Why use honing compoound?

[Mark Reich]

Mark, thanks for your comprehensive compound overview. Much appreciated.  

I would like to use this opportunity to share my opinion what happens on the edge during honing on leather wheel without any compound. Please take it with reserve it was not yet verified by any authority in metallurgy or engineering. 

My idea is that during dry honing we are shifting dozens of surface atomic planes towards the cutting edge. Because BESS sharpness of 150 gf corresponds only to several hundreds of iron atoms near the apex than several dozens of shifted atomic planes may improve the apex sharpness significantly.

This process is not uniform along the whole edge because steel is composed of grains with random mutual orientation. So within one grain we can shift dozens of atomic planes while in the neighboring grain, with different orientation, this number can be significantly different.

So called slip planes group together within a grain, form slip bands, and are visible under optical microscope.


Jan

Thank you for the kind words, Jan, and thank you for your input on the subject. It sounds like you have some metallurgic background, which is awesome! I have no formal metallurgy training, but I've studied a lot, and have hands on experience.

I do understand that the grains of steel have random orientation, which become visible after the surface is polished and etched. To my understanding, it would be analogous to the grains being like a pile of firewood, crushed to the point of being without voids. If you could cut the pile in half and stain it, you could see the pieces oriented with porous end grain on the surface would be darker than pieces showing more side grain. 

That would be similar to how they go about measuring the size of the grains in a piece of steel, except with steel they use an acidic etchant, which acts visibly similar.  

I don't understand your statements about, Quote;  
"shifting dozens of surface atomic planes towards the cutting edge", or "within one grain we can shift dozens of atomic planes while in the neighboring grain, with different orientation, this number can be significantly different".
-Unquote

It's actually the "shifting" part that eludes me. 

Probably in addition to other things...

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Thanks for the info, Mark. One of my life philosophies is that we shouldn't all have to drive over every pot hole in life. Your posts have helped me miss a couple pot holes.

Ken

Thank you, Sir! 
That's all I could hope for!