Bill Harsey
08-10-2005, 10:33
We just returned from our annual trip into the Steens Mountain Wilderness area.
Our base camp is out in the sage brush and winter worn aspen trees at 7300 ft. elevation and within view of the Steens east rim (and drop off) up at 9700 ft.
The tailgate of a pickup truck is a perfect workbench, especially with the new abrasion resistant coatings applied to the bed because these hold the sharpening stones without slipping.
The Norton Fine India/medium stone got a good workout when our firefighting friend Dan Y. who grew up in that country came up to camp to visit us. Dan was the head of Operations for Oregons Burns-BLM Interagency Fire District, French Glen area that includes the Steens Mountain (Burns is the name of the town, not a comment on fire policy). Dan has since moved up to the national fire fighting center in Boise.
His CPM S-30V blade (in a T-2) had been used hard in the last year without being sharpened. The Rockwell hardness was 61 and this would be a good test for the Norton stone.
I know we've covered this before but since the CPM S-30V steel is used more and more for knife blades by a lot of manufacturers, here are the bare basics...
CPM S-30V contains enough vanadium to form vanadium carbides when heat treated. These carbides are harder than aluminum oxide, which is the type of sharpening stone material in the tan side of the Norton combination stone.
To sharpen this steel takes a bit more pressure because we have to push hard enough to abrade away the matrix of steel that holds the hard carbides.
In other words, just take a bit more time to keep doing the same thing and the knife will get sharp.
I put the stone on the tailgate and using two hands on the folder got the blade fully re-sharpened to hair cutting sharp in about 7 minutes. This sounds like a long time but it wouldn't be any less in a fully equipped custom knifemaking shop.
Our base camp is out in the sage brush and winter worn aspen trees at 7300 ft. elevation and within view of the Steens east rim (and drop off) up at 9700 ft.
The tailgate of a pickup truck is a perfect workbench, especially with the new abrasion resistant coatings applied to the bed because these hold the sharpening stones without slipping.
The Norton Fine India/medium stone got a good workout when our firefighting friend Dan Y. who grew up in that country came up to camp to visit us. Dan was the head of Operations for Oregons Burns-BLM Interagency Fire District, French Glen area that includes the Steens Mountain (Burns is the name of the town, not a comment on fire policy). Dan has since moved up to the national fire fighting center in Boise.
His CPM S-30V blade (in a T-2) had been used hard in the last year without being sharpened. The Rockwell hardness was 61 and this would be a good test for the Norton stone.
I know we've covered this before but since the CPM S-30V steel is used more and more for knife blades by a lot of manufacturers, here are the bare basics...
CPM S-30V contains enough vanadium to form vanadium carbides when heat treated. These carbides are harder than aluminum oxide, which is the type of sharpening stone material in the tan side of the Norton combination stone.
To sharpen this steel takes a bit more pressure because we have to push hard enough to abrade away the matrix of steel that holds the hard carbides.
In other words, just take a bit more time to keep doing the same thing and the knife will get sharp.
I put the stone on the tailgate and using two hands on the folder got the blade fully re-sharpened to hair cutting sharp in about 7 minutes. This sounds like a long time but it wouldn't be any less in a fully equipped custom knifemaking shop.