Finally figured out how to use the sharpmaker after over a year... my method is...

F

fanucman

Joined
Jan 31, 2016
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167
Use the corners of the stones not the flats

50 swipes at 40 degrees on the brown stones
30 swipes at 30 degrees
30 swipes at 40 degrees on the white stones
15 swipes at 30 degrees

This gets it factory sharp every time with a lasting edge. Give it a try if you have been struggling at all.
 
it's more about matching the angles, which is very hard until one figures it out.

most factory knives don't come with even bevels at all, so the angles change along the length of the blade on both sides, until it's reprofiled to match a consistent bevel.

i'm gonna bet this will work on many spyderco or more automated factory brand sharpened knives, but maybe not on any knife that has very poor angles from the factory? have you tired a really poorly done one yet with your system? thanks.
 
you gotta make it sharp on a 30 degree setting and then you can swipe on a 40 to touch it up. When you start seeing the secondary bevel clearly due to reflection you might wanna go reprofile it to 30 again. You gotta understand that your swipes are going to be increasing as you widen that secondary 40 degree bevel you are creating. Then you have different steels...
 
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I recently figured it out too! I was never super effective with it and then, recently, BAM. Hair shaving edge every time. As mentioned before it's all about matching the angle which, for me, just means patience and practice.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I thought using the corners were for dull knives and setting the edge before going to the flats where most of the sharpening takes place?

I guess I need to still leanr more also. Good post. Hope more people chime in and can explain the corner vs flats better of the sharpmaker. I would like to know how many swipes people do for a spyderco s30v type blade (approximate number of swipes and time spent)???
 
I never use the corners, just the flats. I also touch up my knives every week, so they are always scary sharp, and usually just a few passes do the trick.
 
I mostly use the flats, most of my knives have been
re-profiled to less than 40 inclusive though, makes touch ups easier.

Sharpmaker can still be a mystery to me sometimes. Almost seems like the more time and effort I put in the more frustrating it can be. Other times a 2 min quick touch up gets sticky sharp edges.


The hours I've banked on the SM... sigh... still don't feel like I have it perfected. Still love it though. Even after sharpening my knives on other systems I always finish with touch ups on the SM and strop.
 
When in doubt mark the edge of your knife with sharpie. It gives you a good idea of whether you are "relieving" the edge (back bevel) or actually working on the apex. [emoji106]
 
archieblue said:
When in doubt mark the edge of your knife with sharpie. It gives you a good idea of whether you are "relieving" the edge (back bevel) or actually working on the apex. [emoji106]
Click to expand...

THIS is something for everyone to practice...
 
jbmonkey said:
it's more about matching the angles, which is very hard until one figures it out.

most factory knives don't come with even bevels at all, so the angles change along the length of the blade on both sides, until it's reprofiled to match a consistent bevel.

i'm gonna bet this will work on many spyderco or more automated factory brand sharpened knives, but maybe not on any knife that has very poor angles from the factory? have you tired a really poorly done one yet with your system? thanks.
Click to expand...

This is true. I actually find it easier to use the flat of the stones even on recurves. This is because when using the flat it is easier to lay the edge against the stone at the correct angle. I use my sharpmaker stones to freehand touch up my edges like a giant crock stick. The factory knife angles are never exactly 30 or 40 degrees amd so the jig never works. Also I found I can only make a knife that went abit dull razor sharp again. I have no luck grinding a very dull knife to sharp again.
 
Lapedog said:
This is true. I actually find it easier to use the flat of the stones even on recurves. This is because when using the flat it is easier to lay the edge against the stone at the correct angle. I use my sharpmaker stones to freehand touch up my edges like a giant crock stick. The factory knife angles are never exactly 30 or 40 degrees amd so the jig never works. Also I found I can only make a knife that went abit dull razor sharp again. I have no luck grinding a very dull knife to sharp again.
Click to expand...

