Renewed Love for the SharpMaker

[quigibo]

Last week I went to visit my father and he specifically asked me to bring my sharpening equipment so I could go through his kitchen knives. Although he has nice knives (Wusthof, heard professionals speak well of them at least) the edges were in some pretty sorry shape. I'm pretty much a novice with free handing on my DMT stones, so I didn't feel comfortable going that route. I started thinking that it would be great if I could run the SM at 30 degrees inclusive with diamond rods. But I don't have diamond rods. Right about the time I was thinking about ordering a set for next day delivery my father walks by, looks at the SM and says "I got some triangle rods just like that for touching up tooling for the mill and lathe. Never have used them. You can have 'em if they'll help you out." Sure enough, he walks over to the tool cabinet, and pulls out two NIT (New In Tube) genuine Spyderco Diamond SM rods. He had originally ordered one of the ceramic file sets but his order got screwed up and he got diamond rods instead. It's like fate (or Sal) intervened to bring us together.

Man I cannot believe I didn't order a set of diamond rods earlier! Being able to quickly cut metal makes all the difference in the world. Other than free handing for free handing's sake, I don't see my DMTs getting much use from here on out.


Also - I noticed that while I was getting good consistent bevels with the SM I was rotating my hand ever so slightly counter clockwise when I moved over to the right side. By making a conscious effort to get rid of that rotation I'm getting much, much better results. Something other, SM users might want to watch out for.

 

[ronT2]

When I first got the Sharpmaker I started going through my wife’s kitchen knives for practice and got nothing more than frustrated. There was no way I was going to reach the apex on some of those knives with just the medium stones and my limited time here on earth. I remember someone saying that the diamond rods were a “game changer” so I ordered a set. They truly are and have replaced the fine rods in the Sharpmaker case as I can usually get a good working edge with just the diamond and medium rods alone. Not going to win any contest but it works. I have been playing around more and more with the fine rods lately though.

 

[exracr]

I free hand on arkansas stones, and a green leather strop. Only steel I haven't tried is my PM2 Burple in S110V steel because I haven't needed to. Most knives I can turn into razors in 5-10 minutes unless they are severely bent/broken tips, or have huge chunks missing out of them. Then they take me a little while. It's a great SKILL to learn if you have the patience......... a local restaurant owned by some friends have me sharpen their kitchen knives every 3 months or so for a free steak, wine dinner. They owe me 2 right now, and said they'd probably be having me sharpen their knives for a very long time to come.