Sharpmaker as a bench stone

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garythenuke

Joined
Jun 16, 2005
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I am looking to buy a Spyderco sharp maker, maybe, and am intrigued that it apparently can be used as a bench stone if you put the rods in the back of the base. Has anyone done this? If so, how well does it work? How does this compare to the dedicated bench stones that Spyderco makes? I have basically this same question in to Spyderco and can anticipate the answer pretty well.

Also, what are y'alls' opinions on the spyderco bench stones themselves? I have been reading here some folk saying that they are inconsistent along with the sharpmaker rods. I could buy a set of DMT bench stones but I would like to get the right set up the first time and not have to replace down the road. I do plan on setting myself up with a strop as well for final finishing.

Any thoughts??
 
Yes, it works. Is a continuous surface on a real benchstone nicer, yes of course.

Inconsistent? I doubt it, and I haven't really read anything along those lines. Inconsistent is the precived finish it leaves, which is in part due to the different expectations of different users. The Sharpmaker rods/benchstones are sintered, meaning they start out with a particle size of 35 microns regardless of the final grit and depending on the sintering, the particles fuse resulting in a different effective grit. But that grit can not be quantified by a particle size anymore, which is way Spyderco has resisted all requests and has stuck to medium, fine, ultra-fine. The UF stones are just fine stones that are subsequently tumbled which breaks up the surface structure and makes it even finer. I noticed that the corner of the rods are not as fine as the flats on the UF. I assume the corners just don't respond as well to the tumbling process.

I understand that you want to get the right setup right away. The problem is that the right setup is really a matter of preference. The Spyderco Sharpmaker will serve you very well. The benchstones would not be my personal preference. I prefer waterstones. I haven't tried the DMT EE yet, but from the comparison that some people here have drawn, I am not really interested either. But other people love it. And the EE is the only stone that is in the same territory grit wise as the Spyderco stones.
 
Thanks HoB,

Do you have a recommendation on where to start with water stones? I have looked around and seen some unbelievably expensive ones ( I cannot remember the company name), and some others that are more reasonable. What attracted me to Spyderco in the first place was that they are designed to be used dry. This way I do not have to soak them in water or leave them stored in water or add borax to the storage water or even put oil on them.

I was originally leaning towards the Spyderco bench stones and a strop, but then got sidetracked by the sharpmaker. I want to get all of my blades (pocket knife, skinning knife, tomahawk, axe, machete, kitchen knife, cleaver, chisel, lawn mower blade....) as sharp as physics will allow while keeping in mind the job they will doing.

I've read some threads on bench stones with a ton of awesome and bewildering of information but I could not pin any one product down.

Does this help my case at all??

EDIT: The expensive ceramic water stones I mention are the Shaptons
 
Using the Sharpmaker as a bench stone does not work for me. The stones are too close to the center of the base The knife handle hits the edge of the sharpener base.
 
I have success using it as a bench stone, but only for working on the tip of the blade, for the reason IUKE12 mentioned...
 
Well, to start from the top. As sharp as physically possible.....There are several types of sharp: Notably, pushcutting and slicing sharp. For pushcutting you need the highest polish, so far so good. For slicing, a coarser edge with polished teeth is far more efficient. How coarse and how to polish the teeth is a difficult question for which I still have not a definitive answer for myself.

For the highest polish physical possible, there is no way around using very expensive waterstones and/or the finest available diamond, CBN and AlO compounds on a strop. Nothing else is close, and AFAIK really nobody claimes to be close. For the slicing edges, Phil Wilson and apparently Goddard as well, use essentially a Norton AlO stone+strop and are very happy with their edges. I have tried it (thanks to Sodak) and while I am not finish evaluating it, I have been able to get a very aggressive, yet very sharp (easily shaving) edge with this set up. But it is not a setup I would recomment and most certainly no to somebody who is just starting out. The "fine" Norton AlO stone is no question coarser than a 700 Bester stone and it takes quite a bit of practice, not to leave a burr that the strop can not remove anymore. Also the stone gives very little feedback, which is really the beauty of waterstones. But it is a very inexpensive setup and in many ways the edges are probably as physically sharp as possible.

