A couple of microscope edge pictures I took

[D_W]

I took these and posted them on a low-traffic forum, but will post them on this low traffic forum, too!

I don't expect most will find them interesting. They're three edges on the trusty Iles chisels (O1) using three different stones. Not why I bought the microscope that I bought, but interesting to me.

I intend to look at a whole bunch of edges, but not to learn anything on tools - we're all pretty comfortable with our routines, right? I like the washita, but I have more stones than debeers and wouldn't mind seeing what they actually do at the edge.

The important thing here is the edge, and not getting hung up ogling the scratches on the bevel.

Washita - stropped with leather:

EZE lap 1200, stropped with leather. No good - you can see the foil.

Then stropped with a barber linen and then leather (not practical, but surprisingly clean hair remover in this condition - a bit rounded so not technically that sharp as the linen beat the peaks right off of the edge).

And shapton 12000.

The magnification level here is high, maybe a true optical 200x or so, higher than the hand held scopes that claim 500x. The washita edge shown here is clean enough to leave a polished surface and pare with.

 

[custard]

I have more stones than debeers

:lol:

 

[D_W]

trans ark:

Slurry gray chinese stone:

Slurry fine Okudo suita:

Mystery stone - you have to guess what it is:

The chinese and okudo stones could cut more finely if they weren't slurried, but they'd be a lot slower at the same time. Their scratches would look more like the arkansas stone scratches.

Important to focus on the edge (what you can see of it) and how straight and uninterrupted it is. These scratches will not prevent a polished surface, so the edge is what counts.

You can see on the okudo picture that the steel itself has pits in it. Some of these show up in the edge, also (I avoided those sections, it's counterproductive). These are AI chisels - I like them quite a lot. I don't notice anything from them in normal use. It'll be interesting to see if we see anything like that in japanese chisels......oops, scratch that. One of the pits is right on the edge at the right side of the picture.

 

[bugbear]

What's the microscope?

If you can, it's best to put a scale bar in photomicrographs, otherwise they're difficult to interpret meaningfully.

Is a scratched surface rough or smooth - only the scale tells you.

BugBear

 

[ColeyS1]

Interesting pictures ! Always wanted a microscope. I'd be interested to hear what sort you have.


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[essexalan]

Was this a grind to the edge straight off your CBN setup or did you just touch up the edges with the various stones? Something looks odd a short way in from the Washita edge as if the bevel has a bend/roll in it. Diamond edge does not surprise me deep striations all the way to the edge plus that initial burr. Trans Ark seems to have something hanging on the edge or is that a reflection? Plus deep striations. Shapton 12K needs a bit more work but it is designed to be used in a progression. Suggest you don't use cross hatch sharpening, if that is what you have done, it just confuses old gits like me. Now bang all the chisels into a lump of cherry and let's see how the edge holds up. The last stone I would guess is a natural with quite high size of grit. Coticule?

Thank you for the interesting post.

 

[ColeyS1]

Now bang all the chisels into a lump of cherry and let's see how the edge holds up.

+1 That did make me chuckle ! :lol:



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[ED65]

Thanks for taking the time to post these D_W, always good to see more pics like this to add to knowledge pool.

I've been meaning to get one of the inexpensive USB microscopes that crop up on sale here periodically and I think this has swayed me, once I get a proper workshop set up.

 

[D_W]

Except for the diamond hone, these are all polished edges. Any little bit of shine left behind is a wire edge, but not enough to affect work, just an artifact of how the stones work.

No issue with banging on cherry, these edges are all past shaving hair easily except the diamond edge with a lot of foil. For scale, the scratches on the shapton edge are about a micron, maybe. The height of the bevel shown in the picture is probably quarter of a millimeter, thus all stones look scratchy at this magnification. The key is whether the edge is interrupted.

The scope is an Indian made metallurgical microscope.

The mystery stone is jasper. Incredibly fine, but slow.

 

[nabs]

I am one of the people who would like to look at your pics DW, but is there any chance you could try getting them to show up inline with the tags?

I would not normally ask, but each time I click one of your links I am presented with a large image of an orange bare-chested chap and told 'steroids are turning men into beasts etc' (I expect Google has worked out that I have an adonis like body and is targeting me specifically, so YMMV!)

 

[AndyT]

+1. My milage was the same, so no worries there - maybe "tools" has more than one meaning?
(I also got a local millionaire wanting to reveal the secrets of her success - maybe she's very good at spotting bootsale treasure going cheap?) :wink:

 

[swb58]

+1. My milage was the same, so no worries there - maybe "tools" has more than one meaning?
(I also got a local millionaire wanting to reveal the secrets of her success - maybe she's very good at spotting bootsale treasure going cheap?) :wink:

Scroll down the page a bit.

