Review on Diamond Lapidary Paste Grit Micron by Keith Aluguvelli

After spending many, many dollars on top-of-the-line pocket knives and sharpeners for four years, and spending many, many hours practicing hand sharpening, I am confident enough to brag about accepting the Pepsi Challenge used my advantage, i can get that from any nasty advantage/lansky/spyderco sharpmaker/etc with angle fixers. At the moment I only use diamond stones, snares and a few very hard natural stones for finishing - water stones aren't yet in my toolbox, which I've been told are both the most effective and the most challenging to get right use. I'll start working with them soon, but there isn't a lot of time and money that could be invested in this little hobby. As for my take on this diamond paste, well. Or rather, I didn't expect the results to have such an impact. I have used 14K grit diamond paste at 25% concentration on several bevels of the blade after running over an 8000 grit whetstone, an extra fine DMT stone, or a novoculite surgical black stone a few times ( sometimes I find that the blade closes better). for some reason), then a leather strap impregnated with a white compound, and finally a second leather strap impregnated with a green compound. I smeared the diamond paste myself onto a leather strap with a low clasp. I'm not neurotic enough to examine my work under a microscope just yet, but to the naked eye the 14K grit paste has given the blade a beautiful mirror finish, as you can see in one of my Rowdy Hi-Tech photos. I like the look of the mirror edge (or the whole blade for that matter; I wish more knife makers offered them) but I was definitely surprised at how much sharper the mirror edges were. Surely a metallurgist or materials engineer thinks, "No kidding, genius. Finer grit = smoother surface = sharper blade', but I really thought the benefits of going from a green putty 10K grit to a 14K grit would be obvious. functional cosmetics. I was very wrong: in short, when used properly, this thing makes your knives sharper, and the difference is significant enough to be felt with just a standard three-finger cutting-edge test grip. This is my first purchase of a diamond coated paste so of course I read most of the 200+ reviews (at the time of writing) before purchasing and whilst generally positive there have been complaints of the paste being too hard. Dressing blades, concentration perceived as less than advertised etc. I understand that product batches may vary in performance and that reviews of all individual products with different grits and diamond concentrations are a conglomerate, but I'm still a bit at a loss at the end, um to understand the complaints. If this product costs 50-125% more than comparable products, I would rate it 'good'. But given the significantly lower price and performance, I'm very happy with it and will be buying a finer grit right away to see if I can make the blade's edge glow.