Nicks

[mrducks]

Hello,

    New to the Tormek sharpening, Been doing it by hand for years.  I also purchased a digital microscope so I have never looked at edges before. Can someone point me in the right direction to correct this problem? One is a cheaper knife the other is a Shun. Both at 16 degrees. I used both hard felt and leather wheel to strop. Resharpened and just leather wheel same results.  Thanks for any help

[John_B]

What I would try is to sharpen the less expensive knife at 15° and look at it under the microscope before you hone to make sure all the knicks are gone. Be gentle honing and check again. Shun's are quite hard and they tend to chip easier than many other knives so I would set it aside until you can perfect your technique. What magnification are you using? I normally use a Bausch and Lomb loupe that goes up to 20x so if your magnification is significantly more I may have the same thing and am not seeing it. For my personal knives I hone using Tormek paste the switch wheels and use 1µ diamond followed by leather razor strop.

[Sir Amwell]

I tried using the rock hard felt wheel for a considerable time before ditching it. I could never make it work for me. I asked forum members about their experiences using it and got mixed , polarised responses as to its efficacy, but no real definitive answers. So it's time to ask the same question again.
Do you use a rock hard felt wheel with 1 micron diamond paste to deburr and what are your thoughts on it?

[Stovepipe]

I was all up in the air with regard to what to use and when. Some knives worked some didn't. I just read Knife Deburring (this is the first time I actually read it and didn't leaf through it) with particular attention to the type of material of the knife. I would encourage everyone to go through his book as I seem to pick up a bunch. Dr Kraitchuk said the leather wheels work well with the paste but are too soft for the higher hardness knives which require diamond microns. The felt, on the other hand, is sprayed with the diamond solution and let to dry throughly prior to using. I tried this approach and had some surprising success. Additional insight is given on the concept of negative and positive burrs, how they occur and how best to remove. Honestly I was clueless prior to reading his book. I think I even missed this the first or second time I leafed through picking up what I thought were the important parts.

[tgbto]

Also Wootz was dedicating a lot of effort to getting the lowest BESS scores, which is an indication of how thin the apex of the edge is. But this result can be altered by sheer oxidation, not to mention a few cuts of hard vegetables on a wooden board. In his book, there is a chapter about edge retention which is not really dependent on initial sharpness but rather on apex angle.

That being said, I concur with John in making an intermediate check before honing to get a good look at the edge. The burr should be visible, but its root should be clean. If nicks appear when honing with only leather wheel and PA-70, I'm clueless. And I wouldn't use a rock hard wheel before I get satisfactory results with the leather wheel. That would eliminate a possible culprit in addition to providing a sound comparison basis.

@mrducks, do you sharpen edge leading or edge trailing ? Do you use a lot of pressure when honing ?

[mrducks]

Edge leading