RokJok
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2000
- Messages
- 4,188
Having had this SharPeak diamond sharpening rod out of the box for all of about a half an hour or so, I think it's a good unit with a single caveat. Price was $25'ish on the big river site.
Sharpeak is apparently a subsidiary of Sharpal, a company whose diamond plate Outdoors55 on YouTube found to be very clean of grit contamination and considerably more durable than the super cheap plates that rapidly lost abrasive particles. So I'm hoping this rod will share those characteristics with the plates.
I tested the rod on a couple of knives that were essentially already sharp. The 1200 grit surface of the diamond rod gave an ever so slightly toothy edge that passed the newsprint test with flying colors, as would be expected from a 1200 grit abrasive surface. No surprise there. The 12-inch'ish length of the diamond plated surface gave plenty of real estate for a medium-sized boning knife to have a lot of runway to work with. The rod is a non-tapered cylinder of approximately 1/2" diameter for most of its length, with a very slight 1-1/2" long taper to the hemispherically round nose of the rod. This will hopefully keep me from mashing a knife edge down on the end of the rod, which I've done a few times, when starting a sharpening stroke high on the rod.
The handle is 6 inches long total. But the angle guide bevels eat up part of that distance. The actual hand part of the handle is only about 4-3/4 inches long. That fits my smallish hands okay. But those with bigger mitts may find it cramped for room. The handle has a nice fairly large hole in the end of it for hanging if you so choose.
Now for the caveat: This is a *HEAVY* rod, weighing in at 14 ounces (just shy of 400 grams)!!! The base rod is a solid piece of steel is my guess, as opposed to hollow tubular stock on my other rods. So it's either over twice or over three times as heavy as my other Dexter or Mercer(?) diamond sharpening rods. See pics for exact numbers. The center of gravity is far enough out from your hand that it's really noticeable. My suspicion is that for extended sharpening sessions this amount of weight cantilevered off your wrist will become wearisome fairly quickly. Time will tell.
ETA: I think the angle guide bevels at the front of the handle are all the same angle. I think this because there are no numbers anywhere on the handle indicating that they would be different angles, say 14°, 17°, 20°, or maybe 24°, and to my eyes they all appear to be the same angle.
Sharpeak is apparently a subsidiary of Sharpal, a company whose diamond plate Outdoors55 on YouTube found to be very clean of grit contamination and considerably more durable than the super cheap plates that rapidly lost abrasive particles. So I'm hoping this rod will share those characteristics with the plates.
I tested the rod on a couple of knives that were essentially already sharp. The 1200 grit surface of the diamond rod gave an ever so slightly toothy edge that passed the newsprint test with flying colors, as would be expected from a 1200 grit abrasive surface. No surprise there. The 12-inch'ish length of the diamond plated surface gave plenty of real estate for a medium-sized boning knife to have a lot of runway to work with. The rod is a non-tapered cylinder of approximately 1/2" diameter for most of its length, with a very slight 1-1/2" long taper to the hemispherically round nose of the rod. This will hopefully keep me from mashing a knife edge down on the end of the rod, which I've done a few times, when starting a sharpening stroke high on the rod.
The handle is 6 inches long total. But the angle guide bevels eat up part of that distance. The actual hand part of the handle is only about 4-3/4 inches long. That fits my smallish hands okay. But those with bigger mitts may find it cramped for room. The handle has a nice fairly large hole in the end of it for hanging if you so choose.
Now for the caveat: This is a *HEAVY* rod, weighing in at 14 ounces (just shy of 400 grams)!!! The base rod is a solid piece of steel is my guess, as opposed to hollow tubular stock on my other rods. So it's either over twice or over three times as heavy as my other Dexter or Mercer(?) diamond sharpening rods. See pics for exact numbers. The center of gravity is far enough out from your hand that it's really noticeable. My suspicion is that for extended sharpening sessions this amount of weight cantilevered off your wrist will become wearisome fairly quickly. Time will tell.
ETA: I think the angle guide bevels at the front of the handle are all the same angle. I think this because there are no numbers anywhere on the handle indicating that they would be different angles, say 14°, 17°, 20°, or maybe 24°, and to my eyes they all appear to be the same angle.
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