Diamond Waterstones

A few videos:

Big Brown Guy:
[www.youtube.com]

Michael Christy:
[www.youtube.com]

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

It makes sense they have a very high bond strength. I am curious about the wear vs a plate, the cost is also fairly high. I would also like to see someone actually flatten one as otherwise it they are not getting any benefit over a plate.

I have had the "pocket" version of that Venev 1200/2000 for a couple of months. The stone can be lapped with loose SiC or on a diamond plate, and the bond is strong enough that it doesn't seem to shed any grit in use. I have had a very difficult time producing a fine edge from this stone. The surface is too hard to gouge but there seem to be some non-uniform grits on which the edge catches, so edge-leading strokes are nearly impossible. The best result I've obtained from it isn't anywhere near as sharp as what I get from my hard or soft Arkansas, any of my fine water stones, fine India, or EZE LAP Super Fine—it can take an edge which is already push cutting and popping hair above the skin down to just barely shaving in a single ultra-light pass on either side. The slicing ability does not seem to improve despite the worsened push-cutting. The stone loads very easily, even with glycerine, oil, or personal lubricant used instead of water. The only good use I've found for it is as a conditioning stone for my finer Shapton Pros.

The manufacturer more-or-less states that the stone doesn't produce good edges:

Quote
From the manufacturer's FAQ:
VENEV 2000 GRIT DIAMOND CREATES LARGE GROOVES ON THE CUTTING EDGE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT?
This is completely normal for diamond sharpening, especially on high carbon steels. Diamonds offer high performance, sacrificing cutting edge quality. If you need a very accurate cutting edge, you should switch to non-diamond abrasives.

I had taken that to mean that the edges wouldn't be suitable for straight razor users, who seem to be the site's audience. I tried sharpening a variety of pocket and kitchen knives in different steels, ranging from a CV Case Sodbuster on the soft end to a ~65 HRC Takamura nakiri in SKD-12. Maybe this stone works better with ultra-high-carbide steels, but I don't have any.

The coarsest stone might be useful for thinning/heavy repair (if it behaves similarly) as it can tolerate much more downward pressure than an electroplated diamond stone.

Quote
humphreyblowdart
The stone can be lapped with loose SiC or on a diamond plate, and the bond is strong enough that it doesn't seem to shed any grit in use.

Have you lapped it? Does it behave any different after the lap? The reason I ask is that SiC will wear diamond faster than steel so it is possible the SiC could wear the diamond abrasive in the lapping producing a worn surface. This would require the SiC and the diamond grits to be similar in size however.

Quote

I have had a very difficult time producing a fine edge from this stone. The surface is too hard to gouge but there seem to be some non-uniform grits on which the edge catches, so edge-leading strokes are nearly impossible.

After lapping?

Quote
CliffStamp
Have you lapped it? Does it behave any different after the lap? The reason I ask is that SiC will wear diamond faster than steel so it is possible the SiC could wear the diamond abrasive in the lapping producing a worn surface. This would require the SiC and the diamond grits to be similar in size however.

I have used 320 grit loose green SiC and a 600 grit diamond plate to lap it. The behavior I'm describing was occurring both pre- and post-lapping. I've also tried breaking it in by using it on a single-bevel yanagi to try to reduce the aggressiveness. The stone works much better on single-bevels than double-bevels, from what I'm seeing. I suspect that the contact area of my knives is too small for this stone to work well, leading to high pressure at the edge. I use a hamaguri-ba (convex zero-grind) edge with no secondary bevel on all of my kitchen knives, with the very edge somewhere around 8-10° per side. I can't seem to microbevel with this stone, but it's great at polishing flats. It might be more useful for polishing HSS chisels or plane blades.

So far, the best uses I've found for this stone are removing/blending thinning scratches from soft cladding and conditioning/dressing fine stones. It's not a bad stone but it doesn't seem to do anything better than conventional bonded abrasives when sharpening Class I and II steels.

That is interesting, there isn't anything which jumps out as obvious which would cause that after lapping unless the diamond grit variance is just extremely high. In that cause you could be wearing down the bond and exposing the diamond and some of them are so large that they are just snagging. It might be of use to try giving it some passes on a solid ceramic after you have lapped it. Just try say 20-40 passes against a piece of ceramic tile and see if it makes any difference at all.

Humphreyblowdart: Very interesting. I remember being very intrigued by these things some time ago, there was next to know information available about these other than being comparatively expensive.

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Folding knives are fun, fixed blades are important.

Quote
CliffStamp
That is interesting, there isn't anything which jumps out as obvious which would cause that after lapping unless the diamond grit variance is just extremely high. In that cause you could be wearing down the bond and exposing the diamond and some of them are so large that they are just snagging. It might be of use to try giving it some passes on a solid ceramic after you have lapped it. Just try say 20-40 passes against a piece of ceramic tile and see if it makes any difference at all.

I tried 20 passes on a piece of ceramic, washed and used it a little, and then another 20. I'm only using it on a VG-10 Tojiro DP paring knife for the sake of consistency. No matter what combination of high-angle passes, edge-trailing passes, or crossing scratch patterns, I cannot yield anything better than a mediocre edge. It performs similarly to an edge apexed on a King 300, capable of shaving hair but not push-cutting paper. Even if this stone is capable of better results, I can't justify the effort when I have dozens of other stones that give me less trouble.