Having said that, my humble opinion is that the Sharpmaker will be able to give an ultimate sharpness that is very very difficult to beat by other means. Yes, I believe it is possible, but it takes time and it takes practice and the reason is not so much because the Sharpmaker is a bad setup, but because you have access to a lot of different media when freehanding. But again, to beat a master on the Sharpmaker like WadeF is HARD (hell just competing is hard, forget about beating) and in practice the difference will hardly be meaningful. Especially if you design a system around the Sharpmaker with a good stone to rebevel the knives that have a too large apex angle and a hard-backed strop with some compound (at least two sided, so you can try a bit, I use Veritas green but I think the diamond compounds are more attractive), the results will satisfy even the most anal blade lover. As coarse stone the DMT XX is certainly the best but you pay for it. To have a stone to lean against the rods for the beginning and price wise the X-coarse 6" benchstone is a very good alternative which is to be had for $30. I do not see really any advantage of the Spyderco benchstones over the Sharpmaker, especially if you really use all the options like Jeff Clark's teeter-toter methode.

As for benchstones: I have more and more come to the conclusion that waterstones and Diamond stones are superior to other types of stones. The forte of the Diamond stones is the fast cutting action and hence the coarse and extra coarse grits. The waterstones offer superior finish, feedback and consistence in the medium and fine grits. I am again and again impressed by the properties of the 700 Bester stone. I stays very long flat, it cuts very fast it provides good feedback and does not need long soaks (although I would wrap the stone in Aluminum foil to keep it wet). The XX DMT and the 700 Bester is a beautiful combination. The Bester will take out the scratches of XX in no time leaving an excellent base point for a finishing stone (and no I am not affiliated with Bester in any way :D). I have decided that my next purchase will be the 2000 Bester. Asside from the Bester, you tend to pay for quality among the waterstones, but it is also a matter of personal preference. I like the 1000 Shapton, but I think it is very similar to the Bester but the Bester is a good $20 cheaper and I do not care for the 5000 Shapton. I think it offers too little feedback, cuts too slow and glazes. Again, I am very fond of the Naniwa 10000, but I understand that it is not everybodies cup of tea. It is a very soft stone. I use it just as I use a strop and get better results (edges that are truer/less rounded and higher polished). But while I think I can recommend the Bester to anybody, I think think the Naniwa is a matter of taste. I think those who like it, will love it. For those who don't like it will hate the price (about $100).

Disclaimer:
All of the above is of course my $0.02. But I hope it give a foundation from which you can look around some more.
 
The Sharpmaker is a great place to start learning how to sharpen. As others have said, using them as benchstones is not completely effective, but it's on the tip where you really need them, since the rods can easily round the tip when used as a v.

Get some small, cheap knives and practice on the Sharpmaker-as-benchstone and once you feel confident you understand how to use that, go for some better stones. I would hold off on waterstones, or any really expensive system, until you master the basics.

I have a Spyderco Double Stuff, a small flat ceramic sharpener with coarse and fine on opposite sides glued together. It works nicely for field touch-ups.

I also keep a fine DMT diamond benchstone for speeding up repairs to badly dulled edges. I learned how to use it by practicing on the Sharpmaker-as-benchstone. :)
 
WHOOOF!! What awesome information. Thank you very much, now I have even more research to do. I will try to look things up more before I post redundant questions. That being said, how do you sharpen a blade that has a recurve in it? For example a Kukri? I have DMT folding pocket hones that I am having good luck with, but I want to "kick it up a notch". On blades with curves in them, I cannot get even my narrow DMT to hit the inside of the curve. Here, again, is an attraction to the sharpmaker system. I am using an EZ lap rod right now for that inside edge part.

By the way, my response from Spyderco was something like: "Our sharpmaker is designed to be used as a bench stone. We do not sell strops. With our system you should not need one". I am surprised at their response to the strop. Except considering that they do not sell them....

To HoB, there are alot of things in your post I do not understand. For example CBN and AIO strop compounds. Also I am unclear on : "Phil Wilson and apparently Goddard as well, use essentially a Norton AlO stone+strop" and I have never heard of Bester.

This is what I am looking for : "the results will satisfy even the most anal blade lover" You nailed it on the head HoB.

I have been reading the threads on cutting threads and weighing the resistance in grams. That is fascinating stuff and I would love to get there some day. However I think I would rather make blades that are SHARP after a few hundred cuts and not have to worry about bending the edge over on the wood thread block. I know that alot has to do with the steel, but I would like to make whatever steel I have "all that it can be" through my sharpening technique.

