my question is why would the diamond dull this razor. I realize the steel is hard but it can't be harder than diamonds.

This one is puzzling. Since you have had sucess with your other razors on this strop it does not seem to be technique one would think. Is this a hanging or hard paddle strop?

The 0.25 micron is very fine. Far finer than any stone and with an equvalent mesh (grit) size of 100,000. This should at best polish an edge while barely removing material although my own tests show it quickly "greys" on the strop indicating metal is being removed.

My only though would be it has to do with the makeup of the Damascus. if true Damascus with will have layers of mild and high carbon steel. Micro laminations ture, but layers just the same. maybe this softer steel of getting rolled over the edge where as a more agressive hone simply cuts through it leaving the harder componenet, the carbon steel more prominant. This would be a good time to have something beyond the Radio Shack microscope to really see what is going on.

Of course maybe both razor and strop are defective I will gladly take that bad Damascus razor off your hands in trade for one of my non-defective strops :twisted: Yeah, that's it, Bad razor, yeah. :twisted:

Tony

Tony, is it possible that .25-micron is really closer to a 23,000 grit waterstone? I've always been confused about comparing grits since I found a chart on the Norton site... I didn't realize that the grit-size spec for a waterstone and sandpaper were not equivalent -- I guess the JIS, CAMI, etc abrasive standards never really registered in my brain. Anyway, an excerpt from the Norton chart includes the following data:

Code:

waterstone  sandpaper   diamond
   1500       1000        9.2 micron
   4000       2000        6
   8000                   3
  15000                   0.5

I plugged this into a Excel spreadsheet and did an xy graph of it, then applied an exponentiial trendline... it looks like .25 micron is roughly equivalent to a 23,000 grit waterstone?

(BTW, the Norton doc is: http://www.nortonconsumer.com/media/...alInfoDATA.pdf)

Hello azjoe,

Your conclusion is reasonable. The simplest perspective is to focus on the micron size.
The JIS, ANSI/CAMI/FEPA etc are useful if you stay within a set of produstcs like sandpaper from the same mfg.
There are many other factors to consider in abrasives besides size of the abrasive particle. But for us we need to stay focused on the particle size in microns.

The "mesh" or "sieve" rating is used by certain industries and is not useful to us.

Just muttering in the early morning hours,

I think what Tony says makes sence. Except for the fact it would be better for you to trade that lovely TI damascas to me for a strop!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: or even 2 strops. :lol:

I agre there are many standards and sadly none ar really "standard". My figures come from Ampex, the makers of the diamond compounds I sell. Interestingly Amplex is owned by Saint Gobain, the owners of Nortorn too....with a different idea of grit sizes :lol:

Ampex refers to the 100,000 as equivalent mesh. Their numbrs may vary because there are varied sizes in the abrasive. For example the 0.25 contains particles from 0 to .5 micron, while the .5 contains 0 to 1 micron.

Tony

The strop in question is a hanging strop. I took a gander at the edge under magnification. I don't have a high power radio shack magnifier but I do have a 40x stereo Microscope from my rock hounding days. What it doesn't have in power it has in resolution.

At that power the edge appears real smooth no wire edge or anything like that. The only thing that alters the smoothness are occasional striations at the edge. The metal appears to be uniform in appearance.But then again I already rehoned it. I should have checked it out under the microscope after using the diamond.

Of course I'll be glad to re strop it again on the diamond if someone volunteers to spend a couple hours rehoning it for me again!

I think it still an interesting occurance.

One thing to keep in mind, is that when you strop with paste you are actually backhoning. Different razors and different steels respond differently to backhoning, and apparently you have found one that doesn't respond so very well to the technique. I think your problem has less to do with the type of paste as it does with the fact you are going away from the thin edge with the polishing stroke.

I've never dulled a Damascus with diamond paste to date. I have honed a bunch of them and can tell you that they can be a little harder than most to hone. The steel is hard as a brick. I generally try to use more finishing strokes on the 8K or Coticule stones. Lynn

A hanging strop? You put 0.25 micron diamond paste on a hanging strop then used it in the same manner as a hanging strop? Perhaps you would have better luck if you placed the strop on a hard flat surface and used it as a paddle strop.

The key observation for me is your statement that there were striations only on the very edge of the bevel. The hanging strop is not perfectly flat, might it act as a slight rounding on the edge?