Question on DMT Double Sided Stones

[Core Knife Co.]

I convex sharpen pretty much every knife that I own. Some are deeper and some shallower however everything is done on sandpaper. I have a lot of slip joint knives however that I would like to keep a nice V grind on. I have been looking at DMT stones and like the idea of the 6" double sided stones. The XX, corse, fine and extra fine combination can be had for much cheaper than if I had to buy them all separately.

Are the 6" stones big enough for a average sized knife or will I find myself running out of surface? And is there any disadvantage to the double sided stones? Anything that I should know about?

 

[Bill1170]

I convex sharpen pretty much every knife that I own. Some are deeper and some shallower however everything is done on sandpaper. I have a lot of slip joint knives however that I would like to keep a nice V grind on. I have been looking at DMT stones and like the idea of the 6" double sided stones. The XX, corse, fine and extra fine combination can be had for much cheaper than if I had to buy them all separately.

Are the 6" stones big enough for a average sized knife or will I find myself running out of surface? And is there any disadvantage to the double sided stones? Anything that I should know about?

I use the Duosharps, one stone and two of the folding "file-type" sharpeners. A 6" stone is plenty for most slipjoints, that is, under 4" blade length.

The disadvantage is that you have to turn the stone over to use the other side. Also, they are the perforated plate design, which is fine for knives but bad for pointy tools you need to push point-first along the stone. For that sort of tool the continuous diamond is ideal.

 

[Jason B.]

The diasharps are continuous surface and available in 6in, XC-F and EF are the exact plates I started with. 6in is fine for smaller blades but can be tricky on larger blades, as long as your not going over 4-5in you should be okay.

Double sided sounds good and may save some money but you would be better off with individual plates. The single plates come with small rubber sticky feet that attach to the bottom allowing you to safely use as a bench stone. Plus I'd also go with C,F, & EF, don't really want to skip stones when using diamonds and C is still coarse enough for your needs.