High quality Bench stones?

N

Nugg3t

Joined
Oct 15, 2002
Messages
751
I need a nice set of stones but I don't have much experience with some of the better stones.

I bought a few cheap sets and they suck!
I tried a $20 tri stone thing and I would give the POS away to be honest. I sharpen some knives at work on a norton tri stone and I can get a perfect edge with it. I use my stones I have at home and just can't get the same results.

I would buy the norton, but it's a little too big for what I need.
I'm looking for 8" hones, coarse, medium, and fine...
How are the Razor edge stones?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Ryan
 
Nugg3t,

Try Keith DeGrau at www.handamerican.com

Tell him what you are looking for and I'm sure he will help you out. The stones come in custom fit wood boxes. I have a 12"x3"x1" black surgical stone that Keith fit in a corian box. Great stuff and a good guy to deal with.
 
I have the coarse stone from Razor Edge (as well as their guides, etc) and it is very good. Lee Valley tools www.leevalley.com is another good source. They ship very quickly, and have a decent selection of different types of stones, strops, grit paper, etc.
I picked up a medium and a translucent arkansas from ebay; the translucent is great. The medium ain't so hot. I just go straight from the Razor Edge coarse to the translucent now.
 
Take a look around www.woodcraft.com , their individual boxed arkansas stones are very good quality from what I've seen.

I have a smith's tri hone, probably the same one your talking about ($20, made of wood). I get good results with it, but had to resurface the two arkansas stones on my belt sander. The medium/soft arkansas is actually pretty nice. The hard arkansas had alot of voids in the top, still has some but I can work around them.
Hindsight is 20/20, I wish I spent the money for the individual stones now. I have a 1000grit waterstone, and fine spyderco cermic bench stone (damn good!), along with a bunch of gouge slips and pocket stones so I get by, swapping around as needed.
 
I'm a a big fan of the Spyderco stones. I have the medium, fine and ultrafine. One of the nice things about ceramic stones is they don't need to be flattend. They also work pretty quickly and you don't need oil or water. For coarse work, I use a diamond stone. It cuts really fast, even the fine diamond stone I use cuts faster than any of my other stones (except my coarse diamond). If you keep your knives up regularly, you won't need the diamond stones unless you get a nick or something like that in your blade.

Rob
 
Maybe you could think about diamond coated sharpening plates?
These ones from DMT are quite expensive but damn good! Their double-sided Duo-Sharp plate with one side coarse (for edge reprofiling) and another fine (for general sharpening) could be the tool what could cover 90% of your sharpening needs. Of course assuming that you have mastered free hand sharpening...
I certainly prefer diamond sharpeners, especially for edge reprofiling, dealing with modern high-alloy stainless steels what are very wear resistant. Probably I’m too lazy to work with them on natural or ceramic stones. SPYDERCO ceramic is good stuff too, however I use it mostly for finishing and light touchups.
 
I use DMT fine diamond hone for edge profiling and remedial sharpening. I finish with a surgical black Arkansas stone that puts a high polished razor sharp edge on.
Hall's Arkansas stones are good people to deal with and are very reasonable on price.
<www.hallsproedge.com>
 
Consider the small DMT Diasharp plates, 4" x 7/8".
Diasharp plates have a continous diamond surface, as opposed to the other DMT plates with islands of diamonds surrounded by bare metal.
First I bought the extra-fine Diasharp plate, then the fine one, and I just completed the set by buying, on Saturday, the coarse Diasharp plate. (In Toronto, at Atlas Machinery and Tools, Queen St. W.). Not too expensive in the smaller size, and the smaller size works well for me with my freehand sharpening method. Note that I aim for pretty-darn-good sharpness usually, as opposed to super-duper sharpness.
I particularly like the DMT sharpeners because:
- they stay flat, no flattening needed
- they don't load up with steel residue in the same way as ceramics, and the residue that is produced is easily and quickly cleaned off.
- they're small enough to be easily carried with me.

I have the Spyderco Sharpmaker, and I use the fine rods freehand for finishing and touchups, like Sergiusz said.
I also have various AO stones and Silicon Carbide stones, some good, some not so good.
And the Lee Valley CrO stropping compound.
And maybe some other stuff I can't think of off-hand.

So check out the DMT Diasharp diamond plates, especially the 4" ones.
 
I use the DMT diasharp plate. I didn't mention before which kind of DMT hone I use.
I have been using the surgical black Arkansas stone almost daily since 1982. It remains perfectly flat to the eye. It puts an edge on like no diamond hone I have ever seen. You do need to have the edge in shape first, though.
 
I found a combination Diamond hone coarse/fine at a decent price. I think that would be a good choice to profile the edge.
I am trying to decide on the arkansas black or a spyderco ceramic.
I have bunch of sharpening stuff, ceramic rods, lansky, strop and compound, and a bunch of cheap diamond and oil stones.
I'm going to give the DMT a try and try to decide on a fine stone for now.

Thanks for the suggestions :D
 
Nugg3t,
I am trying to decide on the arkansas black or a spyderco ceramic
Click to expand...
I have both and I use SPYDERCO ceramic – the set of ProFiles – way more frequently than black arkansas because they stay flat and they do not need any oil or water. They also cut a steel more consistently and remove burr (wire edge) easier. Drawback – they clog rapidly, however scrubbing with coarse dish cleaner solves the problem, just apply it after each sharpening session.
I'm going to give the DMT a try and try to decide on a fine stone for now
Click to expand...
Indeed, fine (red) DMT diamond whetstone should be bought first or if it would be the single piece what you can afford at this moment.
However double-sided plate certainly would be better buy than two single-sided ones in different grits. Just compare prices...
8x2-inched coarse/fine Duo-Sharp plate with optional base looks for me as very good item for knife enthusiast who sharpens his (her) cutlery free hand.
 
I like the DMT AKEFCX diamond aligner set. It goes from (memory) 75 microns to 9 microns, or 225 sieve grit to 350, 600, and 1200, and 7 settings from 12* to 35*. $54 complete w/canvas type case (discountknives). This puts you in the 5000 ceramic whetstone range, just not quite as polished. It is much, much better/faster/finer than the Smith's $25 aligner set I started with. The Apex is probably just that, but at $125 plus extra stones. Salude!
 
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