A very dull knife probably needs to be reprofiled, that is, to have the primary edge bevel ground back to the correct 15 DPS (YMMV) angle.

To make a dull knife sharp, using the Sharpmaker, you need the diamond or CBN rods. Even then, hard steels like 110V can take some time.
 
Another thing to think about guys is when you take your Sharpmaker from your usual sharpening spot to a different place the angles might vary due to the base sitting at a different angle. You want to be consistent at what you do. Use a level and check it out.
 
The corners put more pressure (pressure=force/area) on the steel than the flats for a given down force as less steel is touching at one time. So the edges will remove steel quicker than the flats when using the same amount of force while making a swipe on the rods. However, using the corners will result in dragging the tip over the corner if you sharpen the entire edge which will round the tip in time and you will get rid of a nice fine, sharp tip. I never use the edges personally as I like to keep a sharp tip.

You can use more swipes on the flats or you can use more down force to remove steel faster but using more force will many times result in a less consistent angle being held. There really is no magic when it comes to sharpening but I think it takes a while before it clicks for many people and they finally realize what is going on. If you aren't sharpening down to the very edge with a stroke, then you are not making the knife any more sharp. If you are making swipes and the knife is not getting any more sharp, you are not at the very edge yet. Using a sharpie to mark the edge helps you see where you are hitting the edge at. If you aren't young or don't have good vision, get something to magnify the edge so you can better see what is going on. Even if you have good vision get some sort of magnifying glass. Because it can look like you are removing sharpie at the edge but there is still a very small section of ink and you aren't there yet.

There are times when you need to sharpen a knife where you aren't hitting the very edge and you need to remove metal so you can hit the very edge at a slightly steeper angle. I wouldn't want to do this with a sharpmaker as it takes a long time and is hard to hold a consistent angle and you end up with a slightly convexed edge, so I just use the Sharpmaker for touching up a knife. When a knife gets dull it goes from a * V * edge where both sides meet each other and make a sharp point, to a rounded edge so you are trying to cut with a more * U * shape, but on a very small scale. Though the more dull it gets, the bigger that rounded over section gets and the more metal you have to remove to get both edges to meet in a sharp point again.

Above, sharpening on both the 30* and 40* isn't needed and just the 40* should be sharpening the knife. The 30* isn't going to be removing metal at the very edge and is going to hit further up the bevel or on the shoulder of the secondary grind. If the 30* was sharpening the knife then you would want to keep sharpening there and not the 40* as the bigger angle would just be putting on a micro bevel that will get bigger the more you sharpen at that angle. But I don't think I've ever had a factory knife that will sharpen on the 30* setting.

Keep working and try to understand what is happening at the very edge using a marker and magnification and eventually it will make sense and you will be able to get any knife sharp given enough time.
 
fanucman said:
Give it a try if you have been struggling at all.
Click to expand...
F fanucman Thanks for sharing your method of using the Sharpmaker product!

I posted my experience/method with the Sharpmaker and 204-seriez stones at the Maintenance forum subsection. Instead of opening another thread in the Spyderco forum subsection, it's probably also okay to simply bump your topic and share my video here?

As you can tell, i have given a name to my method, calling it 204-freehanding. What's the name of your method? :D
 
O
GatorFlash1 said:
Here is how you use a Sharpmaker from the guy who designed it, the first knife product he sold.

Click to expand...
Now that made things so much more clear in my mind. All the times I have read about bevels and degrees and all the rest this video was the best. Thanks very much for posting that.

,,,Mike in Canada
 
Sir, you are welcome. Knife sharpening really isn't rocket science in spite of what some knife sharpeners would like you to believe. It seems to me that some knife sharpeners try to turn their knives, made with a good working edge angle for most cutting tasks, into razors for which they are not intended.

I don't really care how many scraps of paper I can cut, or how many times I can cut a piece of rope. I'm more concerned with the use of the knife for daily chores around my shop and yard. This seems to be the use the Sharpmaker was intended for.
 
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