I think you're probably pretty much there already. You're just setting yourself up for failure with you testing media. If you want an intermediate step I would try easier hair. I use one of my thick dark beard hairs. Or one of the the thick white beard hairs that seem to be popping up more and more frequently. A hair from a shaving brush or a paintbrush works. It is just like paper. A world of difference between being able to slice card stock and being able to slice toilet tissue. Thin blonde hairs are much tougher to catch. It is probably also your hair cutting technique. The plates on the hair fit together kind of like shingles on a roof. I is easiest to catch the space between them at a pretty sharp angle. I think at 10 dps your knife is keen enough to slip between the plates. You might just need to practice with easier hair to get the muscle memory right. Then go back to the wispy blonde stuff.
Good point. I have seemed to be making this hard for myself with what I have available.
The scope I have looks like this:
Btw in the latter picture on your 8k is it possible the angle was a little too low so the stone was polishing the microshoulder but sweeping through swarf at the edge? Of course the scratch patterns are deceiving so might be just a trick of the light. Just a minor nitpick in the spirit of achieving excellence
Thanks for sharing. I guess the challenge I’ve got with the optical microscope is I’ve got to also put my eye ball close to the edge and focus and stop the knife moving around and losing focus. I need like four hands.
It’s great! Clean cuts of hanging paper towel!
I do see here a pattern. It's perfectly common to have the first strokes on the finer stone not to instantly reach the apex. If you have no reason to believe these first strokes were at too low an angle, I would not increase it, but just go on with the same angle, and eventually the apex will be reached. That's the essence of a straight bevel. If it doesn't work, go back to the previous stone, and make sure the top of the edge gets clean.
Ahh okay. Fair enough.
I think so, yes. I wouldn't change the angle anywhere in the progression. Just to make sure: even on the finer stone, better use the scrubbing motion, until you're deburring. There's still is some steel to be removed and a scratch pattern to be eased.
Ahh right. Thanks for the explanation.
That’s an interesting possibility.
The scrubbing — with any stone — is the phase of the sharpening before the deburring. In a very tight progression you may skip it with one or more intermediate stones. Not your case so far. The idea is to remove steel. With some steel and stone combinations it allows loosening of the burr.
Okay thanks.
Those were the early pictures where you didn't reach the very edge with the finer stone, the paint was still there, with a messy surface right behind the edge — an accumulation of debris — and you decided to increase the angle, not with the coarser but with the finer stone.
Ahh sweet! Yes I get it now.
Sharpening: scrubbing. Deburring on that same stone. Please rinse it. Don't expect to abrade the burr on a medium-coarse stone with a single stroke. The burr is simply too large. Perhaps five light strokes are needed. We are not going to count. Feel if it is still there. Go on until it's gone. Other side: again, the strokes that are needed. If gone, restart with the first side, where there certainly is a burr, a bit smaller. Eventually the number of strokes get reduced to 1. But there still is a small burr. Go on flipping sides and feel if the burr getting is still smaller. In case you would think there's no burr any longer: bad news. Strop one side on a non-abrasive media — your hand palm, for instance — and feel the other side again. All debris have moved over the apex to one side where you may abrade them.
Awesome! Thank you for that.
