I stropped with white rouge, now my knives wont cut anything.

GarageBoy said:
I have a norton economy stone/pocket stone, a medium arkansas, a bunch of ceramic rods and a DMT coarse. Gonna get a spydie brown and white stone soon
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Well, you've got the right tools for the job. All the more reason to chuck that dog bone into the Gowanus canal. :)
 
Will the Spydies be able to replace the arkansas? (it's a really small piece and I can't find a hardware store that sells bigger ones)
 
I have lots of sharpening tools that I sort of rotate through, but I don't use my Arkansas stones anymore at all. Here is a link to a chart on honing speed versus edge finish for various type of hones: http://www.ameritech.net/users/knives/speed.htm You'll notice that Arkansas stones do not produce the finest edges and they are the slowest type of hone. I have spent a lot of money and have diamond hones, water stones, and belt sanders (I'm an old fart and can indulge myself that way). If I had to pinch pennies I might get by with just ceramic hones. Look at how close they are to diamond hones and water stones in performance. I find Spydercos to be at the top of the heap for ceramics and the design of the Sharpmaker to be particularly useful. On the other hand almost any ceramic V-rod sharpener will work quicker and give at least as good an edge as an Arkansas stone. If you are stuck with a short Arkansas stone, long ceramic sharpeners will do a lot better. Be sure to get medium grit hones, not just the fine grit white hones. I also like the cutting performance of the ceramic hones better.
 
I love the edge that Spyderco browns gave me on a Mora. How can I tell the difference between Aluminum Oxide and Silicon Carbide? (India and Crystlon?)
 
Gee I have two dogbones which I generally use for touchup and take with me when I travel. (Kind of hard to travel with my edge pro or bench stones.) One is a general purpose one that I've used mainly for the short pe section on my fully serrated spydie police, to sharpen my Emerson CQC7, and to hone my super knife. The other is made for the spydie serrations and thats what I use it for. I can usually get all these blades shaving sharp (well I wouldn't shave with the police).
 
Just my 2 cents (And I am a newby on the bladeforums):Jeff Clark's link to the chart is some really nice information and I would just like to amend to that. The cutting speed is actually a quite complex function of the particle shape of the abrasive and more dependent of shape than of size (given by grid#). There are are two recent scientific publications on that topic and I am more than happy to post the literature information if there is any interest. The quick summary is, that particles with a small angluar structure (high polygonality) cut the quickest. Waterstones with their flaky structure are among the fastest cutting stones available, especially when it comes to the fine grid #s. That is also evident from the graph since a fine diamond is about #1200 and cuts (according to the graph) as quick as a #4000 waterstone.

Having said that, the material of the abrasive is virtually irrelevant to cutting speed and this is were the graph is misleading. It is the fact that certain material tend to agglomerate preferencially in certain shapes, that affects the cutting speed (especially among natural stones). This is also evident from the fact that most ceramic stones are made from pure alumina (aluminum oxide). The difference between ceramic and aluminum oxide is obviously not the material (which is the same) but the fact that in an aluminum oxide abrasive the individual particles cut while in an ceramic rod/stone the pore structure in the sintered material does the cutting. Again shape and size is the important parameter here.

Aside from the theory: I love the Spyderco sharpmaker and find it quite fool proof. If you can afford the $40 bucks it is well worth it. But I also use Japanese waterstones as I agree with Torz that it is a very rewarding experience to create a razor edge free hand. In principle neither the waterstones nor the sharpmaker rods would require stropping and in fact, if you want a factory like edge (toothy) it is even counter productive. Personally I strop my edges on a wood mounted leather strip but only about 6 strokes each side (either with Veritas green or plain leather), because it creates that really scary finish, and because a highly polished edge must have necessarily a higher edge retention than a toothy edge (the edge supports itself along the blade, while the individual "teeth" do not and fold over more easily) except of course when we talk about quite "rough toothy".

Mmmh, I guess length wise this was more like 10 cents than 2, sorry about that. I am kind of crazy about shapening....can you tell??? ;-)
 
I actually want to get a polished edge for once. I just never knew what it felt like. I had the worst of luck with my buddy's sharpmaker and I found freehand easier, once I figure out how to hold an angle
 
One more thing about the Arkansas stones - I can understand that they're not everybody's cup of tea, but there are vastly differing qualities of these stones. Some are just crushed up stone that's reconstituted into a benchstone shape. Many are just poor quality.

I couldn't work with the soft arkansas, that's why I went with a DMT duo-sharp for the coarse and fine. But a true black or translucent Arkansas stone is an outstanding finishing stone. I find that using these natural stones is an oddly comforting experience.
 
This thread got me thinking about why I liked the Lansky dog bones and I think its because I can hold them up to eyelevel at about 6 to 8 " in front of me and visually confirm when the honing angle is correct. I lay the blade edge towards me, bevel down, and rotate the spine up till I see the edge touch the stone, (you can see the shadow disappear) and gently stroke the knife at that angle. Its easy at any time to double check and see if the angle is correct. I think this works particularly well with my police and cqc7 because they are chisel ground. As for the superknife, the blade is really a box cutter blade and very thin. Anyway I can get these blades shaving sharp pretty easily with the dogbone sharpener.
 
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