I'm still liking it as a cleaning/grooming stone for my soft/hard Arkansas stones and finer Shapton Kuromakus—it unclogs and refreshes the surfaces rapidly, and pulls up a nice creamy slurry (even on the Arkansas).

Is the catching of the stone influenced at all by the ceramic lapping?

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CliffStamp
Is the catching of the stone influenced at all by the ceramic lapping?

The edge still catches after lapping. At this point I'm questioning whether I received the correct grit—the sticker on the shrink-wrap packaging said "Fine/Ultra-Fine" (or something like that) but the stamp on the abrasive itself was illegible. It seems to polish blades on the flats. The vendor caters strongly to users of guided systems—maybe it works well in those.

If you keep lapping the stone on the ceramic does it have any impact at all on it catching or in general how it behaves?

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CliffStamp
If you keep lapping the stone on the ceramic does it have any impact at all on it catching or in general how it behaves?

The stone loads up a bit with ceramic dust, but after being scrubbed clean it continues to be…fussy. I'm using the glazed side of a ceramic bathroom tile, if that makes any difference.

I've managed to get an edge that push-cuts receipt paper on a freshly zero-ground (~20-25° inclusive) higo no kami after extensive prep on a progression of 300, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 6000 grit waterstones over the entire bevel that had yielded a near-mirror finish on the core steel. That edge took a lot of care and finesse to apply, and still felt very toothy against my fingertips. The edge catches as soon as I try to raise the angle for a microbevel. The pressure needed to maintain a consistent angle (~30-60 g is the least I can manage against a scale but it's probably less than that when I hold the stone in my left hand) when grinding a small contact area (~0.1 mm) is enough to make it snag. The bevel was left with big scratches easily visible to the naked eye, seemingly larger than those created by a worn Medium Crystolon—the Crystolon appeared to refine the scratch pattern afterwards, leaving it shinier and smoother to the touch. The gouges in the cladding are deep enough to feel with my fingernail. I am very confident that I had obliterated the scratch pattern from my coarser stones beforehand and that these gouges were created by the diamond stone, as I could not detect any such roughness after the 6000 grit stone (or even the 300).

I've left it alone for weeks at a time to try to avoid letting my initial perception color my subsequent use. At this point, after trying dozens of different knives scores of times I have run out of profanities to express my frustration with this stone. I'd rather sharpen on a flattened coprolite. Trying to use it feels like an existential crisis.

That is an interesting combination of properties, it is hard to understand how it is would still be catching after lapping with ceramic when it isn't releasing grit readily. Any high diamonds should be worn down and new ones should not be being released.

I have always found hard bound stones the easiest to apex with, getting push cutting paper on 600 DMT stones readily, so something 2000 grit or so should do that easily.

I am becoming curious enough to probably pick up one.

What's even more weird is that they use the FEPA-F grit rating scale so 2000 grit is supposed to be 1u:
[www.gritomatic.com]

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2017 07:37AM by jasonstone20.

Quote
CliffStamp
That is an interesting combination of properties, it is hard to understand how it is would still be catching after lapping with ceramic when it isn't releasing grit readily. Any high diamonds should be worn down and new ones should not be being released.

It's not catching in the sense that the blade comes to a hard stop, like if I held the blade at too high of an angle on a King 6K. It's more of a jittery, start-stop, "grabbing" sensation, if that makes any sense. It feels as if certain spots drag on the blade—the surface doesn't feel uniform. It feels similar to a broken-in coarse electroplated diamond stone in use, but more aggressive (cuts with less pressure).

Quote
CliffStamp
I have always found hard bound stones the easiest to apex with, getting push cutting paper on 600 DMT stones readily, so something 2000 grit or so should do that easily.

I have, too—push cutting paper off of a Fine India is no trouble. As Jason mentioned, this is nominally a 2.5/1 micron stone, about 4/8K JIS. I rewatched the videos and I don't think that my experience is out of line with theirs. Christy describes it as finer than a coarse DMT, but faster and coarser than the Naniwa 6K. He uses 4 different abrasives afterwards to obtain his final edge, which doesn't help at all in demonstrating the effects of the Venev stones vs. any other medium grit stones. A lot of stones will produce a sharp edge if you follow them with 4 other abrasives. BBG doesn't specify the grits of his Venev stone or go into much useful detail at all about it. If I follow either side of my 1200/2000 Venev with Arkansas stones I can obtain a hair-whittling edge, although I don't see that as a useful metric of edge quality.

The really strange thing about this stone is that it produces an edge which doesn't push cut especially well for its grit while also having fairly poor slicing aggression. I suspect that it's loading and burnishing while also somehow leaving big gouges. The Gritomatic product site shows close-ups of the edge that don't look too bad, although the very edge of the edge seems to be reflecting light. I can't tell if that's a microbevel or a burr or just an optical aberration from the microscope.

