The <BYX•CO> Sharpening Stones Thread

Not feasible.

 

The old Collins machetes are cool, but Imacasa can't make 'em like that. It's just not possible. You could always rehandle one yourself, though. Pre-Bakelite they used horn, and that's still available, or you could use Delrin. It's just not something my manufacturer works with and most folks who aren't keen on the poly handle would be pleased with walnut.

 

Again, not a material they work with. But when the wood-handled ones come out down the road there's nothing that'd stop you from popping the scales off and making your own.

 

Prototype Ptarmigan bench stones are now up on the site.

 

Wonderful! I find the American Mutt stone puts an incredible paper- and cardboard-slicing edge on boxcutter blades, in addition to shaping bevels well. We'll be getting pocket stones and pucks made in that blend soon.

 

We're now offering the "American Mutt" series in both a puck and a pocket stone, in the improved 90% press force configuration we've been using for the bench stones. Pucks are excellent for scrubbing aggressively at a heavily worn surface, and the pocket stone gives the ability to repair damaged edges easily without needing to add much weight or volume to your kit. I've personally found that the edge I get off of the Mutt series, when finished using light strokes to avoid a burr, is just the bee's knees for cutting cardboard and paper, and I've been using it to routinely resharpen my box cutter blades. And like the bench stone, they're super economical and made with a blend of random sizes of silicon carbide, aluminum oxide, and trace amounts of diamond, so they chew through just about anything.

 

Just got these babies ready for market. Done in the 80/20 blend of black and green 60-grit silicon carbide that made the bench stone so effective, but in a Carborundum Co. pattern No.188 oval bar with file-like grooving. Doesn't blunt from use on rusty or dirty tools, and even bites into vintage axe bits that are too hard to file. Cuts on both push and pull strokes, too. A small number of other companies produce stones in this pattern, but all in "cheap" blends that aren't really optimized for the intended usage. The use of the hyper-aggressive Manticore blend really "makes" the stone, in my opinion.

The gem shown with it is made of the self-same material, but is more like a 1-grit.

 

Steels containing over 3% vanadium can be sharpened with ANSI 400/JIS 700 grit stones and coarser, but above that you'll need to use diamond or CBN stones to produce a lasting edge. Vanadium carbides are harder than silicon carbide is (which, in turn, is harder than aluminum oxide) but are also very tiny, at an average of 3µ in size. This means that at 400 grit and lower the silicon carbide or aluminum oxide abrasive can just scoop out the steel matrix without being bothered by the carbides. Finer than that and they start running into trouble removing the metal properly and you need to switch to abrasives that can actually abrade the vanadium carbides themselves.

So basically, the Arctic Fox and coarser should have no problem with those steels, but something like the Ptarmigan (which we're out of anyhow--it's not in full production yet) would be advised against.

 

You can roughen the surface with either something like a T-shaped diamond grinding wheel dressing tool (they're cheap and super coarse) or use a pointed or edged object to scour the surface, like a crisp edge of a piece of black iron pipe. You should be using the Mutt with fairly high pressure, or else it won't shed grit. Pretend it's a file and you're really trying to hog metal off. Using your body weight in the stroke makes it cut absurdly fast and allows it to shed worn grit. If you prefer lighter pressure, you can use it with oil to reduce frictional wear on the abrasives.