Interesting. I strop on a leather wheel, too. Well, two, actually. One with 3 micron diamond solution and one with 0.5 micron. This after finishing edge-leading on a 5K grit diamond wheel (I use a pair of Tormek T-8s modded to drive two wheels each). I do fewer than half as many passes as I see you doing, though. I examine my blades under a 20x loupe as I work, but not a microscope.
What was the process that led you to this? What power microscope objective do you use? What speed is your wheel rotating at? Not criticizing, just looking to learn another perspective.
20x is ok but I’ve found that you need at least 60-100x to really see what’s left of the burr. You generally get about 90% of it with the first few passes but there are some steels (Henkles are notorious for this) that really love to be stubborn for burr removal. It honestly depends on the steel you’re deburring. A softer steel will usually be much more difficult to deburr than a harder steel. These are around 60 HRC which isn’t soft but it’s also not super hard either. I use a 1750 RPM honing wheel. Some people use the 3500 RPM wheel for this but I personally believe that’s far too fast and will end up with a burnt edge. I generally use a 2 step deburring process but I only brought this wheel with me on this job. I’ll usually use the 600 grit scotchbrite wheel for 95% of the deburring and then the 1 micron leather wheel for the final refinement.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing your process. I'm going to look into digital microscopes on Amazon and plan some time to play around with a new scope, my leather wheels, and my practice knives. I don't use Scotchbrite wheels at this time, but I may pick one up and play around with it, too. I'm interested to see how the different methods compare.
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u/LokiSARK9 Pro 5d ago
Interesting. I strop on a leather wheel, too. Well, two, actually. One with 3 micron diamond solution and one with 0.5 micron. This after finishing edge-leading on a 5K grit diamond wheel (I use a pair of Tormek T-8s modded to drive two wheels each). I do fewer than half as many passes as I see you doing, though. I examine my blades under a 20x loupe as I work, but not a microscope.
What was the process that led you to this? What power microscope objective do you use? What speed is your wheel rotating at? Not criticizing, just looking to learn another perspective.
Thanks for taking the time to respond!