You got your Ceramic Mule. How you gonna sharpen it?

[Steeltoez83]

I'd like to retest my technique a second time just so I can articulate better if it's a valid approach or not Real testing always begins on the fourth edge anyways.

[VeraX_Knives]

Steel, you gotta know that I love ya brother. Without getting too complicated to bore you and everyone else here, the way that me and you test steel (loose standing paper towel slice test) needs to change for ceramics because of friction. That's the main thing there. I know you are going to try the edges and whatnot but it's a simple fact of physics that isn't going to change and exactly why I said to whittle wood with steel and then a ceramic knife. You will instantly feel the 'scientific bs' which is why it won't cut a paper towel as we expect it to.

It's all geometry as I know you know, friction plays on that a bit also similar to the covalence of liquids such as water but NOT covalent bonding being the why.

You know how you can oversharpen a steel knife? It's that same principle although the science changes a little.

[Steeltoez83]

Right now I'm trying to identify a sharpness standard for testing that compares to my other stuff. The paper towel demo is just to showcase I have a good method to create a sharp edge which only took 2 minutes. I have more verification runs to do in order to make sure I have a solid foundation first.

[VeraX_Knives]

About that one - I've tried to think up something that would work like that but unfortunately my brain is too toast to do so. Uhhm. The harder it is the.. more it's going to be noticable. The best my brain can do at this moment would be some polymer the softer the better. Rubber maybe although there's problems there also so no don't use rubber, sorry brother but I really can't think something up right now I overthink things so like the way I look at it is.. you gotta kinda keep the material in its own place metals are just always going to cut differently than the HIC. It really would be a two separate category deal for me. I'll try and think of something or maybe I'll try and spend the time explaining the why's behind.. what on the face of it seems like a very similar material to steel when it is and isn't at the same time. I know that the website science of sharp can definitely explain this, I would assume that they have some information on this stuff already posted but I don't actually know that.

But yeah if you're curious that was about the same results that I got personally with it on the towel test. I rely on the CATRA numbers for any.. I guess what my own selfishness does this stuff for and actually cares about knowing, honestly, my main interest was to see how workable the material was nothing more. The other information was just a bonus I suppose.

Edit: Okay here lol, scientifically speaking the best test would be technically cutting the same material as it is so another HIC, that's a little bit technical but no joke either. I'll loopback to why that is in a later post.

[burlyspyder]

I’ll offer up that if anyone has a “piece” of one that’s around 1 cm2 I’d be willing to image the edge under our SEM at my company:

I too would like a broken piece for SEM if anyone has any to spare. It doesn't need to be as small as Hewn's.

Hewn, what model do you have?

[Steeltoez83]

Normally I use a 1k super vit for testing. However I know very few ppl have that stone so I will be switching up to the spyderco cbn benchstone and recording the times. I'm still deciding on specifics so I have the ability and agility to adjust accordingly. On my sanding roll I got 220 cuts today. I'm leaning towards a time based set standard for achieving a starting point sharpness, but I'm still deciding. In regards to cutting media I'm starting out with sanding rolls and will probably venture into another area. I'm still brainstorming what this material conquers everyday for its users.

[VeraX_Knives]

Normally I use a 1k super vit for testing. However I know very few ppl have that stone so I will be switching up to the spyderco cbn benchstone and recording the times. I'm still deciding on specifics so I have the ability and agility to adjust accordingly. On my sanding roll I got 220 cuts today. I'm leaning towards a time based set standard for achieving a starting point sharpness, but I'm still deciding. In regards to cutting media I'm starting out with sanding rolls and will probably venture into another area. I'm still brainstorming what this material conquers everyday for its users.

The sanding roll isn't a bad idea I'm just being a little picky, but there's various types of wear abrasive and adhesive as you know.

All this material is for, is for corrosion. Period end of discussion.

I'm just trying to defend the concept behind why they tried this, there is some legitimate science behind it but if I'm being completely honest with everyone here, I'd consider that an "ingot" accuracy alloy, with the injection process I'd have to know more about it and various other things that.. I personally believe is leading to a drop in toughness.

It's literally like me making a plastic knife and you comparing that to steel. I can't make polymers that hard but hard enough to be used as a knife yes it's.. technically possible although the knife would snap. You gotta separate the categories of materials for any .. real comparison. Not that I see many people interested in that either but I digress.

