Thread: At what grit can you no longer see scratches with the naked eye

what grit, or after what natural hone can you no longer see scratches without magnification?


not sure if this should be in advanced, but it seemed like something experienced people would have noticed and others might not.

IMHO about 8K

A radio shack magnifier/microscope is about as affordable as you can get & you can see what is going on at the edge...the naked eye can't see this. I say this because you can have a beautifully mirrored polish to 30K on the razor, but if the bevel isn't right, it doesn't matter.

Without Magnification????

Guess that would depend on your closeup eyesight for me about 1k now if I had longer arms it might be higher

I love that expression "I don't need reading glasses, I just need longer arms"

Depends on the eye, but for me 1k scratches are invisible.

Depends on the hone, too. Not all hones at (insert whatever number)k have the same types of patterns.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

A radio shack magnifier/microscope is about as affordable as you can get & you can see what is going on at the edge...the naked eye can't see this. I say this because you can have a beautifully mirrored polish to 30K on the razor, but if the bevel isn't right, it doesn't matter.

oh I didnt mean that, I have a loupe I was just curious when most people stop noticing them. Since I have better than 20/20 I didn't think about bad eyesight.

I too was blessed with good eyesight. What magnification is your loupe? When I was learning to hone I "thought" a loupe from Hobby Lobby was the answer to my wanting to see scratch marks as well. During a private transaction/trade on some gun parts, member Sicboater sent me one of the cheap magnifier/microscopes from Radio Shack as a freebie. I had no clue how much a so called 60-100x (I really doubt it magnifies that much, but it's what it claims) microscope with a light could help my learning curve. This along with invaluable information provided from veteran honers is what actually taught me the "ropes".

Nothing beats sitting down with someone well versed in the stones though...

I have a 10x-18mm otto frei triplet. I have a razor honed by lynn and one honed by another senior member and i can see the scratch pattern on those with it.

the interesting thing for me when I started using a loupe 40x(thanks Glen) is that I learned what the scratch pattern for my stones was at each grit. even at 16K Shapton I still can see scratches. just more refined and smaller. The trick now is to use this info when honing to it's benifit. I use much less finishing strokes now as with a 16K it only gets so "good" after that I use a few CrOx passes. My edges are better then they ever were prior to the loupe. Prior to it was trial and error. Now 9/10 times I "hit" the edge I am looking for.