Macro photos on a budget, or looking closely at sharpening

[gidon]

Well I originally set all this up to look at the edge of my chisels and plane irons to help quantitate my sharpening methods. But found that's actually not that exciting once you've done it! FYI I am getting around 16 pixels per 0.001 inches - which is a little more than the Intel QX3 microscopes get used here for a similar purpose. I also soon realised I haven't the time, knowledge or inclination to get into the level of detail this chap has.

Anyhow if anyone's interested here is my setup and some early shots from it (no chisels though I'm afraid ):

http://www.tregarras.com/photos/v/macros

Cheers

Gidon

 

[Neomorph]

lol... I had to use a dictionary to find out what quantitate meant. :?

Seriously though this method would be useful when learning to sharpen plane irons, scrapers and the like as I'm guessing it would show up possible flaws in your sharpening method and even maybe flaws in things like chisel metal too. The reason I mention chisel metal is I had what I thought was a good chisel that used to hold a good edge but after I sharpened it the one time it kept nicking the edge... strangely always in the same place.

I wondered if I had sharpened through the hardening (I wish Dad was alive - his last job before retiring was hardening metal in a truck factory) and that was the reason that the blade kept failing at that one point. It was as if that part of the blade was softer for some reason. The rest of the blade kept its fine egde.

 

[MikeW]

Wonderful set up, Gideon!

Thanks for the pictures of the set up. My wife has wanted me to make something and that has given me help.

Take care, Mike

 

[gidon]

Neomorph - sounded correct when I typed it but not sure now! It wasn't so much to find out flaws in my sharpening as to compare a couple of different methods I'm trying out at the moment in order to ditch my waterstones for 99% of sharpening tasks. What bevel angle were you using on the chisel?

Thanks Mike! Glad it may be of some help - would be very interested to see any attempts you make.

Cheers

Gidon

 

[Neomorph]

Neomorph - (snip) What bevel angle were you using on the chisel?

As I dunno enough about angles I should be using I just used the same bevel the chisel came with. I've still got it somewhere in my shed but can't get to it at the moment as the shed is full of stuff from my living room (decorating sucks when you have to wait for a pain free day).

I used next doors bench grinder to sharpen it btw. It's a pretty old grinder which probably needed dressing so I bought a brand new Rexon bench grinder which is unfortunatly somewhere under all the stuff in my shed. I started decorating my living room and moved as much stuff into the shed you see so I can't get more that about six inches into a 10x6 shed. :wink:

When we moved all the stuff into the shed I got some help and a friend moved the grinder box out of the way at the back when we were moving all the stuff. When I found out that's where it was I couldn't ars.... errr... bothered to move all the stuff out just to get the bench grinder out. Hopefully sometime this summer when I've finished the living room I will manage to dig it out and try to sort that chisel out.

 

[gidon]

I would try regrinding the primary bevel on your grinder or a belt sander (try not to grind off the tip and keep it cool with frequent pausing and water) and then honing a 30 degree secondary bevel at least and see how you get on ...
Cheers
Gidon

 

[Anonymous]

Gidon

Nice work mate. You say the resolution is about the same as for the Intel micrscope and that it is pretty cheap. How much would one be looking at spending on such a setup?

The Intel costs about £70 I believe but is diffcult to source these days.

 

[Anonymous]

If anyone is interested, i use VGA resolution webcams at work when we want a cheap image proessing system. They have a 640*480 CCD array (many webcams use CMOS which are inferior in quality of image) in them and are made by Logitech. You can remove the plastic case and mount a standard 'C' mount lense on them to remove the abhorations inherant in the standard lens and to gain iris contorl and a zoom facility. We typically pay about £30 for the lenses. You will need to make a small adaptor and I have a drawing for ours somewhere.

I have some Visual Basic code that will allow you to use the camera to grab still images and have even mounted one of these CCDs onto a microscope lense to get a pretty useful tool.

The VB code will allow you to write your own filters etc. to process the image (this is what I do) or you can simply save the raw bitmap and open it in Paintshop pro etc. to process it. the software also allows you to save an array of data to hardisk which contains the numbers of the RGB components - may then be processed in Matlab or Excel etc.

Interested in making your own? drop me a pm and I can send the VB code over. You will need to buy a Logitech Pro 4000 or 5000 webcam as these have a superb CCD array in them.

 

[gidon]

Nice work mate. You say the resolution is about the same as for the Intel micrscope and that it is pretty cheap. How much would one be looking at spending on such a setup?
The Intel costs about £70 I believe but is diffcult to source these days.

Tony - apologies - I missed this post over Easter (and many others).
This setup was cheap for me because I already had the camera (DSLR) and lenses (55-200 and a 50mm). The only additional item was the macro ring which I bought for $10 odd from the US. I did look at getting an Intel microscope - but this way was cheaper for me and had the additional benefit of allowing me to do some macro photography on the cheap too (I've never convinced myself to splash out ~£400 for a dedicated macro lens - and even that would only give 1:1 macro - not the 4:1 I'm getting here).

Your webcam setup sounds interesting ...

Cheers

Gidon

 

[gidon]

In case anyone's interested, I managed to increase the depth of field by taking a number of shots and stitching them together with Helcon Focus. Here's the result on a chisel blade sharpened to 1 micron grit on hard Maple:


From right to left: 120 grit belt sander 25 degree primary bevel, 1200 grit (9 micron) 30 degree secondary bevel, 1 micron diamond paste on Maple 32 degree micro bevel.

It's quite handy for looking at your sharpening technique and comparing one against another quantitatively. If you're sad that is .

Cheers

Gidon

 

[Chris Knight]

Great pics Gidon! On this basis one clearly needs to go .000001 micron for an edge worthy of the name!

Seriously, it's very educational. I would love to see an edge that has been stropped on a hand and a power strop with a fine compound.

 

[gidon]

Thanks Chris - I'll try and get some pics of different sharpening methods / finishes when I get a chance. Although the most difficult bit for comparisons is keeping methods consistant. I notice I've left a few scratches from the 1200 grit on the chisel above . The nice thing now is I'm happy that I get as good an edge (well actually better - my stones only go to 6000) using either diamond paste or microfinishing film compared to waterstones - all pretty much mess free .
Cheers
Gidon

 

[Jake]

I notice I've left a few scratches from the 1200 grit on the chisel above .

Fantastic and fascinating photos. It looks like the jump from 9 microns to 1 micron is maybe a bit too big for perfection, and an intermediate step might help.

 

[gidon]

Thanks Jake.

It looks like the jump from 9 microns to 1 micron is maybe a bit too big for perfection, and an intermediate step might help.

I do sometimes go to 5 micron in between but it makes little difference. In fact I've gone from 600 grit (25 micron) to 1 micron (and half micron) before. This is only on the titchy micro bevel - so there's very little work. I think those larger scratches are larger (rogue) grit still on my DMT 1200 - it still feels quite coarse and I know it takes a while to wear it down to its actual grit. It could also be some dirt on the hard maple - I did that sharpening quite quickly and perhaps wasn't careful enough . Either way I'll perhaps try and do some comparisons and see what comes out ...

Cheers

Gidon