Sharpmaker

Sacramento12214 · May 30, 2015

I just ordered the spyderco sharpmaker☺🔪 I'm hoping it lives up to all the good reviews. Pretty excited to get it and get some of these blades I've got on it.

dr_fosg8 · May 30, 2015

It is a very good tool. Watch the DVD that comes with it and take your time. Clean the stones well and often.

If your knives are very dull or damaged at the edge you may want to invest in the diamond or cbn rods as well.

Sacramento12214 · May 30, 2015

Thank you for the additional information

wiredbeans · May 30, 2015

1 advice: vertical swipes with the tip finishing toward your body, do not press against the rod side ways and swipe or you will round the tip of your knife.

Sacramento12214 · May 30, 2015

Also good information. Thank you keep them coming. I suck at sharpening with the traditional whet stone. I am hoping I will get a good edge.

wiredbeans · May 30, 2015

Practice and you will do just fine. It takes a little getting use to like anything else but once it clicked, you will love the sharp maker

Sacramento12214 · May 30, 2015

Thank you

vic2367 · May 31, 2015

you got a good system with the sharpmaker :thumbup: look at the dvd and you will do well ,your blades will be so much sharper

Fanglekai · May 31, 2015

Ignore the 20 strokes then switch part. Your knives have to already have the right bevel angle for that to work. The sharp maker is really the sharp keeper. It's terrible for reprofiling with the default setup. That said I love mine as a finishing tool and for touch ups. The ultra fine stones are cool but not necessary. The diamond ones might be better if you don't have coarse stones.

Bob6794 · May 31, 2015

Just got mine in yesterday or it was the day before, either way it's a pretty good system. Just a heads up though using the sharpie trick is very helpful with this system. And don't get carried away with being perfectly vertical in your strokes, it's more important being consistent than maintaining that. So if it feels natural to be off a degree or two but your consistent in that I wouldn't worry about it as consistency is key.

I can tell you I have a slight habbit of making my blades slightly more shallow of an angle on the left side but I seem to be very consistent in that with this system, but almost perfectly vertical on the right side. But as long as I do my job as a sharpener I can get the blade sharp enough to push cut circles in receipt paper.

Also try not to run the blade off the edge, lift it off before you reach the end of the stone or don't remove it off the stone and work the blade in an up and down motion. Whatever feel right to you. But if you run the blade all the way off it you will end up rounding off your tip.

And don't forget you can set it up to use as a benchstone which I have done a few times already though my personal preference so far is to just use on side on the top side instead of two and use it that way. And anti-skid pads on the bottom help out a bit in keeping it in place, or you can use a drawal mat to help keep it in place so you don't have to worry about it moving as much even though you probably end up holding it while it's in use.

Oh and lastly it does live up to it's hype both good and bad. It works good but is a PITA to reprofile knives to work on those preset angles but you can prop up a stone along it so it's at the same angle and secure it down there to reprofile or buy the diamond or CBN rods to reprofile or it may take awhile if you have to remove a lot of metal. Right now I'm currently experimenting with the idea of just using my SIC Norton Economy stone propped up against it and the one or two knives I tested that setup on worked well. Tried using a 4in diamond stone from my DMT Aligner with it being secured by a rubber band but it felt too small and a small slip sliced the rubber band off with ease, a 6x2in stone seemed like a better size to use.

wiredbeans · May 31, 2015

Fanglekai said:
Ignore the 20 strokes then switch part. Your knives have to already have the right bevel angle for that to work. The sharp maker is really the sharp keeper. It's terrible for reprofiling with the default setup. That said I love mine as a finishing tool and for touch ups. The ultra fine stones are cool but not necessary. The diamond ones might be better if you don't have coarse stones.

I don't find that to be true. I have numerous knifes come with unmatched edge grinds, the presentation side is often done at 20+ degree ( so it looks nice and pretty) and the other side has 12-18, this happens a lot with CRKT, Kershaw, Benchmade and ZT; not as often with Spyderco. You will notice your blade tends to run in or away from you when you try to slice in a straight line horizontal .

Use the sharpie technic and give it 5-10 swipes and see how much you are "erasing" the sharpie. If you are only erasing sharpie marks at the shoulder of the primary bevel, that tells you it's current edge angle is higher than 15 degree. Then you will need to re-profile; the opposite is true when you are only erasing sharpie marks at the edge apex (cutting surface) that means the angle is at 12 maybe 10 degrees.

The most stable and efficient edge angle is 30 to 40 (15 - 20 per side)

The worst I got was the CRKT Ken Onion EROS stainless, the edge angle was at 30 degree per side! You can barely see an edge, I thought it was a real bad zero grind... It stay sharp for 2 days... Maybe I got a one off lemon but I had to re-profile it and the new edge set at 15 per side had the edge width of almost 1/8 inch and that on a small blade just looks ridiculous.