What is your opinion on Spyderco bencstones?

[Cliff Stamp]

Maybe the AO in lighter force at finer grits works better than the coarser grit AO stones on these steels because the coarser DMT's, Glasstones, or Spyderco stones have already cut the carbides to form a fine edge that is easy to refine at the point where I use the lapping films?

Sounds perfectly logical to me, it would be fairly straightforward to confirm under magnification

Not enough pay back for the expense and mess.

I can understand the mess, especially when you have to deal with storage and/or soaking. That being said I would not give up my coarse SiC waterstone, ever.

-Cliff

 

[sodak]

Have you tried less force?

-Cliff

I've tried, I think my fine motor skills are lacking.... A moment's distraction and I raise it up too much and my tip meets the stone. I need lots more practice, but before that, more time!

That's the one thing I love about razors, it's like having built in guides. No problem at all. So I know the stones cut well, but require some care.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Yeah, I know that feeling, all of Alvin's knives are sharpened like that.

-Cliff

 

[matt321]

.... One tip, don't use a solvent to clean the stone and put it back into the plastic case until it's THOROUGHLY dried off. I cleaned my medium stone with some gunscrubber (1,1,1 trichlor) and toweled it off so it was dry to the touch, when I got back to it the next day the plastic from the case was all over the stone surface and some of it is still soaked into the pores, makes for a slow cutting stone.

Thanks for the tip yoda. I had some Hoppe's on mine before, so I'll watch out for that.

Another thing I can mention is that I had to work the lateral edges over with a fine diamond stone to work out the raspy edges that made the stones hard to use. They're sweet now.

Edited to add: Actually a much better way to smooth the edges of the benchstones is to work each edge in the groove of a sharpmaker rod of the same grit.