[Steeltoez83]

I have my own criticisms of why this was made too. I wasn't wearing my excited pants when the ball started rolling either. I'm moving thru these shenanigans of mine to really see what this stuff can do. So far I haven't thought of a practical use for it yet. However I have seen edge retention improvements thru sharpening. I am working my way thru harder materials such as ice right now, and limestone after that. Spyderco likes to take the road less traveled, those usually have the most stones.

I don't want to detour from my normal testing too much. Bridging off test results and making gradual alterations is helping me identify where the rubber meets the road. Instead of 60% in 1 day, extend it over 7 to get a percentage not a pass or fail score. Then replicate the same amount of impacts the ice got, but with a harder material like limestone. Depending on the damage or lack of, move up to a cinderblock same idea. The process is gradual, but I'm hoping to provide a few more positive points to the discussions.

[VeraX_Knives]

Totally understand that man I really do. I commend you on it and never said stop. With what I know from testing you're right I can get it to exceed z-max @69Rc on CATRA testing but that's actually at 20-22 DPS vs 17.5 (stockish) with my own testing and if you factor how Larrin tests into it, it would easily pass any steel alloy there. People are on my a*s for saying what I have to you without realizing that this.. only really benefits Spyderco as I'm honestly shutting my mouth on a lot of technical stuff that I can't exactly "prove" but "know", and I expected you to not take anything that I said personally which I don't believe that you have.. (this is where you correct me if I'm wrong) I think I have a decent idea of what kinda guy you are, You just gotta pause for one second and think about how I think about it lol. Even with tons of scientific equipment and whatnot, like I'm used to seeing the deltas in their results and being shocked thinking okay is this calibrated correctly lol which it is, so I expect you to get.. a bunch of rather random results just because I have gotten those results with a machine not.. a human being that has even more variation. And yeah I tried different materials which some would balance out like steel such as printer paper. I moved to a yellow page book and that was about half of the printer paper. I have absolutely no explanation for that besides... IDK eco-friendly starch ink? It didn't feel like that but I'm sure the process has improved and it's the only guess I have. So as I've said before man keep it up don't let my brain overthink everything when I can be missing one small piece of information that I just didn't think about that is very blatant to anyone else lol. I believe that I went on about the time I spent 5 hours trying to figure out why it cost more to go a ring size up rather than down. 5 hours of questioning everything that I knew about it and then my mother of all people goes "uhh the cost of the metal being added?". Me: total facepalm.

So that can happen!

[hewn7]

I too would like a broken piece for SEM if anyone has any to spare. It doesn't need to be as small as Hewn's.

Hewn, what model do you have?

We have a phenom, It can take samples larger than that but that’s the size of the “sticky tiles” we have to mount samples on.

I do have a 20 micron diamond film belt on the way. I’ll try that with lubricant on the 2x72 running slowing in reverse on a rubber wheel and see what we get.

Have been using the mules around the house, kitchen, barn and they have been great. No chips etc, but I do tend to be careful with my blades. Save for last weekend when I was cutting a piece of rubber edging with my umnumzaan. Dang thing had a strip of metal
In it.

[burlyspyder]

I too would like a broken piece for SEM if anyone has any to spare. It doesn't need to be as small as Hewn's.

Hewn, what model do you have?

We have a phenom, It can take samples larger than that but that’s the size of the “sticky tiles” we have to mount samples on.

Nice, we also have a Phenom. I figured as long as it can fit in the tray I'd be able to figure it out. The reason I asked is because you described the mount area for samples almost exactly. I haven't run anything ceramic, will be interesting if I can get a piece. Maybe I will try sputter coating as well for giggles.

[hewn7]

I think it would be interesting to see grain size and what’s happening to the grains along the edge. Usually to see grain boundaries you need to etch a material fist,
But I’m not sure what that would be done with for this material.

I did sharpen on mule with the diamond film belt this weekend with water as a lubricant. It’s around the same sharpness as the tormek w cbn mule now, but with a finer smoother edge. On a 3 Finger test it feels sharper but shaving and papertowl say it’s around the same.

Still using the knives daily and they work great around the house. Have a Bahamas trip coming up so I’ll take 2 there and use them as for diving, rigging, fish cleaning etc.