Spyderco Sharpmaker

Joined
Aug 11, 2004
Messages
52
I just got my Sypderco Military and the Sharpmaker. Watched the video and all that good stuff. When I tested out the sharpmaker on my old kershaw, still pretty damn sharp, it didn't do much a difference. I followed everything they did in the video. I'm not pressing hard either. Is there any tricks to this?
 
The angle of your knife has to less than or equal to the angle of the sharpmaker for it to work. A common way to test this is to put some marker on the edge of your knife and then do the strokes on the sharpmaker. If the marker is removed from the very edge, then you are actually sharpening, and not just reprofiling it. If the marker is still there you need to keep doing more strokes until it's not.
 
Also, make sure you are using the correct angle on the Sharpmaker. Generally you will be using the 40 degree angle for sharpening and the 30 angle for the back grind.

If you have a good magnifying glass and look closely at the edge of the knife after a few passes on the rods you wil be able to see if you are grinding right to the edge or, as suggested, you are just profiling the new angle on there.
 
sweet, thanks for the tip.

Another question now though, whats back grind and profiling mean?
 
Hmmm.. this is a little more tricky to describe, hopefully somebody better at describing stuff will help me out here.

Profiling simply means grinding away at the blade until you get the angle you want at the edge. So, if your knife has an edge angle of say 50 degrees, (25 degrees each side of the centre line), and you want to use the Sharpmaker you are going to be grinding away for a fair while until you eventually remove enough metal so that the angle at the edge has been reduced to 40. This is a good compromise angle, wide enough so you don't easily damage the edge during cutting but narrow enough so it slices reasonable well.

What I would call the "back grind" is where you grind the edge, and a fair bit of the width of the blade, down to an angle of 30 so it will slice through stuff but then you finish off by grinding a small width of the edge, say around 3 mm, to 40 degrees so you get a strong edge.

Does any of that make any sense?

You guys who know a bit more about this sort of thing feel free to correct me where I've buggered up.
 
JM is right the marker tells you what's going on. A lot of knives come with bevels set at more than 20 degrees per side. It can take quite some time to reset them with the brown rods, but you gotta do it.

The other thing I'd advise is read the forum's primer on sharpening. One thing Sal touches upon in the video, but is not addressed in the booklet, is the need to raise a burr. I've found it works best for me to raise the burr, cut it off, then switch to the white rods.

http://www.bladeforums.com/features/faqsharp.shtml
 
JM is right on with the marker trick.

I would take it further that without a marker you will have absolutely no idea just where the stone is rubbing against the blade. And that is with what ever sharpening system you might use.

If you are not hitting the actual edge you are not sharpening.....you are re profiling. And re profiling, changing the edge angle, is not the SharpMaker's best attribute.
 
Ok, I've done the marker tip. It helps a lot, however, they still aren't as sharp as my Spyderco Military?

Shouldn't the sharpmaker make any knife as sharp as any top quality knife except the steel isn't as good?

Thanks for all the info too guys, very appreciated!
 
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