 

[D_W]

I think they're too big. I have ads turned off, so I never see anything from the picture host in terms of those.

I'll see if I can post them in line, though.

 

[D_W]

https://s26.postimg.org/88jwks5ih/washi ... Chisel.jpg

test of the link directly to the image.

 

[bugbear]

Did you mean:

(wrapped in IMG tags)

BugBear

 

[D_W]

No, I had clicked through until I had only the image, but the software at the image sharing site outsmarts that and doesn't allow you to link directly to it. I'll have to use a different site to host images.

You guys should use "adblock". When you view the images at the site links, there are no ads because the browser won't allow them to load. (thus, I've never seen all of the "stuff" you guys are talking about).

 

[D_W]

OK, links adjusted to inline. I don't do that all the time because the pictures almost always need to be resized.

 

[D_W]

Couple of last comments - the scope here, probably not clear, is about a $425 scope. Not expensive in the world of real microscopes, but well beyond what a cheap scope can do. Lighting and item holding is a challenge. A scope like this is intended for metal examination - as in a flat surface with uniform lighting. It sends light through the lens onto the surface of the object, and it's bright light, so even something like reflectivity creates a big difference. The background is actually a white sheet of paper and it is magneted to the chisel - the difference in reflectivity vs. the metal is so stark that it looks dark. I might try something glossy next - it's the very edge that I want to pick up.

i didn't buy it to look at tool edges. I flip razors on the side - I bought it to speed up my razor honing process without decreasing results. Most people who hone professionally don't send razors that are as well honed as I do, at least not the people who do it in volume. They charge $15-$25 to do 10 minutes worth of work, but I've bought a razor from one of those folks that they "courtesy" honed, and it wasn't that great.

I can't see what I want to see with an inexpensive hand-held scope. Those do take great pictures of edges for what they are, especially considering you can get them for about $10 with shipping, but they stop at about 100x. I will be able to look at razors edge-on with this thing and see the last 10%.

It sounds dumb to buy a $425 microscope, but these have strong secondary value (almost the cost of new) so when all of this is said and done, it'll just go to the next guy and I won't be out much.

For reference - the images shown are about 15 times as wide as the average human hair (which is also about the same as the thickness of a sheet of office paper). If I stacked 15 sheets of paper together and viewed their edges, it would take up the entire width of the picture. So we are looking at very small things. (I could be off with my measurements, but I'm going to capture a .009" guitar string in one of my pictures at some point, and that will settle it.

I took the washita edge out of curiosity first because I often hear from people (who watch my videos) that they see my method, but "for their work, it wouldn't be sharp enough. Modern waterstones are needed". The edge in the very first picture will plane a surface to a fairly bright polish.

I will take some wear pictures in the future to see how they compare to a fresh edge picture. My contention is that though the shapton edge and the trans ark edge are both sharper to start, the difference between all of these in the hands of a skilled sharpener is relatively little in the context of actual work.

 

[No skills]

As a mere wood butcher I find little snippets of information like this quite interesting.

The quality of edge from the diamond is both interesting and slightly worrying at the same time, I've moved from nasty cheap diamond to a set of 3 slightly better budget diamond plates (and green compound strop after if I'm bothered) - and to be honest the quality of cutting edge that I've achieved isn't as good as I expected - I'd written this off as just bad technique/need practice on my part.
Maybe I'm not wholly to blame - hmm...

 

[D_W]

I have two thoughts - make sure you're doing enough to remove the wire edge. I used a linen here, which is something you can do but it's probably not that practical (don't be afraid to pick up an old razor strop if you see one at a boot sale, though). The linen is much better at removing a wire edge than leather.

Second, do you think you're coming up short because of the lack of edge quality, or because it's not finished?

OH, a third. The $15 scopes are very instructive. If you have uniform scratches going all the way to the edge and the edge is even and not blunt, then you're probably at the maximum of the sharpening medium. The $15 scopes on ebay are actually pretty decent for routine examination, and they seem to have two magnification levels where they focus - one that's very practical for woodworking, and another one that's more practical if you're trying to really zero in on something.

Here's an image from my $11 (I got it a while ago, but it's no different than the stuff that's on ebay for 10 or 11 quid delivered now). This is the high magnification side.

It's probably a third of the magnification of the scope pictures above, which helps it probably look better than those (this is a razor bevel, and the bevel is probably a mm or so).