Sharpening Setup

J

jetdriver21

Joined
Aug 29, 2015
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It has been a long while since I had a reasonable sharpening stone and many advancements have been made in that time. After doing quite a bit of research, these are my ideas for stones for full-service coverage:

DMT - F/EF (600/1200)
Norton - 4000/8000
Finish with leather strop

Is all of this necessary? Or is this overkill?

I would appreciate your advice before I make this investment.
 
Not overkill.

But you need something coarse, like the DMT Coarse (325) or Extra Coarse (220) for repairing/restoring/reprofiling. If budget is tight, I'd get the C or XC before the EF.

I recently sharpened a neighbor's dull kitchen knives. Man, was I glad I had the XC or I'd probably still be working on them. ;)
 
I have found that sandpaper (220 to 1200) on a 2x3x12 balsa wood board and a Flexcut 8x2 strop loaded with Flexcut Gold Compound will do almost everything I want. You can get all this for under $25 and it will do everything (or 98%) that any other setup will be able to do.

I LOVE all my expensive sharpening equipment, and use it frequently. But I also know that the simple tools I outlined are more than capable of maintaining a great edge.

Cheers and best of luck with whatever you end up with!
 
I picked up a diamond box sharpener (200/300/400/600) at harbor freight that works quite well for the rough stuff, I think it cost about $15. I finish from there, if I dont want that toothy of an edge, with an alox stone from dollar tree that was, of course, $1. Then strop on a $3 leather belt from Goodwill glued to a 2x2x2.5 ft board I found loaded with Herbs Yellowstone (I dont remeber what that cost).
If I do my job it no tug shaves my face. Total investment is $25 or so? And with easy pressure on the diamonds will last near forever.
 
jetdriver21 said:
It has been a long while since I had a reasonable sharpening stone and many advancements have been made in that time. After doing quite a bit of research, these are my ideas for stones for full-service coverage:

DMT - F/EF (600/1200)
Norton - 4000/8000
Finish with leather strop

Is all of this necessary? Or is this overkill?

I would appreciate your advice before I make this investment.
Click to expand...

I'm not even sure how you came up with this set-up, to me it makes no sense and I would not purchase those items to be used together.

For a diamond plate the DMT XXC or Atoma 140 would be the better option. It not only works far better at setting bevels but is also better for lapping waterstones. From here you want to pick stones that will maintain the edge easily and provide good sharpness, my first recommendation for this would be the Shapton Glass 500 and 2000 grit stones. They can be used to easily follow the coarser diamond plate and with their exceptional cutting speed you get sharp edges quickly. The 500 and 2000 grit is a far more useable range of grits, the 4k/8k Norton is a common stone for Razor Honers and not really ideal for knives.
 
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