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Old 11-07-2017, 04:29 PM
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Grayshadow95 Grayshadow95 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Michigan
Posts: 91
Heat treat D2 anthology

Got a handle put on the blade so I could sharpen and do some testing:
IMG_5056-1.jpg
IMG_5057-1.jpg

I left the "case-hardening" to see how it stands up to testing.

Got the edge close to final sharpness (yes it is quite hard! thank God for diamond hones!) and tried the brass rod test. The smallest round brass I have is about 1 inch in diameter, not ideal, but everything else I have is larger. Put the blade on the rod so the secondary bevel was flat on it, then raised the spine up a little more. Don't know if it was because my eyes aren't so great or the blade is so thick, but even pressing down as hard as I could with both hands, I couldn't see any deflection of the edge. I rolled the blade along the rod the full length of the straight part of the edge a couple times. I couldn't detect any roll-over on the edge with either my thumb nail or a sewing needle, and no chip-out.
So far so good!

I am now working on fully sharpening the edge. I have 3 diamond hones, 600, 800 and 1200 grit, and several traditional stone hones starting with very coarse up to an 8 inch fine white hard Arkansas stone that is about 4000 grit. The white stone puts a wonderful finish edge on a blade, then I use a barber strop coated with rosin to remove any burrs. While sharpening I do thumb nail tests to check for any flat spots along the edge that need to be worked out.

I don't have any hemp rope, so any other suggestions for testing the edge retention? I thought about cutting up a corrugated cardboard box because I know it is hell on a blade edge.
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