My Spyderco Sharpmaker

L

LouZava

Joined
Nov 1, 2009
Messages
154
I recieved my Spyderco Sharpmaker today. Wasting no time I watched the video, and started my practice on some old dull kitchen knives the wife has. Well I tried to sharpen two knives and they didnt get sharp at all! Hmm! I managed to get them a little sharp but thats was it!

I also noticed how on 2 of the stones there were some chips on the corners from sharpening these old knives. I didnt use alot of pressure either. WTH? Will this hurt the performance of the stones?
 
How long did you spend on them? The Sharpmaker is best when applied in a maintenance or finishing role.

It's not going to re-bevel a very dull knife very quickly at all. The grits are not high enough and the surface area is not large enough for speedy re-beveling that can be done with a bench hone. It excels at maintaining edges that are within the proper angle specifications as well as removing the burr from other, faster sharpening measures.

The corners are the structurally weakest areas of the very hard ceramic and have been seen to have some chipping. I would think this is not from sharpening the knives but is from the handling during transportation to your door. This is not an issue particular to the Sharpmaker and can commonly be seen on other ceramic sharpening tools. They should not affect performance so long as you do not run the edge over the chipped areas.
 
I didnt spend too much time on the knives. Well I noticed that the stones had chipped while sharpening, because i could feel it as i did the passes. I washed the stones and rubbed the corners where it chipped against each other, and I think this helped. It smoothed the chip out some. Are the stones defective or is it something I did maybe? Should I return the system for another?
 
Had the corners of the rods chipped at the ends of the stone?

Of where the chips on the corners nearer the middle of the stone?

What kind of knives were you sharpening? Some serrated blades can causes chipping to the corners if you sharpen very quickly with a lot of pressure.
 
My experience tells me that the sharpmaker is built for, and excels, in taking a decently sharp blade (actually has an edge, at least will grip your thumb nail), and making it shaving sharp. To recreate an edge, you're going to need more heavy duty equipment.
 
This is a common problem. I had it when I got mine. The difficulty is that the SM is made for sharpening knives that have edges with the bevels set at 30° or 40°. If your knife doesn't have such a bevel, you have to rebevel, and that can take quite a bit of work. The SM can do it with the coarse stones if the steel isn't too tough but you may have to take hundreds of strokes to get there. Not 10 or 20 or 40 like the video would have you believe.

If you look through the messages here and in the Maintenance, Tinkering & Embellishment discussion section, you will see quite a few threads dealing with this problem.

Here is a link to one such thread:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=687208
 
I'm fairly certain that there are diamond rods available for the sharpmaker if you need to rebevel an edge.
 
I've heard nothing but poor reports about the diamond rods. The sharpmaker is always the first system to be suggested but no one ever thinks of all the other important factors in sharpening, like grinding the main bevel. Most factory edges are no where close to the preset angles of the sharpmaker and with the ceramics being more of a finishing stone, grinding in new bevels is almost impossible. IMHO the sharpmaker is the wrong choice for a beginer looking to make their dull knives sharp.
 
knifenut1013 said:
I've heard nothing but poor reports about the diamond rods. The sharpmaker is always the first system to be suggested but no one ever thinks of all the other important factors in sharpening, like grinding the main bevel. Most factory edges are no where close to the preset angles of the sharpmaker and with the ceramics being more of a finishing stone, grinding in new bevels is almost impossible. IMHO the sharpmaker is the wrong choice for a beginer looking to make their dull knives sharp.
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It does take forever to re-bevel on a SM if the steel is hard like S30V or INFI and that's even with the diamond stones. It will take hours to do it if the angles are way off as most seem to be.

I use my Edge Pro for re-beveling these days. :thumbup:
 
<<safety!>> said:
My experience tells me that the sharpmaker is built for, and excels, in taking a decently sharp blade (actually has an edge, at least will grip your thumb nail), and making it shaving sharp. To recreate an edge, you're going to need more heavy duty equipment.
Click to expand...

knifenut1013 said:
The sharpmaker is always the first system to be suggested but no one ever thinks of all the other important factors in sharpening, like grinding the main bevel. Most factory edges are no where close to the preset angles of the sharpmaker and with the ceramics being more of a finishing stone, grinding in new bevels is almost impossible. IMHO the sharpmaker is the wrong choice for a beginer looking to make their dull knives sharp.
Click to expand...

