Two of my favorite stones

[willis]

The small one is a black Arkansas I bought at House of Blades in Lake Worth Texas nearly 30 years ago,back when they had a cougar that hung out in the shop.The big Arkansas came from Hand American and the lid has a leather strop glued to it that has green chromium oxide powder on it.

I have some DMT diamond stones for the harder steels,but for the carbon steels I prefer like O-1,1095cv,and Case CV,these old timey rocks work just fine.

 

[Davor]

Do you find the diamond stones is all you need? I sharpened a coworker's folder with my diamond rods and then moved over to the ceramic, and found it was sharper with just the diamond rods.

 

[willis]

Davor I use the diamonds for reprofiling mostly,using a DMT aligner setup, although I do have a 8x3 DMT fine/x-fine that fits into a base unit that works good on the few stainless knives I have.I have carried a VG-10 bladed Caly 3 in my pocket for the last 3 and a half years and use the Sharp Maker that I bought at the same time to sharpen it.I have sharpened it exclusively with the Sharp Maker and just last week finally used the 30 degree side to knock back the shoulders.I have never used the SM on any other knife.I do sometimes strop after the diamonds using a canvas strop with a coarse grey compound on one side and a green chrome oxide powder on the other side but this is mainly to polish the bevel if it is scratched from the diamonds.I could probably get by using my double sided Norton 8x2x1 medium/fine India and a strop for all my sharpening needs,but I could also get by with just a couple of knives too and where is the fun in that