A couple of microscope edge pictures I took

[D_W]

Kamisori (japanese razor).

Full finish with chromium oxide - ignore the stray mark, nobody will notice.

This is the best I'm capable of, but it takes a while because it's a razor and you can't be rough or the edge will crumble. The routine is 15 minutes or so, so no good for tools.

 

[ColeyS1]

Have you got an ordinary photo of a used chisel tip and then perhaps a microscopic close up of the used edge ?
I can get an edge that looks sharp and shaves easily, it'd just be interesting to see how much further it could be taken.
I had a quick look at metallurgy microscopes. Nearly had a heart attack at the prices :lol: Minimum to maximum was £1200-£26000 !
Cheers
Coley

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[bugbear]

Couple of last comments - the scope here, probably not clear, is about a $425 scope. Not expensive in the world of real microscopes, but well beyond what a cheap scope can do. Lighting and item holding is a challenge. A scope like this is intended for metal examination - as in a flat surface with uniform lighting. It sends light through the lens onto the surface of the object, and it's bright light, so even something like reflectivity creates a big difference.

So it's an actual metallurgical scope. Thank you. $425 appears to be dramatically cheap for such thing! Which make and/or model is it?

BugBear

 

[ED65]

No, I had clicked through until I had only the image, but the software at the image sharing site outsmarts that and doesn't allow you to link directly to it. I'll have to use a different site to host images.

If you don't have a philosophical objection to it I do recommend Imgur.

When I first joined here I used Photobucket initially as I was a user going back years, but I found it too often unspeakably slow and frankly just too clunky for me, so I ditched it thankfully long before the recent fiasco. Switched to Imgur and the difference was like night and day! Uploads are fast and it auto-generates all the link types you could need. I have no complaints other than the occasional slow period during heavy-traffic times for North America which can't be helped.

You guys should use "adblock".

Amen to that. I can't imagine browsing without an adblocker enabled any more. The few times I have to go online on a library computer I can scarcely believe how noisy some pages are!

 

[ED65]

The quality of edge from the diamond is both interesting and slightly worrying at the same time, I've moved from nasty cheap diamond to a set of 3 slightly better budget diamond plates (and green compound strop after if I'm bothered) - and to be honest the quality of cutting edge that I've achieved isn't as good as I expected - I'd written this off as just bad technique/need practice on my part.
Maybe I'm not wholly to blame - hmm...

You're unlikely to be wholly to blame I'd think, but the grit size and uniformity of your current finest diamond plate will be important to quality and consistency of results.

For plane irons many users probably don't need to strop and you can get away with a much coarser edge than most people (now) think. The level of edge I'm talking about was perfectly acceptable for a wide range of users, pros included, just a couple of generations ago, q.v. what Hayward and other trustworthy sources have to say about honing setups and techniques. These 'coarse' edges are still perfectly capable of planing bright surfaces on many woods, including every species commonly used over here, if need be. Of course with scrapers and sanding that's something that very few do actually need so its importance is, I think, overstated a little sometimes.

But for chisels if your final stone/plate isn't quite fine you really do need to strop at least a little bit unless your honing technique is absolutely dead on.

 

[D_W]

Couple of last comments - the scope here, probably not clear, is about a $425 scope. Not expensive in the world of real microscopes, but well beyond what a cheap scope can do. Lighting and item holding is a challenge. A scope like this is intended for metal examination - as in a flat surface with uniform lighting. It sends light through the lens onto the surface of the object, and it's bright light, so even something like reflectivity creates a big difference.

So it's an actual metallurgical scope. Thank you. $425 appears to be dramatically cheap for such thing! Which make and/or model is it?

BugBear

It's made by an Indian company called radical, not sure of the model number. It's listed on ebay as a trinocular metallurgical scope with 1.3 mp camera.

Definitely much cheaper than a western made scope.

 

[No skills]

When I 'upgraded' I went from a nasty 4 sided diamond box (my regular setup) to a 300/600/1200 ultex plate set plus leather strop and green compound.
The 300 cuts nowhere near as well as my bargin trend 250 BUT I've not used it that much yet - too early to call as the trend hasn't seen much more use than the 300.
The 600 seems on a par with an old plastic dmt 600 I have so no worries there.
As my previous final grit was 600 I was expecting a noticeable increase in sharpness when stepping up to 1200, imo there's not or I'm doing something wrong :lol:
I've played with stropping using the green compound a bit on different materials, I am using leather at the moment but I think I prefer mdf.

