When done with the flats of the brown stones, you should be able to catch hair above the skin, either on your arm or back of your head. After the white flats, you can whittle hair. The Sharpmaker is excellent for final honing and keeping knives sharp. Even with the diamond stones, it is not good for rebeveling. I suggest a cheap hardware store coarse hone or you can get one of the nicer stones from Norton, DMT, etc. A $5 coarse hardware store stone, a coarse Norton India, an X-Coarse DMT, or a 220 grit waterstone will all rebevel so the Sharpmaker can be used to its potential. Sandpaper clamped around the rods will work as well. The critical part is that you must rebevel thinner than the intended final angle you want to use on the Sharpmaker. For the 20 degree slots I cut the bevel down to 17, and for the 15 degree slots, I use 12. All these are degrees per side, not total inclusive angles.
Another thing is to keep the stones clean. They load up very quickly, and act like steels when loaded. I've used a Sharpmaker long enough to have replaced the brown stones because I dished the corners out. It is not a stand alone tool, but once you understand what it's good at, it is very good. If the bevel of your knife is wider than about 1/32", then it will take a long time to polish if it matches the Sharpmaker angles exactly. Lowering the angle 2-3 degrees makes all the difference.
A statement of disclosure is in order. When sharpening my EDC and kitchen knives, I'm not interested in mirrored bevels, and having 2 or even 3 visible bevels on an edge (say 10, 15, and a final at 20 degrees) doesn't bother me much. Each one will often be at a different grit, 220, 1000, Spyderco Fine. If you want a fully polished bevel all at the same grit, then the Sharpmaker is not the tool for you. It will do it eventually, but bench stones are better and will give a higher polish. The Sharpmaker is a tool for putting on and maintaining micro-bevels.
Edited to add: If you have a knife with a VERY thin primary bevel, then the Sharpmaker works well for that. IME, only the very thinnest knives will work though, by which I mean the thickness at the top of the sharpened bevels needs to be 0.005" or less. The only knives I've tried like this I reground myself.
Another thing is to keep the stones clean. They load up very quickly, and act like steels when loaded. I've used a Sharpmaker long enough to have replaced the brown stones because I dished the corners out. It is not a stand alone tool, but once you understand what it's good at, it is very good. If the bevel of your knife is wider than about 1/32", then it will take a long time to polish if it matches the Sharpmaker angles exactly. Lowering the angle 2-3 degrees makes all the difference.
A statement of disclosure is in order. When sharpening my EDC and kitchen knives, I'm not interested in mirrored bevels, and having 2 or even 3 visible bevels on an edge (say 10, 15, and a final at 20 degrees) doesn't bother me much. Each one will often be at a different grit, 220, 1000, Spyderco Fine. If you want a fully polished bevel all at the same grit, then the Sharpmaker is not the tool for you. It will do it eventually, but bench stones are better and will give a higher polish. The Sharpmaker is a tool for putting on and maintaining micro-bevels.
Edited to add: If you have a knife with a VERY thin primary bevel, then the Sharpmaker works well for that. IME, only the very thinnest knives will work though, by which I mean the thickness at the top of the sharpened bevels needs to be 0.005" or less. The only knives I've tried like this I reground myself.
Last edited:
