What do you guys recommend for sharpening stainless fixed blades.

W

Wind_Slash

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Aug 3, 2012
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I have a Navy Mark 3 MOD 0 dive knife. I really like the knife and can get a decent edge with regular sharpening stones, steel rod, and an el cheapo diamond sharpener. But I have heard of some guys using Japanese water stones, some using a grinding wheel with some type of water wheel/paper ( I might have that wrong please educate me on this.) Of course some type of decent ceramic or diamond sharpening set.

Like I said I can get a decent usable edge out of this knife, but the grip, handling and toughness of this Ontario Navy knife is great. I just need to find the best sharpening tools for a thick stainless knife. Also what would be a good field sharpening tool for this knife? Something you could carry hunting or camping with?
 
The worksharp is an excellent tool. Add a decent strop with good compounds to get you to a nice laser like edge. Good luck
 
That knife is probably relatively soft and there are many different products that will sharpen it. You just have to pick a product/method that you like to use.

I use diamond stones in a guided system- the DMT Aligner. It is easy to use to get the right angles, and diamond stones will work on any steel.
 
I use a very expensive wicked edge system for reprofiling edges and then touchups on the knives I've already used it on.
For most of the rest Lansky croc sticks are highly functional, easy to clean and transport.
 
An E-Z Lap diamond rod sharpener has worked very well for me in the field.

The best thing you can do is learn to sharpen freehand with a basic Arkansas stone and go from there. That way you have the fundamentals and understand exactly what you are doing and what is taking place on the edge. It sounds like you might already have that down if you're getting consistently good edges.

If you still prefer to go right to a sharpening "system" you should get some good recommendations here. I have tried many over the years but I usually just freehand.
 
If you are looking at waterstones then I would recommend the Shapton Pro 2000. You seem to have some sharpening gear now so a fine but fast cutting and able to remove some steel 2k would probably give you the best experience. Shapton stones are hard and fast cutting stones, they just need a splash of water to sharpen and they wear slowly so they last a long time. The 2k stone is a great finishing point for many knives, it's a good balance of toothy and polish to provide good cutting. The Shapton Pro 2k is also a pleasure to use, it has a wonderful creamy feel and gives good feedback while sharpening. Many like to use diamond lapping plates to keep the stones flat but many other cost effective methods such as wet/dry sandpaper or loose SiC compound on glass can be used.

Water wheels can be expensive and hard to obtain and powered grinders are for professionals that do a volume of work. I would not recommend power equipment to home sharpeners.
 
There's hundreds of threads just like this one, several which are posted every day. A simple search in this sub-forum would reveal a lot of answers to questions already asked. Sorry for being an a hole. :p
 
The current version of the knife from Ontario is apparently 440A stainless at HRC 49-54 hardness. With that in mind, most anything will work for it. A lot will depend on what stones/systems will be easiest for you to use, and what edge finish you prefer. For a 'thick stainless knife' like this, something like an inexpensive SiC stone would work very quickly for heavy re-grinding of the bevels, if needed, and most anything else could work to refine it to a higher finish. Softish stainless like this would be prone to burring, so using a clean-cutting & aggressive abrasive like SiC or diamond, with a LIGHT TOUCH, would be my first choice. Somewhat less aggressive or less-hard abrasives that don't cut as cleanly will exacerbate the burring issues, especially if pressure used is somewhat heavy. Ultra-hard/dense ceramic hones could also generate burrs, if pressure isn't kept very, very light.

Stropping with simple hardware-store compounds in black, white or green should also work with this steel.


David
 
Thanks for the info guys. I will check out the E-Z rod and some diamond stones. Also that Shapton Pro 2000 sounds really cool.
 
Well got it working pretty good on a diamond sharpener. A cheap one but it does the job. Love the knife so much I gave it to a friend when I ordered a new one the other day. Now I have a new one and oddly enough it came in sharper than the old one did out of the box. I just cleaned up the edge a bit and...its not razor but plenty sharp.
 
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