Spyderco Profile and Sharpmaker grit questions

[peacefuljeffrey]

I have been wondering for a while, since people keep referring in various sharpening threads to the grit number of a sharpening surface, what grit the Spyderco stones are.

I have a Sharpmaker and a Profile. I generally don't use the Sharpmaker anymore, because I find that different knives I own have different angles, and I don't want to either have to reprofile all of their edges to match the Sharpmaker's set angle or hold the blades at weird, non-vertical angles.

I need to know what grit the standard Spyderco stones are. I imagine that the brown and white stones from the Sharpmaker are the same material as the brown and white stones on my preferred sharpening system, the Profile. Are they? And what "number" grit are they, respectively? I would like to know if they are comparable to some of the wet/dry sandpaper grits that I have seen people mention here, or whether I need to obtain additional stones to get similar results.

In the meantime, I tend to get a really good edge from just my brown Profile stone, and only occasionally do I bother to finish off with the white stone.

Does anyone else have to spend upwards of an hour doing baby-baby-gentle strokes, one side then the other for forever to get rid of that last little lingering bit of burr?

Sometimes, I'll finish sharpening a knife thinking I've removed it all, and then days later reexamine the edge and suddenly I see a teensy bit of glow at the edge that I would swear was not there when I had finished sharpening! Maybe I'm being too anal about it. I just don't want to use a knife that has a burr and then find out it is instantly dull because I hadn't gotten it "properly" sharp in the first place!

 

[kevtan]

get a piece of old leather belt and strop the edge trailing, at the same angle as the edge. This will get rid of the burr. Do a search for diamond rods for the 204. Thay can also gotten from newgraham.com. I would recommend the DMT Aligner 4 kit for fast reprofiling, as you get 4 grits of diamond abrasive and a gadget for keeping the the angle. My favourite site is Roger at knifeworks.com
Check the sharpener page for a lot of other ideas.

Another idea by one of the forum members is to clip a piece of sandpaper to the 204 rods to do the reprofiling. Do a search on sharpening and stropping.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

peacefuljeffrey :

Does anyone else have to spend upwards of an hour doing baby-baby-gentle strokes, one side then the other for forever to get rid of that last little lingering bit of burr?

It should not take any longer than a couple of passes to remove the burr. Additional honing is a sign you are pushing it around and not cutting it off. Make sure the edge is not excessive weakened or damaged and the hones are clean and aggressive. Force is critical as well, too much and you will burr the edge again, too light and you will not allow the abrasive to cut.

No idea on the grits, you might want to search the Sharpmaker forum.


-Cliff

 

[Ironman]

I just wanted to chime in with how great the ProFiles are as well. I gave up my Sharpmaker 204 for the PF as well. Same reasons. If you have the skill, I highly recommend the PF. Kind of an adavanced sharpmaker or something. I don't know the grit either....

 

[Jeff Clark]

If you keep working at precisely the same angle on the hone you will have a very difficult time removing the burr from your edge. After you finish your basic sharpening you need to tip the spine of your blade away from your hone and do another 5 strokes per side with your medium rods to remove the burr. Then go back to your medium stones for about 5 strokes per side at your normal angle and 5 strokes per side with your fine stone.

For example I thin my edges with a diamond bench hone at under 15 degrees, then I do about 10 strokes per side on my brown rods set at 15 degrees (at this point the edge is sharp, but has a burr), then I set my rods to 20 degrees and hold my blade tipped past verticle so that I am stroking at about 35 degrees per side, I do 5 strokes per side to remove the burr (but now my final edge has a 70 degree included angle), I reset my brown stones to 15 degrees per side and do 5 strokes per side (I am now back to a 30 degree included angle with no burr), then I do 5 strokes per side on my white rods at 15 degrees.

If this was a kitchen knife used for dicing I would be done now. If I want a more durable edge and expect to do any slicing I go back and do a few very light strokes on the brown rods at 20 degrees to get a little tooth on the edge and a little higher strength (due to a narrow sliver of more obtuse edge).

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Jeff's method is pretty much what I use for the exact reasons he described. I would strongly recommend that if burrs are a problem that you try sharpening a soft machete, especially a cheap one. Contrary to popular opinion that the soft blade steel makes for an easy sharpening (it does speed up basic shaping) this is a myth. The very soft steel will deform quite readily forming very large and floppy burrs. It can be very difficult to form a crisp and clean high sharpness edge. However once you work through this problem with the machete (using the method Jeff outlined) any decently hard blade will seem trivial in comparison.

-Cliff