sharpening Question

Learning to sharpen freehand is a skill that you will be glad you learned... if you take the time to practice and learn it. I don't think you are giving yourself enough credit, and handing skilled tasks off to skilled people isn't going to make you a better, more capable person. Learn to sharpen, and once you get your first edge that will shave hair, you will be incredibly proud that you put in the time to learn this task, and then others will be handing you their knives because YOU possess the skills.

Just my two cents. Take it or leave it.

JGON
 
I agree with Jgon's post, two above me. Learn the skills to do sharpening on stones, a Sharpmaker, whatever. You won't always have your guided systems with you, but your skills are ever at the ready.

I usually use paper wheels at home but was on the road last summer and sharpened a pile of kitchen knives for a friend we visited, using his stones. Months later he and his wife are still raving about how great that was to have sharp knives in the kitchen.

The stones this guy had were four perforated diamond plates bonded to a big chunk of plastic, 2" by 2" by 6" long. The stones are mounted on the four long faces. This thing was bought for a song at Harbor Freight and it did a fine job on their kitchen cutlery and the SAK of their great-nephew.
 
All systems are going to have their tradeoffs at some point. The great irony being that a few of these have roughly the same price points. The Edge Pro is nice, and I can see why some would want it over a full set of DMT Diasharp stones. But I find that the diamonds work exceptionally well on knives with the modern powder metal steels with vanadium carbides, whereas it could take up to an hour or more trying to lower the bevel on ONE knife using the edge pro.

The sharpmaker is nice, but if you're trying to sharpen a knife with a very obtuse angle, be prepared to spend some time on that venture.

Paper wheels are fast, but it requires about as much practice as with freehand or else your edges will come out rather sloppy(works better if you have a slower motor).

It's hard to get a razor sharp edge with freehand, but I find that my edges look a lot better than when I use the paper wheels, as well as having a welcome convex to the edge(which is more or less inevitable).

For the most part though, I think an XC/C DMT Diasharp stone along with the slotted polishing paper wheel would be a winning combination:thumbup:.
 
I have a lansky and I can say it is not fool proof. I find it nearly impossible to get it clamped it the same way each time you sharpen. I convex most of my knives. can't get much more simple then stropping imo.
 
Noctis3880 said:
Hair popping? I must be doing something wrong then.
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StretchNM said:
Yeah, the old "hair popping sharp" is a little, uhm, overused, isn't it?

For the OP: The Sharpmaker won;t make your knives "hair-popping sharp", ever.......until you learn to use it, and on certain knives, even then. Admittedly, the learning curve for the Sharpmaker is small, but it still takes practice and a knowledge of your blade's steel and geometry. Stropping, in my case anyway, is always required before any of my knives will "pop" hair, and I can only get 3 maybe 4 of them to do it with any degree of consistency. Most will never pop hair, at least sharpened by my hand anyway, and I'm a pretty fair sharpener.

Nuthin's easy...........
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The first time I ever used a sharpmaker was at my friends house over a few beers as be bragged about how cool it was. I gave it a try and got my flash 1 shaving sharp.

I got one myself later on and within 40-50 min I was getting knives that had a similar angle VERY sharp, able to shave facial hair (with shaving cream of course) with minor irritation. Now if I try really hard I do get them to pop hair but not quite split it.

I should have mentioned above that a strop is required. I have always taken sharp things to a belt for a few passes before I finish, but now I have a real one.

If the knifes angle doesn't match the sharp-maker its going to take a long time to sharpen it, go slow, don't let the blade hit the rods, always stand over the unit while sharping (Don't SIT), and in my opinion, close one eye and move your body above the rods. Finish with a few passes on a belt.
 
Jiggy said:
I have a lansky and I can say it is not fool proof. I find it nearly impossible to get it clamped it the same way each time you sharpen. I convex most of my knives. can't get much more simple then stropping imo.
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Agreed.

I have 2 Lansky sets (the 'Deluxe' set w/standard hones, and a brand new diamond set), and a GATCO diamond set. They definitely have their virtues (best suited for re-profiling an edge), but take some getting used to. Setting up the knife in the clamp is, by far, the most critical step. The clamp must be set up, checked and re-checked, to make sure the blade doesn't move (slip sideways, rock back & forth, etc.) in the clamp. Takes a fair degree of patience, and sometimes some improvising with tape (for grip) to get it set up. Once that's finally done to satisfaction, the rest is pretty easy.

I've begun to discover how simple it is, relatively, to convex using sandpaper on a soft(ish) backing. Prior to this, I had been heavily focused on learning good stropping technique, using leather/compound on a wood backing, to strop my freshly reprofiled knives (from the Lansky/GATCO). After developing the 'feel' for proper stropping technique, I decided, out of the blue, to lay some sandpaper on top of my strop block and convex a few edges. Amazingly simple. Same exact motion as for stropping, and produces great edges quite quickly.
 
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