Best Home Sharpening tool for a beginner ?

thebrain said:
Please excuse the "get a stone and learn" guys they are traditionalist and to a point are right in their opinion.
There is no easier to use sharpening tool than the Spyderco Sharpmaker but it has limitations, if you need to reprofile an edge or create a new one you will not be very successful. For that you will need another system.
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Right, the big limitation of the Sharpmaker is that it has only two angles, 15 or 20 degrees. An awful lot of knives, including Spydercos, come out of the box pretty far away from 15 or 20 degrees. I have Spydercos that came out of the box at 25, 35, or even more than 40 degrees at the apex. Trying to sharpen those at 20 degrees on a Sharpmaker is not something I would ever contemplate.
 
Another Shepherd said:
Right, the big limitation of the Sharpmaker is that it has only two angles, 15 or 20 degrees. An awful lot of knives, including Spydercos, come out of the box pretty far away from 15 or 20 degrees. I have Spydercos that came out of the box at 25, 35, or even more than 40 degrees at the apex. Trying to sharpen those at 20 degrees on a Sharpmaker is not something I would ever contemplate.
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Per side.

That's 15 degrees per side, or 20 degrees per side. On the Spyderco Sharpmaker.

A 40 degree edge is 20 degrees per side. A 30 degree edge is 15 degrees per side.

40 degrees per side would be an 80 degree edge. 30 degrees per side would be a 60 degree edge. I'm not aware of any knives like that. Are you?

Just to be clear: I don't think you're that dumb. Clarity is important for the people who read this stuff and don't know anything about knives.
 
Guy McVer said:
Per side.

That's 15 degrees per side, or 20 degrees per side. On the Spyderco Sharpmaker.

A 40 degree edge is 20 degrees per side. A 30 degree edge is 15 degrees per side.

40 degrees per side would be an 80 degree edge. 30 degrees per side would be a 60 degree edge. I'm not aware of any knives like that. Are you?

Just to be clear: I don't think you're that dumb. Clarity is important for the people who read this stuff and don't know anything about knives.
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All the angles I referred to are per side near the apex. A lot of Spydercos are convex.
Spyderco Atlantic Salt Sheepsfoot 25 degrees on one side, over 40 degrees on the other.
Spyderco Endura Thin Red Line 35 degrees on one side, 45 degrees on the other.
Spyderco Pacific Salt 2 19 degrees on one side, 38 degrees on the other.
Spyderco Para 3 25 degree both sides.
Spyderco Salt 2 Wharncliffe 34 degrees on one side, over 40 degrees on the other.
Spyderco Stretch 2XL LW 17 degrees on one side, 38 degrees on the other.
Spyderco Subway Bowie 25 degrees on one side, 28 degrees on the other.
Angles measured by two Gritomatic laser goniometers.
 
Thanks for clarifying.

For those not really versed in knives: don't worry too much about it. Most knives are symmetrical. That means they have the same angle on both sides of the edge. The ones that aren't symmetrical usually are chisel ground, which means they theoretically have no angle on one side (zero degrees), but in practice it's probably non-zero, but still close to zero. The other side has the angle that you should care about.
 
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Another Shepherd said:
In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/knives-with-the-factory-bevel-lopsided-by-20-or-more.1948303/
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Nothing is ever perfect. That's one of those things that I would ordinarily chalk up to "interesting to note", but it's essentially negligible in the vast majority of cases and is self-correcting up to a point as long as you maintain the same angle on both sides when you sharpen the knife.

It's not really something you would ever need to worry about unless it's actually a big enough difference for you to notice it in the first place. In other words, if someone has to draw your attention to it, then it probably wasn't ever an issue in the first place. It also doesn't come up very often if at all whenever people discuss sharpening. Worst case is that it affects the performance of the knife and you end up having to spend more time sharpening to compensate for the difference, but the sharpening process itself remains the same. Sharpen at the same angle on both sides.
 
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