Deburring

[Rupert Lucius]

I was doing some experimenting with different materials for deburring.  I wanted to try hard materials just to see the effect of something that would be strong enough to definitely bend the burr.  Then I wondered what a plain piece of leather would do.

When I say, "strop", I mean do a one pass strop one side of the blade turn it over and do the other.  That would be 1 strop.  5 strops would be doing that 5 times.

Here's what happened:

I started with this Oxo Good Grips blade sharpened on the Kally @ 180 grit.  This is the burr.  It is a fine burr.  The black line is marking pen.



I decided to try a hard plastic cutting board on the theory that it would be strong enough to bend the burr but not damage the steel.  The dent in the burr is where I took a sharpness reading.  This is what happened after 10 strops on the hard plastic.  Yes, the burr had actually fractured and broken off in some places but I was not getting anywhere very fast.  The burr was just bending back and forth and back and forth...




So then I tried the smooth side of a clean leather strop with the hope that the leather would bend around the edge of the blade and do a better job of grabbing the burr.  First I did 10 strops and there was still a lot of burr.  Then I did 10 more strops.  The dark/light image below is the same image, just with side and top lighting.  Here's the result after the 20 strops on plain leather.  Much better, but still a lot of burr and it was a bunch of work to get to this point.  It also seemed that getting that last bit of burr was going to be a very slow process indeed.  Some of that little tiny burr directly above the edge is very difficult to get to.  You can see it in the light picture below as little shiny mountains right on top of the edge.  That is burr.



Getting tired of messing around, I did 5 strops on the Kally using the rough side of a leather belt with just a touch of Tormek 1-3 micron compound that was left over from a previous sharpening.  Final sharpness was 200g.



So, that was yet another experiment.  Take from it what you will.  Hope you found it as interesting and entertaining as I did.  (I have a low interest/entertainment threshold).

Excellent - was this on the platen or off the platen?

Your photography is the best

Leather with Tormek paste is impressive - I am a sold.

You set the bar for my son Henry and his Celestron UBS.

Thanks

Rupert