Sharpening Tungsten Carbide on Only Diamond Strops - Will it Work? Sandrin TCK

My most recent venture in the mysteries of Tungsten Carbide Blades. Featuring the TCK by Sandrin Knives.

Also check out my tutorials on dual grit sharpening.
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[camorakidd_edc]

It is recommended by a lot of people to use lapping films. If you want to use stropping I would use very highly concentrated and well cutting diamond spray or emulsion directly on some bass wood. I would suggest Stroppystuffs Diamond Spray.

[thiago.assumpcao]

Hello Gabe. Nice experiment. I never tested that, the strops I have here cut too slow to apex. I use them only for maintenance or to smooth the edge a bit after apexing with a low grit stone.

800 seem too high, I wonder what happened. Since you already have experience and good results with strops maybe its just limitation of the material as you said but it could also be rounding. When you strop both ways you need to be extra carefull to fully raise the knife before you start flipping or you risk rounding the edge. Another issue could be applying too much pressure on the low grit to eat steel and rounding there.

I love low grit strops but only after I apex the knife. Ultimate cheap setup. 120/320 Silicon carbide stone for fast cutting and creating the apex then modulate the edge with strops and low grit compound. Don't even need a leather strop, any soft wood works. Jacaré Black paste for 1, 5K finish and brown paste for 6K finish. The results I had with this setup were really good, I could shave hair with either paste.

[knickly]

This is an awesome test to verify the idea of cushioning each grain! But I think (as you found) the coarse diamond paste was much too big - for comparison 240 grit FEPA (and 400 grit JIS) are around 40 microns!

[MFDMTR]

Sorry to hear the pastes didn't work for the Sandrin. I never had one myself so I wouldn't know what they do on it. I mainly sent them to help with your dual grit edge (since 125 micron paste is close to the 250 stone you use) and because they were only $2-$3 each(the 125 might've been a bit more) so I ordered extra for a friend who's videos I enjoy and is just a great guy.
Maybe you can use them for regular knives and they perform better. Never tried the lapping films but I might have to get some eventually for my Kase ceramic knife(the one that did amazing in Pete's tests). I've had it for about a year and its finally starting to lose its edge a bit and Iirc he recommended using films for touch ups. I'll try some pastes on kangaroo (not tail, regular leather), balsa and hetinax strops and see what the results are.
Venev have a 1, 200 OCB(5/3 micron) and recently came out with a 1, 500 (3/2 micron). They had a 2, 000(1/0.5 micron) as well which worked giving you a better edge but the binder itself was coarser than the grain so it left scratches bigger than the 1 micron rating so its been discontinued. I like Venev stones but for me the Edge Pro diamond matrix stones are a touch better. And now that the price of Venevs went up(at least in the US, not sure about the rest of the world) they're not that much more expensive if not being cheaper sometimes. But their finest is a 4, 000 or a 5/3 micron stone.

[MichaelE.Douroux]

I've been searching for a kangaroo tail strop. Any chance you could provide a link? Thanks enjoy your channel!

[mikeobrien]

My guess would be that the strop compound isn't adhered to the surface strongly enough to grind solid tungsten carbide, although it might refine an apex with weak bits. This is exactly the sort of case where vitrified diamond (or other kinds of diamond-in-matrix or cbn-in-matrix) stones are more of a need-to-have than just a nice-to-have I suppose. The films would be a good low-cost-short-life option for this kind of madness.

[jeroenvoss]

Well the stropping didn't do much for the hard thungsten, the leather is probably to soft to get material off. The lapping films were a better result. For me the material is just to difficult to sharpen. Thank you for trying Gabe.