Maybe I'm not working the wire edge off enough... I've never checked the 1200 plate for flatness, perhaps I'm undoing my work with a duff plate...

I've done so little hand tool work in the last 12+ months (new baby/college/house repairs/odd jobs getting in the way! ) perhaps I'm just down on practice.

 

[D_W]

If the plate is out of flat, it shouldn't be enough so to bother your sharpening. If you can feel that you're able to move the wire edge to one side or the other (controlling it reasonably well), then you have good contact to the edge, plenty enough for woodworking.

In terms of edges, I'm not a great big fan of partially finishing an edge and going right to compound, as sellers does. You can work with it, of course, but it's not economical/efficient in time vs. results, and the wire edge is tenacious. The urge to fix that can result in too steep of a final angle with the compound and rounding, dubbing.

 

[ED65]

I've done so little hand tool work in the last 12+ months (new baby/college/house repairs/odd jobs getting in the way! ) perhaps I'm just down on practice.

Well you can certainly get rusty if you don't do it frequently, especially if freehanding of course.

Just in terms of the potential of the materials, assuming your green compound is up to snuff (and most are, no matter what they're made from they work well enough for our purposes) you should be able to refine the edge from a 1200 plate to a level that will comfortably pare pine end grain.

 

[ED65]

In terms of edges, I'm not a great big fan of partially finishing an edge and going right to compound, as sellers does. You can work with it, of course, but it's not economical/efficient in time vs. results, and the wire edge is tenacious.

Could you expand on what you mean here? I'm not sure it's reasonable to call Sellers's edges partially finished given he most certainly hones enough to remove the wear bevel.

 

[D_W]

In terms of edges, I'm not a great big fan of partially finishing an edge and going right to compound, as sellers does. You can work with it, of course, but it's not economical/efficient in time vs. results, and the wire edge is tenacious.

Could you expand on what you mean here? I'm not sure it's reasonable to call Sellers's edges partially finished given he most certainly hones enough to remove the wear bevel.

By partially finished I mean skipping too much space. Compound is usually something you use on an edge that's been finished on a stone (like following a washita stone with "emery" on carving tools, as the old texts would say). 1200 diamond is much more coarse with a much stronger burr. It's a big jump.

 

[essexalan]

I had to request replacements twice for my #1200 Ultex plate, both were bent in the middle. New diamond plates cut fast and need to settle in a bit, you can't exactly ease up on the pressure used much because these plates should be used with light pressure only. Personally I would use a hard strop loaded with 1 micron diamond to finish that edge having tried to remove as much of the burr as possible using the plate.

 

[D_W]

That's good policy. One plate around 1k and 1 micron loose diamonds on a hard strop is a complete system.

 

[ED65]

1200 diamond is much more coarse with a much stronger burr. It's a big jump.

I presume such a big jump is a no-no for razors but I don't think it's fatal for woodworking edges, even chisels.

My finest diamond plate is sold as 1000 grit and I strop after that using a loaded cloth strop. I touted this combo as a candidate for a low-budget honing kit late last year, here and it's still what I use most of the time unless I'm deliberately testing out an oilstone progression.

 

[D_W]

A more uniform and stronger (and more durable edge) can be had just by following that with autosol.

My cheapest honing setup is a $1 stone from the dollar store and autosol. You can sharpen something well enough to catch a hanging hair with it, and there's less tendency to start an edge in a state of wear already (rounded limited clearance) with two hard surfaces.

Does it make that much of a difference? Only if you're finish planing or finish paring, the two hard surface edge will have less tendency to nick (which will show up on a pared bevel, and obviously on a finish planed surface - inside of a dovetail socket, not so much.

My favorite cheat to get a good edge is this:
* washita on a japanese white steel chisel - slurried
* tiny bit of powder that I've saved from lapping razor stones that were very out of flat when I bought them (i flip them)

The washita wouldn't have to be slurried if the chisel wasn't japanese, but it's done because we generally don't grind them if we want them to look nice.

