GATCO vs Lansky - Economical Guided Sharpening Systems

Are you sharpening regular steels like carbon,vg10? I have a 4 rod Dmt (diamond) lansky crock stix turnbox. Its 24 shipped and works great. I might be in the minority but polished edges are overrated. Anyhow with the crocksticks you can set a microbevel with the dmt rods. It does great work on my traditional knives anand fast too. I also have a dmt set as well as Arkansas stones. The turnbox is quickest of them all.
 
I have the lansky and the DMT. More often than not I use the DMT hones with the lansky clamp. Some knives are a little too small for the edge pro.

Edition: the lansky stones are great for recurves.
 
Just carried out a mod on my DMT clamp.Ground a sliver off the tip of clamp where DMT is stamped to thin it down,helps with sharpening small pen blades.
 
bonzodog said:
Just carried out a mod on my DMT clamp.Ground a sliver off the tip of clamp where DMT is stamped to thin it down,helps with sharpening small pen blades.
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Could you share some pictures of your mod? Also how small of a pen blade are you able to sharpen now & at what angle?
 
I have owned the Lansky and a Gatco when they first came out about 20 years ago or so,I would never own or use a Lansky again for any reason the clamp does not work that well at all and everyone I know from my area that has one say's the blade always pops out to easily,and the other problem with both the Lansky and the Gatco is how they use slot's to hold the rod in the clamp itself and how the rod flops around all over the place if you try to sharpen really fast and sometimes when your not going fast at all.


If you want my honest opinion and if you want a clamping sharpening system save up if you have to and get a KME,if your on a budget just get the kit with the ceramic stones to start and a Gold Series 300 or 600 grit Diamond hone and a Hard Arkansas Black Stone to start with or whatever you can afford.

The major improvement's with the KME over Gatco and Lansky is the clamp holds the blade and never moves or let's the blade fall out because the jaws of the clamp are rubber padded,the other major improvement would have to be the spherical ball that holds the guide rod and does not let the rod just flop around,the other improvement would have to be is that you can set the angle at whatever you want with the KME not what Lansky or Gatco set it at and the pistol grip of the KME feels perfect in your hand when sharpening.

I know the KME is more money but it's a lot more fun then the other 2 systems mentioned but that's just my 2 cent's worth.


EpicHam said:
Now I'm sure EVERYONE has heard of Lansky.
Pretty sure that's the first name people came about when they search sharpening system, but a few hours ago I just founded a company called.
GATCO - Great American Tool Company
Now I've seen people doing individual reviews of their systems but never a side by side comparison of the two.

Now I have next to no experience with sharpening knives , still trying to figure out how to freehand with my mom's cheap silicon carbide and I think I need to start using something more efficient and precise...... I'll learn freehand later I guess..

Back to the point.

GATCO or Lansky?
:confused:

Opinions seemed to be quite divided among the YouTube community.
[video=youtube;A-Qxj0meecM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Qxj0meecM[/video]
So what about the REAL GURUS?
What do they have to say?
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My Gatco has a notch for holding small blades. Just FYI, I've had it a lot of years not sure about newer models.

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-vaguy
 
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^^My Gatco had that notch also, but it was very poorly ground/milled, and wouldn't reliably hold anything. Bought it in the last 5-6 years or so (diamond kit). Like the Lansky clamp's good/bad variation over several generations, I'm betting the manufacturing of them is somewhat hit-or-miss, in terms of how well they hold small blades.


David
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
^^My Gatco had that notch also, but it was very poorly ground/milled, and wouldn't reliably hold anything. Bought it in the last 5-6 years or so (diamond kit). Like the Lansky clamp's good/bad variation over several generations, I'm betting the manufacturing of them is somewhat hit-or-miss, in terms of how well they hold small blades.


David
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Try lightly lapping (use the coarse diamond stone that came with it) the blade contact faces inside the notch to square them up (if you still have the Gatco set). Clean up the inside corner of the notch with the long edge of the stone. Only took a couple of minutes and made a big difference with mine.
 
AxisFan said:
Try lightly lapping (use the coarse diamond stone that came with it) the blade contact faces inside the notch to square them up (if you still have the Gatco set). Clean up the inside corner of the notch with the long edge of the stone. Only took a couple of minutes and made a big difference with mine.
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I'd already done a little re-grinding of that notch, mostly to square up the inside corners of it. They were rounded off from the factory, so the blade spine never really had a firm & tight corner to seat itself. The clamp's 'flat' surfaces actually had some warp to them also, so I'd even gone to the length of flattening them on some wet/dry sandpaper. All this being said, I tended to rely more on my Lansky and DMT Aligner sets anyway, so the Gatco wasn't such a priority to 'fix' anymore.


David
 
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