Need sharpening advice for Benchmade knives and Spyderco Sharpmaker

M

MO-Knight

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Dec 13, 2019
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Hello, and please forgive if this had already been addressed. I could not find a thread on this.

I have been using crock sticks for sharpening kitchen knives for ages.I have recently bought some EDC knives by Benchmade (CR mini and 940 Osborne in s30v, and a mini grip sheepesfoot in 20cv) along with a Sharpmaker.

I believe the knives are ground at 17 degrees, and so I am not sure how to correctly sharpen them with the Spyderco. It has 2 angles, 20 degrees and 30 degrees. Which angle should I use? I want to use the Sharpmaker because it’s so convenient.

I value your experienced opinions here, and in advance I thank you.
 
According to Spyderco it's "30° (15° each side) or 40° (20° each side)" so to hit the apex on a 17 degree-per-side bevel you'll want to use the 40° setting.
 
Would the create a secondary edge, from this

17degrees per edge
| |
\ /

to this -
| |
\ / 17 degrees
V edge angle 20 degrees1
 
Take a sharpie and color the edge to see where the stones are hitting
 
Get the diamond or cbn rods, reprofile the edge on the 30 degree setting, then microbevel on the 40 degree setting.

You don't have to reprofile right away, but after a while of touching up the microbevel it will get thicker. You'll have to thin the edge down, might as well take it to 30 degrees. I do this to all my knives.
 
Another alternative is to have a professional sharpener reprofile your knives to 15 or 20 degrees.

Reprofiling with the SM takes all of the fun out of being a sharpening geek!
 
Ben Dover said:
Another alternative is to have a professional sharpener reprofile your knives to 15 or 20 degrees.

Reprofiling with the SM takes all of the fun out of being a sharpening geek!
Click to expand...

I've been working on my freehand skills, but I still use the sharpmaker after the coarse side of my norton crystolon. If I'm not right on my angle (usually not! Lol) I've at least done most of the work and I'm just dialing it in with the sharpmaker. Works great.
 
MO-Knight said:
Hello, and please forgive if this had already been addressed. I could not find a thread on this.

I have been using crock sticks for sharpening kitchen knives for ages.I have recently bought some EDC knives by Benchmade (CR mini and 940 Osborne in s30v, and a mini grip sheepesfoot in 20cv) along with a Sharpmaker.

I believe the knives are ground at 17 degrees, and so I am not sure how to correctly sharpen them with the Spyderco. It has 2 angles, 20 degrees and 30 degrees. Which angle should I use? I want to use the Sharpmaker because it’s so convenient.

I value your experienced opinions here, and in advance I thank you.
Click to expand...

Great responses - thank you!

From what I am gathering so far, here is what I am thinking my plan of action may be:

VERIFY ANGLE
1. check angle of edge using Sharpee on edge and see what angle the marker gets scraped off
then
IF 17/34 DEGREES, SHARPEN @ 17/34 DEGREES
IF NOT, DECIDE WHAT ANGLE TO USE
2. try to sharpen at that angle (I would use a horizontal stone for this, ‘cause I do not think I can odd-angle the Sharpmaker) - Assuming it really is at 17/34 degrees, I am thinking I would need to get a Worksharp Guided Sharpener, since it has a 17/34 degree angle helper.
or
SHARPEN @ 40/20 DEGREES, THEN REPROFILE
2. use 40 degree angle on Sharpmaker in short term, then
3. reprofile blades at 30/15 degree angle later on, then microbevel at 40 degree angle
or
3. have the blades reprofiled by a professional to the 30/15 degree angle

Any other thoughts?
 
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Benchmade confirmed their angle is 15-17 degrees.

I am leaning toward keeping this simple, creating or reinforcing the 15/30 degree main bevel, and skipping the 20/40 degree microbevel.

Does anyone see any issues with this approach? I do not want to mess anything up.
 
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Only this: if your existing edge is 17 DPS and you want to reprofile to 15 DPS it may be slow going if you don't have the diamond or cBN rods.
 
Actually, I have both. I am thinking of trying this first on one knife, then decide if I want to do this on another.

My knives are mostly s30v, and I have some vg-10 and Sandvik blades, plus I have a 20cv.

Is it fair to say that s30v and harder steels should be able to hold a 15/30 degree edges, but softer steels would best be sharpened at 20/40?
 
OP - you’re overthinking it. No plan necessary. The Sharpmaker will eventually getcha there.

If you want to speed it up, you can always freehand on stones to get the angle closer, but I bet the sharpmaker is close enough to hit the edge as is. Just try it.
 
MO-Knight said:
You’re probably right. :)
Click to expand...

I have a lot of experience with the sharpmaker and even more freehand sharpening with stones.

The sharpmaker has universally given me great results. It’s simple, but it works. Just give it a shot and see what happens.

Like has been mentioned, if you paint the edge with a sharpie you’ll see where the stones are hitting. I had to adjust my grip to make sure the blade was absolutely vertical when I first started using it, but after that I had no problems at all.

Good luck, and don’t stress.
 
I have a ceramic rod set-up similar to a sharpmaker,and one thing I noticed is if I tilt the knife off vertical I can feel/hear it smooth out once I'm on the matching angle. It's really not much harder to hold knife off vertical for me to do this. Hope this helps
 
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