First the washita look after refreshing the entire bevel:
https://s26.postimg.org/z2fl2rl61/IMG_2 ... 202107.jpg

What that looks like under the scope (the washita doesn't cut the hard steel very deep, so the edge is pretty much finished - it does cut the wrought easily, so the balance of those two things is pleasant).

And then after 15 seconds or so of work on a jasper loaded with jnat powder in a light paste with WD 40 (which has a nice side effect of rust prevention with no additional effort - that I lose if I use only waterstones).

(the entire picture is about 0.5mm of edge lenth, so the scratches are pretty small. The washita edge alone does very nicely for most work - it's important at this level of magnification to focus on the actual edge and its straightness or lack of divots instead of getting put in a trance by the scratches or lack thereof on the bevel).

An interesting thing from looking at this is the lack of the voids that showed up in the AI chisel. This is Yasuki white #2, it is just better steel than western O1. It's also more expensive and a little harder to get right (no back yard heat treating with it). It is my favorite chisel steel because it's still not *that* hard, only about as hard as the hard ward stuff of old, and makers have better luck with it than they do usually with white #1 (which has a very strict range for hardening and tempering - something like 25 degrees F for the quench temperature). White 2 varies in hardness a lot depending on the maker. Ouchi's chisels are much harder, and from a practical standpoint, less covenient to use because of it.

 

[ColeyS1]

Thanks for those pictures. My cutting edges don't look as polished as yours in the normal size picture . My chisels must look ragged in comparison :lol:
Thanks for an interesting read.

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[D_W]

Well, if your tools work well, there's not much to argue with!

I've learned a little bit in this, too. I used to burnish the ends of my chisels with the jasper (which does make sure no trash is left). Little did I know that quite a bit of stiff work with the jasper does almost nothing for the edge - it just makes the ridges shiny, and is only insurance that no large chunks of flotsam are left where they shouldn't be.

Charging the jasper with a bit of stone powder is very fast, but still very fine. Much faster than the powder is on a finish stone itself (the jasper is very hard....very very hard, like a few multiples harder than a translucent arkansas, thus the habit of completely ceasing to cut. If it's slurried with a diamond hone, it gets brash and hard quickly).

If it works well, what's the big deal? (you can see that the edge itself is very straight, and there's no reason to think that it's thick). Not much, really, but it's easier and faster to use the charged jasper than it is to use the jasper itself - by far. So I've made a change based on this looking, something I didn't think would happen.

Plus, it's allowed me to really improve kamisori sharpening.

 

[Hornbeam]

While the micrographs look fine, to my way of thinking the real issue is does the edge feel sharp in use and how does it stand up to repeated cuts in hard wood. I have used grade water stones for 25 years and get a good enough level shatrpness to shave my arm and hold an edge in oak. Too fine an edge/cutting angle will give a good sharp edge but will crumble. Sharpening takes repeated practice. Once youve established a method that works for you stick with it
Ian

 

[D_W]

Well, I got this to improve razor edges and time spent, plus it helps for me to flip razors if I can provide a picture of the edge. The woodworking sharpening is a curiosity - I already feel like I sharpen faster than anyone else who gets a decent edge.

But even at that, I've learned something that I mentioned a couple of posts above. A bunch of hard rubbing on a jasper to refine the edge wasn't doing as much as I thought, and something that's physically easier and faster does a better job.

On western chisels, this will be about a 30 second effort, and it will never require flattening of stones (I used waterstones initially because they "cut the fastest", but when all is said and done, that's not what you need to have to sharpen faster).

You can't really have too fine of an edge (that's an old myth), but you can definitely have one at too shallow of an angle.

This is maybe in line with my comments in another thread about learning to plane a board flat and continue to plane it without making it less flat. Is it a game changer? No (gad, I hate that term). Is it useful? Certainly - better edge with less effort. Total setup cost without grinder was about $50 and would last five lifetimes ($40 for an unmarked washita, $10 for jasper and just not throwing out the toishi powder - but that can also be bought inexpensively).

 

[No skills]

I'm going to persevere with the setup that I have now - part of the reason I brought the new plates was to have a matching sharpening setup that I could really get the hang of rather than the odds and sods that I have been using (with variable results). I must admit tho I have a fallkniven double sided plate that I keep indoors for quick sharpens, if it was a full 8x3 plate I would probably never of brought the ultex stones

More practice needed, whenever I get the time...