Ankerson said:
It does take forever to re-bevel on a SM if the steel is hard like S30V or INFI and that's even with the diamond stones. It will take hours to do it if the angles are way off as most seem to be.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything above to some degree. I use my sharpmaker for four years for all my tasks. It is very time consuming to reprofile, just using standard rods.
If you want to reprofile with sharpmaker you need to get coarse stones. Spyderco sells diamond rods, but I never used them, but I have a friend who is completely happy with them. I use Congress toll stones, which are less expensive and comes in much coarse grits, so work faster. I reprofiled my Native with S30V blade without a problem. Reprofile VG10 is not a concern at all.
Also you can use sharpmaker with DMT stones, holding them against rod with binder clip.
You will need sharpie and 10X eye loupe as well to see the edge, if you planning to satisfy your sharpening needs.
Search forums, ask questions. It will help to learn.
good luck.
 
Guys thanks for all the responses and info. Well Im not going to lie, I am a beginner and I was really fooled by the Spyderco Sharpmaker. I see why it didnt sharpen those old knives. (they dont have a set edge anymore). It worked good on my Benchmade Vex though. Like some one said, its a good tool to use for touch ups. The search continues! What else do I need?
 
One thing you need is practice. The Sharpmaker is almost intuitive, the instructions are very good, but ... there are tricks to every trade.

The speed you pass the blade along the rods, the pressure you use, the way you hold the knife in a saber grip, the tip slightly raised. All these add up to a great edge even on a poor bevel.

Gently rubbing the rods together before your first session will give the ceramic a "bite". So a roughened ceramic is good, not bad. Don't press too hard while sharpening, though, or you will make the rods irregular.

Especially for kitchen knives, as long as the edge is less than the Sharpmaker's 30 (or 40) degrees, it will put a good edge bevel on it, Only if the edge is more obtuse than 40 degrees would there be a reprofiling problem.
 
LouZava said:
Guys thanks for all the responses and info. Well Im not going to lie, I am a beginner and I was really fooled by the Spyderco Sharpmaker. I see why it didnt sharpen those old knives. (they dont have a set edge anymore). It worked good on my Benchmade Vex though. Like some one said, its a good tool to use for touch ups. The search continues! What else do I need?
Click to expand...

I still use the rods from my sharpmaker (freehand, I don't even remember where the base is now) for touching up an edge prior to a final stroppin'. For major reprofiling of very dull knives, I bought a cheap belt grinder and some decent belts designed for sharpening. Excellent investment. You can select higher or lower grits, depending on just how dull the blade in question is. To ease myself onto freehand for lack of some kind of angle jig, I used a piece of paper folded to a certain angle as a visual reference to see roughly how the blade should be held in relation to the belt. Purists may disdain power tools, but if you don't want to spend a LOT longer reprofiling, it's great stuff! :thumbup:
 
Just my 2cts: Get those 204D diamond rods. They work well, just don't push too hard - let them do the job for you. And even with these, take your time as it'll sometimes take several dozens of strokes to get where you want to be with them. They're a steal on eBay if you look carefully. I had my Sharpmaker for two days and decided it was worthless without the 204D's - everything together, it's a great package. I today managed to get the so-so factory edge on a new 110 up to Stupid Sharp - the highest attainable level of sharpness in my book. :D Quite a feat for 420HC steel.
 
Freehand on DMT coarse first, as acute an angle as you dare. Then finish up wth the SM. Recently redid my D4 on the SM with the DMT coarse braced against the rods and it worked a charm- woulda been a major PITA with a large or dilapitated blade, though.
 
knifenut1013 said:
I've heard nothing but poor reports about the diamond rods. The sharpmaker is always the first system to be suggested but no one ever thinks of all the other important factors in sharpening, like grinding the main bevel. Most factory edges are no where close to the preset angles of the sharpmaker and with the ceramics being more of a finishing stone, grinding in new bevels is almost impossible. IMHO the sharpmaker is the wrong choice for a beginer looking to make their dull knives sharp.
Click to expand...

This is quite true. The OP's problem is that he is grinding at a more acute angle than the edge has and doing it with a product that isn't designed for grinding.

My recommendation is to get one of the many sharpening fixtures available. The best one I have used is the Edgepro. It is more expensive than your Sharpmaker. Lansky makes good ones that are less expensive even than the Sharpmaker. You can use these products to grind new bevels to an accurate angle. After that is done, the blade will sharpen up quite nicely by using subsequently finer grits at that same angle..
 
At the recommendation of Knifenut 1013, I bought the DMT aligner kit. Thank you, Knifenut 1013.

