Wire Edge Prevention

[SteveG]

Brass-rolling test on a Spyderco Chaparral, freehand sharpened to 17dps.
Procedure: Sharpened on fine diamond, then stropped on CrOx/leather (whole blade).  Then resharpened half of the blade on extra-fine diamond (which usually leaves a burr). I rolled with less pressure this time, maybe 1/2 lb.

No-Burr section pre-rolled: Avg 185.7 StdDev 11.5 - rolled: 191.7/25.8
Burred section pre-rolled: 275.3/10.5 - rolled: 297.0/18.7

This is a pretty coarse edge, so I expected quite a bit of variance.  What I didn't expect was the very high numbers, the no-burr section of the blade still easily push-cuts newsprint and phone-book paper across the grain even after being rolled, and could nearly whittle hair right after sharpening.

The relatively high pre-roll "no-burr" edge score and post-roll increase in its score deviation tell us that the base burr is still there sitting on the apex.
What you actually have on your Spyderco Chaparral is half blade with the base burr, and half blade with a feather burr from the extra-fine diamond.
As you start real cutting, the base burr will behave as a wire edge.

Don't you feel that from the fine diamond to CrOx is too big of a jump? - before taking the  burr to CrOx it should be substantially thinned away. I would add an in-between honing with a 3-6 micron metal polish like Autosol or Flitz - the CTS-XHP should respond well to it.

Yet, looking at your S30V and CTS-XHP, and my Elmax results, I believe we can safely generalize that in response to "gentle" brass/copper rolling a deburred edge scores <= 10 BESS worsening, and an edge with micro-burr > 20 BESS worsening on higher-end steels.

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it, and suspect you’re correct.  I wouldn’t think it too big a jump if there were no base burr (and it’s all I had handy at the time), but given the evidence I’m compelled to agree.

The evidence does look pretty good, I’ll keep at it as time allows and report anything of interest.