As you can tell I am a noob in the world of high performance sharpening. I know how to sharpen basically. I can shave arm and leg hair after using my blue and red DMT pocket hones already.

Thank you again for your patience with my "Noobness" .
 
Well, Spyderco is correct. You do not need a strop. You get a very high performance edge just with light strokes on the regular Sharpmaker fine rods. The finish will leave fine teeth that give a good combination of "bite" and polish. I like it. It is a good all-round working edge. Is it the ultimate in push-cutting? No. But as I said there are different types of edge finishes and most people have their favorite finish. I used to polish my edges all the way, but I found that I like finishing at around 2000-3000 or to leave a gap 700/10000 or strop. So there is really no way around finding what kind of edge you like best. The additional strop is not needed but it gives you options to go with a polish that is otherwise not attainable or to try going from a coarse stone or the medium rods directly to the strop. You don't have to buy a strop, you can make one yourself from cardboard or leather, so it doesn't cost you much. Important is a hard backing. Do a search for Nozh2002, he really went all the way with strops and compound and he has posted pictures of his setup. But I think currently he is very happy with the DMT stones including the EE.

CBN is cubic boron nitride, AlO (should be Al2O3) is aluminum oxide of a specific crystal structure. For a stropping compound you need something that is harder than steel. It will embed in a soft backing which prevents it from rolling around and will abrade the hard workpiece. Because of the hard carbides in the modern steel, very hard abrasives are a plus. People tend to underestimate the hardness of diamond because they think of the Mohs scale which is very nonlinear, steel being about 5-6, Ruby (same as AlO, ruby, saphire, corundum, Al203 is all the same material) 9, diamond 10. The Vickers and Knoop scale are comparable and largely linear. On those scales hardened steel comes in around 600, give or take 100. Vanadium carbides (the hardest carbides in steel) come in around 2000+. Chromium and Aluminum oxide are about the same, meaning they have trouble cutting the hardest carbides. In practice though very few people have really experienced problems. S30V containing about 4% Vanadium carbides sharpens just fine on the Sharpmaker rodes which are also Aluminum Oxide. However, Novaculite, the material that make up Arkansas stones is only quartz with a hardness around 900 give or take 100 and some people have reported having trouble sharpening high carbide steels. Most oxides and carbides and nitrides and various combinations there of top out at around 2500 Vickers/Knoop, after that there are only two commonly available materials that are harder, and those are MUCH harder: Cubic Boron Nitride comes in at around 4000 and diamond at about 8000. Diamond is therefore about 8 times as hard as saphier (which is also Al2O3) and not 1/10 as the Mohs scale suggests. The specific polygonality (how many corners and edges it has) makes it a very aggressive cutter. I think my second post ever on bladeforums was about polygonality :). The advantages of CBN is that it is cheap in bulk. It is still a bit difficult to find in small quantities (less than 1 kg), and for powered applications it doesn't deposit carbon in the steel like diamond does. Not an important consideration for benchstones. The advantage of Al2O3 that it is available in the finest of grits. You can get Linde B compound which has an average particle Diameter of 0.05 microns. That is about 400.000 grit (and no, there is not a zero too much) and it is pretty cheap. See here:
http://www.gravescompany.com/polishin.htm

For recurves, the Sharpmaker is probably the best tool. Alternatively you can use slip stones or the side of a waterstone. The advantage of waterstones is that they are soft enough to be shaped (on a hard stone like the Bester it would be a pain the butt though, on a soft blue stone it is a piece of cake), so you can either break off a small piece of the stone and shape it so that it fits the curve of your edge, or you intentionally put the waterstone on the side and round over the edges so that you can sharpen on a radius or an edge instead of the flats. Again alternatively you can use a hardwood dowel and glue some wet-dry sandpaper to it. You can shape the dowel to fit the radius of the edge precisely. Works very well. For finishing, you can use a softwood dowel and put compound on it and strop on the loaded softwood dowel, again, works very well (softwood has the right amound of "give" for a strop). Specially shaped woodworking tools have been sharpened this way for decades. But, again, provided that the edgeangle is blow 20 deg per side, the Sharpmaker is by far the easiest method. Some people like to strop the serrations of their knives individually with loaded leather shoe laces. Works of course also on a recurve....just some ideas for you.