The kit I found had four stones (XC, C, F and E-F). On knives with a blade wider than half an inch or so, it works like magic. Much easier (for me) to change the bevel and get a really good edge than with the SharpMaker. And much quicker. With narrow blades, it is not quite so good since you can't get an acute enough angle. Or at least I can't and my post in another thread asking for assistance didn't yield any suggestions. And it probably is better to use the SM for recurved blades.

But this really isn't responsive to the OP who wants to get his SM to work like he wants. So I will quote from my posts in the thread I referred to above.

There are several forum members here who do knife sharpening at modest prices. If you hire one, tell him that you want a 30° angle, and once they get done setting the bevel for you, the SM will be easy to use for touch-ups.

Just for this purpose (because I'm stubborn and want to do it myself), I bought the DMT D6CX Double Sided Dia-Sharp Bench Stone. It's 6 inches, has the continuous diamond surface, and is coarse on one side and extra-coarse on the other. It was $47.50, but a better buy than the SM diamond rods, which I have but don't find satisfactory. I have a number of knives in high-end steel that need this kind of stone. For example, I just got a Queen in D2 (a slip joint with a sheepsfoot blade and a pen blade). The sheepsfoot blade is reasonably sharp; the pen blade is only fair. Still it would be a lot cheaper and easier to send all those knives to one of the experts and have them grind them to 30°.

I have experimented with rubber banding the DMT stone to the SM rods, and the DMT stone stays fixed in the same angle as the SM rods, but be sure to rubber band top and bottom if you go that route.

I haven't had a chance to try the DMT stone banded to the SM rod on the Queen but will soon.
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and
Update:

Last night went to work on the pen blade of my Queen with D2 steel. It's a Birdseye Maple Large Congress Knife (with just the sheepsfoot and pen blades) Model QN31BEM, by the way.

First I used a Sharpie to mark each edge, inserted the coarse SharpMaker rods at 30° and did 5 or so strokes on each bevel. The Sharpie was rubbed away on the shoulder of each bevel, so I knew my work was cut out for me (so to speak).

I rubber banded the DMT stone to the SM rod (inserting a piece of paper between the stone and the rod to protect the rod from the diamonds--and vice versa) and used the coarse side to stroke the blade. After a short while, it was evident that the coarse side of the DMT wasn't coarse enough, and I switched to the extra-coarse side.

The extra-coarse is supposed to be 60 micron / 220 mesh and is recommended when significant removal of material is needed for damaged edges. It also may be used to flatten conventional and water stones. The coarse diamond is supposed to be 45 micron / 325 mesh and is recommended to quickly restore a neglected edge. Size: 6" x 2" x 1/4". The coarseness is marked on each side of stone, but it is pretty obvious which is coarser.

I would say that it took me close to an hour of stoking on the extra-coarse DMT to re-bevel the edge of one side of the pen blade and raise a burr all along the other side. Re-beveling the edge of the other side took around 10 or 15 minutes. So maybe the other side was closer to 30°.

I did notice at least one chip in the edge near the tip of the blade that was not there when I started, but I am expecting that to go away once I finish with the coarse side. This was the first time I used the DMT, and the diamonds are expected to be extra rough at first. So it's quite possible that the DMT was initially the equivalent of extra-extra coarse at the outset.

If I had used the coarse SM rods, I would not be done with resetting the bevel to 30° even if I spent hours last night at the task. As I mentioned in the previous post, I have the diamond SM rods, which I am not satisfied with, and I am very glad to have purchased the DMT. The greater suface area alone of the DMT makes the work go quicker, and the extra-coarse side of the DMT is much coarser than the SM diamond rod. I suspect that even coarse side of the DMT is much coarser than the SM diamond rod.

The SM is a great tool, but using it to re-bevel edges of tough steel is like using a good knife to chop down a tree. Get an axe or a saw.

In this case, that means using diamonds or clipping banding sandpaper or emery cloth to the SM rods. Before I got the DMT stone, I preferred emery cloth. I have used both coarse sandpaper and coarse emery cloth clipped to the SM rods, and in limited experience, I have noticed that they cause some scratching above the bevel.
Click to expand...

Diamonds are the novice sharpeners best friend.
 
bh49 said:
Red magic marker to color the edge. 10x eye loupe to see where material is removed: on the edge or on the shoulders. Coarse stones or rods

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=444326

this is discussions about Congress Tool rods and some other coarse stones and sharpmaker use with them.
Click to expand...

I just read that thread and looked over Congress Tool's website. I plan to order a pair of 120 grit 1/2" x 6" moldmaster squares to rubber band to the sharpmaker hones and use for reprofiling all my knives to 30 degrees. Good idea or is there a better choice from these guys.
 
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