I have one of the original Sharpmakers, when there was only one angle. My question is this. I have an XM-18, gen 3 flipper,. 3.5. Its pretty sharp, but I like to keep it really sharp, so I use the sharpmaker on it a lot, normally with the white stones. I find its better to touch it up a lot then let it get dull and have to work on it for a long time or go back to the coarser gray stones. On this knife, or any other quality knife with any of the modern stainless steels, am I removing a significant amout of steel by sharpening it a lot?
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Sharpmaker Question
- Thread starter Bob45
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If you haven't noticed a big difference then you probably don't. I'd invest in a strop though: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/640503-Make-a-leather-strop http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/770338-demo-how-to-build-you-own-strop
Hopefully this helps!
Erd
Hopefully this helps!
Erd
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2009
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- 11,409
IIRC, the grey medium rods are 15 micron and the white rods are 6 micron. So it should be impossible to remove any significant degree of metal unless you keep at it for hours nonstop, which I hear is usually what it takes to reprofile an edge with the grey rods. If you're concerned, buy the Ultrafine rods to maintain your edge. At a measly 3 microns, it would be akin to using a strop.
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Ceramic hones remove little metal (comparatively), and produce the best results at light pressure. Used as such, I wouldn't worry about doing any real harm to your blade.
The caveat to that is, if you feel you're having to do a whole lot of grinding away on the Sharpmaker, just to create a decent edge, then using a somewhat coarser hone to re-establish a good bevel is probably in order. If some additional metal has to be removed to put a geometrically sound bevel on it, then so be it. Once the bevel itself is in 'good shape' (literally), that's where very light touch-ups on the Sharpmaker will really make the edge pop. Then, as mentioned above, stropping can take the edge even further.
The caveat to that is, if you feel you're having to do a whole lot of grinding away on the Sharpmaker, just to create a decent edge, then using a somewhat coarser hone to re-establish a good bevel is probably in order. If some additional metal has to be removed to put a geometrically sound bevel on it, then so be it. Once the bevel itself is in 'good shape' (literally), that's where very light touch-ups on the Sharpmaker will really make the edge pop. Then, as mentioned above, stropping can take the edge even further.