Basically, I've concluded that the Venev 1200/2000 is poorly-suited to the task of finishing an apex. There are better options for "intermediate" stones that cut faster, leave a more-uniform finish, prevent burr formation with slurry, and don't load as readily. I think the 100/240 would be more interesting considering all of the wear/lifespan issues that users report with electroplated coarse diamonds.

I replied but I had left this page open overnight and my login timed-out. So, if there's a lengthy comment from an anonymous user, that's me. The TL;DR of it is that if someone wants to try another one of these I suggest the 100/240 version. Also, if you want to save on shipping, almost everything from Gritomatic is available through Amazon.

I had reached the same conclusion you noted :

" I suspect that it's loading and burnishing while also somehow leaving big gouges."

That is a binder/abrasive mix problem. I will likely pick one up to see if I am right.

I just got a small pocket model of the Gritomtatic Venev Diamond stone, EF/UF, 1200/2000 FEPA, 4k/8k JIS, 3u/1u. The stone was $16 on Amazon delivered. Size is decent, as I like wider pocket stones, at 1 3/4" (45mm) wide and 3 1/4" (82mm) long. The stone cuts fast and as boxed, the finish is a little rougher than the grit rating would imply, but it strops up to a mirror with 10pps on a loaded strop. It leaves a very grabbing edge when felt with the fingertips. Like most diamond hones, it leave relatively deeper scratch marks, which could explain the lack of a high polish off the stone. Grit rating seems accurate. I used the stone with just water, and I didn't have any loading problems. The stone came clean with just a damp paper tissue. I am very pleased with this stone.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

I had the EF side mixed up with the UF side. The finish is good off the UF side, and even with the EF side as a finish, it still stropped to a mirror finish. Go figure.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

After getting the right side of the stone to finish on, I got a very nice edge which polished up great after a little pasted stropping. The edge had great slicing aggression, would severe a head hair in both directions, and would even push cut free hanging paper towel. I tried it on Benchmade's 154CM and S30V, both steels sharpened up the same.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2018 09:31PM by jasonstone20.

This stone gets glassed very fast, after only 5 uses.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

The problem with diamond as an abrasive is that it doesn't wear significantly against steel hence you don't want it lost (weak binder) because if you do you are just shedding sharp abrasive. However if you don't shed abrasive at all then you are going to encounter loading really fast. Essentially think about using a Norton India stone without lubricant (water doesn't do much as a lubricant).

Now you could try oil -but- most oils are likely to have a heavy masking effect due to the small size of the abrasive so while they might stop it loading, they could also cut down on the cutting speed significantly as well. Ideally you want to thin out the oil just to the point it minimizes loading, but also, if you do oil it, going back takes some work if you decide you want water again.

Cliff,
Interesting. I could try the dishsoap, oil and water mixture. The stone isn't porous at all.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

The stone comes clean with either a pink pencil eraser or rust eraser.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

Discussion on BladeForums:
[www.bladeforums.com]

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

Big Brown Bear:
Sharpening Maxamet (video):
[youtu.be]

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

BBB CBN Resin Waterstones #400 and #1500

[youtu.be]

I have had a chance to try these stones, and Shawn also sent a pair to Jef Jewell (see his YouTube videos) to try. I was able to try them alongside the Naniwa Diamond Waterstones, as well as the Japanese Knife Imports diamond waterstones. I like these stones a lot for sharpening medium to high carbide steels, and if I had the money available I would pick up a pair of the CBN stones because they left a better edge right off the stones in my opinion, as well as offering great feedback. The Naniwa Diamond Waterstones and the JKI stone had a tendency to pull up a burr very quick, and the JKI stone felt almost exactly like a resin bond AlO King 1k Stone. I have used the Venev Resin Waterstones also, they don't have the burr issue, but the feedback isn't that great. I also used the metallic bonded stones, they were very interesting as you could just wipe off the swarf like my Suehiro and Steelex/Woodstock AlO waterstones. I used the CBN stones to sharpen a Spyderco LW Manix in Maxamet, and it sharpened to a high sharpness as if it were 154CM or AUS 8. All of these diamond/CBN waterstones execpt the Venev stones leave a great polish, higher than the grit rating would suggest. They only drawback I see to these types of stones are the price, which is prohibitive for most people.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

Quote
jasonstone20
BBB CBN Resin Waterstones #400 and #1500

I am intrigued, wonder how they compared to the Venev Bonded Diamond Stones?

vigiloconfido,
The CBN stones leave a better finish and have better feedback than the Venev Bonded Diamond Stones, as well as giving you a crisper edge. The drawback to the CBN stones is the price and limited grits, the Venev stones have more grit options and are less expensive.

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser

More interesting stone:

Gritomatic Metallic Bonded CBN stones:
[www.bladeforums.com]

Diamond Matrix Stones:
[www.bladeforums.com]

"Gotta love living in 2019 baby, (63rc too soft on a production knife)"
--Shawn Houston

"I am still discussing issues of steels and performance at this stage."
--Cliff Stamp

"Cause geometry cuts, .....steel determines the level and the duration"
--Roman Landes

"But in general, I'm all about high performance, Ergos, safety. That's why I've been accused of 'designing in the dark' "
--Sal Glesser