Morning gang, this thread has had me hooked for months now, and has fueled an obsession that has had me spending way more on sharpening gear than knives for a while now. In any event, here's my first submission to this thread.
The knife is a cheap Kershaw boot knife called "The Secret Agent" or something cheesy like that. It came with only one edge ground, and frankly some pretty bad\off center grinds all around. I figured it would be a perfect candidate to practice on, and I'm pretty blown away by what I was able to do with it.
I started with the CKTG house branded diamond Edge Pro plates, 180, then 400, then 1000. They chewed through whatever this thing was made of like butter. I then switched over to a Gritomatic 2500 Silicon Carbide stone, then a Shapton Glass 4000, then a Shapton Glass 8000. Finally I lightly stropped it with CKTG house branded (the stuff that's like $5\syringe) .5micron Diamond Paste on a Balsa strop.
Total time spent from a ~220 grit single edged blade to a mirror polished double edged dagger was a little over an hour.
Before
After
It's actually a lot harder to capture a mirrored edge than I thought. I'm sure I'll get better at it, as I'm hooked now. I'm also in love with the Shapton Glass stones. The Edge Pro polishing tapes work well, but I seem to really blow through them. The Shaptons produce a very similar finish, but seem like they'll last a super long time. The only thing I've noted is that they do tend to get gunked up with black gunk a fair bit. Having a good Nagura stone, or hitting them quickly with like a 400grit DMT plate keeps them good though.
Thanks for all the invaluable info in this thread, I'm sure you'll see me around here some more.
