Advice on sharpening equipment

[augostos]

I already have Arizona mid-coarse stone, some diamond bench, and a Lansky coarse ceramic rod. I think they are in 600-grit range. So it is free-hand sharpening so far.

I can't say I made a lot of progress though. Sporadically my mini-grip 154CM reaches hair shaving level, but mostly my knives are sharp to cut a sheet of paper or a newspaper. I miss factory edge on my knives. My mini-grip, CQC-7 and Military were exceptionally sharp, although I understand that some of you can improve factory edge as well.

So, I would be happy to hear your advice on extra things I might need to improve my sharpening, I'd like to get some stones/devices/equipment for sharpening my knives. Free-hand or assisted sharpening.

I don't know the budget right now, but please feel free to suggest whatever works for you to get your knives to hair shaving sharp. I can use your suggestions later if I can't buy them now.

Thank you again for your suggestions.

 

[Wolf1524]

Practice if you want to continue free hand. If you want assisted then get spyderco sharpmaker or lansky set.

 

[FRB]

I wasn't very good at sharpening freehand. Now I use an edge pro apex and get very good edges but the edge pro was expensive.

 

[Noctis3880]

I use a 1x42 Kalamazoo belt sander. Before it was a Worksharp Knife & Tool Sharpener(not the Ken Onion edition).

I should warn you that any mistake you make will be 100 times worse than if you did it manually, such as grinding off a bit of the thumbstuds, scuffing the handles, or scratching the hell out of the side of the blade/coating. But that aside, I do happen to use it to sharpen $500+ customs... just not other people's stuff.

FYI, I still can't freehand sharpen. It'll be somewhat sharp, but the edge just looks fugly and uneven.

 

[mrdeus]

I don't use my edge pro much any more, but it taught me one important thing: just how sharp I could get a knife. It took a while to get the hang of freehand sharpening, and I'm still not ready to freehand my Sebenza for example, but looking back I'm glad I got a good water stone to begin with (chosera #1000). I think it made it easier to get good results quickly. And I recommend practising on kitchen knives. They're easier to sharpen than folders or hunting knives. Oh, and while I now basically only use water stones and paper, I found it helpful to be able to "fix" the edge on a compound loaded leather strop in the beginning.

 

[KNaB]

Practice. If you've already committed some time to freehand, you might as well keep at it, IMO. I have an extensive collection of stones when I'm at home and want do some serious sharpening, but I can get a knife plenty sharp with a spyderco double stuff, which I carry with my tools and one in my car. The only other advice I can give is to not be too concerned about achieving a high polished mirror edge(unless that's what you want). Personally, for my knives that I use at work, I usually sharpen at 500# (depending on the steel) for an aggressive edge. Just for perspective, I own an edge pro professional model with a full set of aftermarket shapton glass stones, and I rarely use it as I prefer the simplicity and speed of bench stones. YMMV.