Oh and you have never heard of Bester....too bad :D. We got to remedy that :):
http://www.japanwoodworker.com/dept.asp?dept_id=13116
you see, the japanese have a different opinion of coarse than the western cultures, a 2000 grit Bester is listed under coarse stones while a "fine" Norton India stone is significantly coarser than a 700 Bester.
or here my favorite store (not because they have better products but because they are professional woodworkers who are quite knowledgeable about the stones they sell:
http://www.hidatool.com/shop/shop.html
You know you got to give it to the Japanese, they are crazy in some ways, but what they do well, they do REALLY well. There are planing competitions among traditional japanese woodworkers. The best will produce a "chip" during planing that is about 1 micron thick and several yards long :eek:. And they use waterstones to sharpen those edges....but then again they spend the first 6 months of their apprenticeship with nothing but sharpening....

And the Norton India (which is an AlO stone):
http://www.nortonstones.com/Data/El...it.asp?ele_ch_id=L0000000000000005655&Lang=US
I have the IB8 which is currently apparently unavailable. Sodak was so nice as to give one as a gift to me, which I am very grateful for. There are quite a few people that are very fond of it and I am happy for the chance to try one for myself.
 
Phil Wilson and Wayne Goddard are custom knifemakers and members of Bladeforums. They have posted results of slicing tests of various steels on manila hemp rope.
 
Once again, WOW!! I have officially developed a new addiction. Thank you. I am sure I will have many more questions to come. These answers are perfect and exactly what I am looking for. I am going to look for a way to use "polygonality" tomorrow at work:D

Most appreciated.
 
Some people like to strop the serrations of their knives individually with loaded leather shoe laces.
Click to expand...

This is a good technique for guthooks or rescue hooks like Benchmade's, also.
 
How do you do the laces? Do you coat them in the dust and string them really tight between two nails or something? Or do you put them on a wood base like the flat strop? As far as a wood strop, do "Wally World" dowels work or do you need a higher grade? Would a pine 2X4 work as long as it was planed and sanded or is some other wood preferable? Y'all are awesome!!
 
garythenuke said:
How do you do the laces? Do you coat them in the dust and string them really tight between two nails or something? Or do you put them on a wood base like the flat strop? As far as a wood strop, do "Wally World" dowels work or do you need a higher grade? Would a pine 2X4 work as long as it was planed and sanded or is some other wood preferable? Y'all are awesome!!
Click to expand...

The compound is usually a slurry or a wax or gel, so you just rub it on then you use it like a hanging strop, tie one end to a nail/door knob and hold the other and (easier if you tie a beat to the end you are holding).

There is no special quality needed for the backing of the strop, as long is it is somewhat flat. Seriously, do a search for Nozh2002
Here is a nice one for example:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=501026&page=2
another one
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=502542
This is the one I was originally looking for
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=465961
 
In the refrenced thread (http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=28545), the author says that the grits of the three Spyderco bench stones stones are:

Medium = 3-4k
Fine = 8k
Extra Fine = 13-14k

I do not belong to that forum, and I wonder if anyone here can tell me if those grit designations refer to Japanese Waterstones, or either of the two generally accepted conventions......CAMI or FEPA. More importantly, does anyone know to what micron size particles 3 or 4 or 14k refer, if such a cross refrence is even possible with the Spyderco stones.

Thanks for any help...............Frank
 
More great information. I have been huntng and pecking around cyperspace for products. This is a bit of a tangent for this thread, but knivesplus seems to have the best prices. Does anyone know if discount houses like these sell seconds or knockoffs or do they get the real quality stuff? I bought a hawk from knifecenter and the handle was terrible. The I bought the same model and brand from another source and the difference was night and day. I can start a new thread with this question if that is appropriate.

Please don't stop advising on the sharpeners though. :D
 
knivesplus has the best prices on some gear, and are more expensive on other pieces. Same with most all the other sites.

Spyderco ceramic usually gets compared to micron sizes like

med. 12-14
fine 7-9
UF 3-4
 
Thank-you, hardheart.

Can I presume that the 'extra fine' falls somewhere between the 'fine' and 'ultra fine' then?

Frank
 
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