Question about the KME sharpener

[jfindon]

I just got my KME Sharpening System and so far it has taken my crappy Gerber that I messed up totally with a Sharpmaker back to pretty much shaving sharp.

My question is in regards to the stones. The standard kit comes with these:

The sheet that came with it described the extra coarse silicon carbide stone as "Bluish black", the coarse aluminum oxide stone as "gray", medium aluminum oxide as "orange", and fine as "white".

The picture above doesn't show a "bluish black" stone, there is gray, brown, orange, and white. I know which ones the medium and fine are obviously, but the two coarse ones are confusing me. Which is the coarser? The brown one feels like it to me, but given that carbide stuff is usually darker and the other medium grit stone is orange makes me think the brown one is second.

 

[bchan77]

Sorry to give you a question rather than an answer, but what are your thoughts on this system? Is this easy to use? I am also currently using the Sharpmaker. Thanks.

 

[jfindon]

Sorry to give you a question rather than an answer, but what are your thoughts on this system? Is this easy to use? I am also currently using the Sharpmaker. Thanks.

So far so good, it puts a hell of a nice looking edge on knives. My Sharpmaker efforts were all over the place, these cleaned them up nicely. I haven't really gotten them amazingly sharp yet, don't know if I'm just not spending enough time on them or what.

The only thing I'm worried about is I see fine scratches on the blades, I don't know how they get there since the stones don't touch anywhere but the edge. Maybe they were there before, I don't know. I ran out of knives to test and won't use my good ones until I find out about the scratching.

Plus I need to find the angles of my existing knives, I don't want to go reprofiling them all just to touch them up a bit.

If no one here knows or has any experience I suppose I'll email they guy who made it.

 

[Splat]

Plus I need to find the angles of my existing knives, I don't want to go reprofiling them all just to touch them up a bit.

Use the Sharpie method. That'll help find the existing angles on your knives. Good luck with it.

 

[Hard H2O]

I haven't really gotten them amazingly sharp yet, don't know if I'm just not spending enough time on them or what.

Once you have sharp you just need to refine.

A lighter touch with the last strokes might help.

A finer finishing stone or hone.

A final stropping step added.

Good Luck.

 

[jfindon]

Thanks guys, I'll have to look into stropping since I've never done it. I tried it on the back of a tablet here but don't really know what I'm doing.

I got my Gerber to shave , but it seems like I can only get a good edge with the gray stone pictured above as my first stone, and then finishing with the fine stone. When I try using the medium stone it seems to make it duller.

 

[jfindon]

Does that make sense to anyone? Maybe it's because I was trying to do a touch up with the medium stones, and the position of the blade in the grips was slightly different so it ground a very slightly different angle? That's the only thing I can think of as to why it would actually make the knife duller.