spyderco sharpmaker ultrafine stone

Z

ZippyDan

Joined
Sep 30, 2005
Messages
61
i bought one of these. but then i realised that the recommended sharpening method for the sharpmaker employs two stones

do i need to buy another one? :)
 
the sharpmaker comes with four stones? Two fine (white) and two coarse (gray). Are you sure you have the sharpmaker?
 
the ultrafine stones are sold separately and individually.

I have a single triangular stone that I use for burnishing.
 
You don't need to, but if you are going to use it in the sharpmaker which Im guessing you are, it would benefit you to buy the other stone. So you dont have to turn the sharpmaker back and forth when you use it.
 
When using the ultra fine stone, should you use the corners and then the flats as is done with the medium and fine stones?
 
I don't use the edges on either the fine or uf rods, I only use them for preliminary work on the medium rods. I think that the narrow rod edges tend to over stress the blade edges. I have observed extremely small chips in the edge when I use them. I guess that they are necessary when you sharpen serrated edges, but I try and minimize their use on unserrated edges.
 
You can get away with only one UF rod since you only do a few strokes using it. I would expect to do 80% of your honing using the medium rods, 15% using the fine rods and only 5% of your honing using the UF rods. Basically sharpen the blade using the medium rods until it seems completely sharp. To use nice even numbers lets assume it takes 80 left-right stroke pairs to sharpen your knife on the medium rods. Then you would use 15 left-right stroke pairs on the fine rods and only 5 left-right stroke pairs on the UF rods. Since you are only doing a total of 5 strokes on the left and 5 strokes on the right on the UF rods it is easy to use just a single UF rod. Set the UF rod in the left-hand slot in the base. Gently stroke the left side of your edge down the rod then rotate the base on your work bench to put the rod on the right side. Now gently stroke the right side of the blade down the UF rod. Keep doing this where you do a stroke and then rotate the base till you have done each side 5 times. Be sure to rotate between each stroke to keep things even. You should be able to do 5 left-right stroke pairs in under a minute this way.
 
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