Using Sharpmaker with no diamonds to full profile M390

M

maximus83

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Nov 7, 2011
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Wanted to find out if it would be possible for a Sharpmaker user to do a full profile and sharpen on an M390 blade without diamonds. The reason for this is that the Spyderco add-on diamond and cbn rods are about 400 mesh and extremely slow/difficult to profile, plus they don't offer a great finishing grit. So I decided to see if I could find a way to do the full end-to-end job on Sharpmaker, without needing diamonds at all. This would enable a user who prefers using Sharpmaker to sharpen their super steel blades that have no more than 4% vanadium (as M390 does) without needing to buy the diamond stones, which is only a partial solution anyway.

Materials used:
* Sharpmaker
* Congress Tools Moldmaster triangular stones, in these grits: 150, 400, 600
* Spyderco UF ceramic
* Strop with cbn compound
* Clean leather strop

Process:
* Set a 15 dps bevel on the 150 stones. This was most of the job and took nearly an hour. At this point there was small burr, but M390 typically doesn't form large burrs for me, and already the edge would slice newsprint.
* Refined the edge on the 400 stones, about 30 strokes per side.
* Refined the edge further on the 600 stones. Finished with 5 super light strokes per side to reduce burr.
* 10 super light-strokes per side on the Spyderco UF ceramic.
* 10 laps per side on linen 'nanocloth' strop with 1 micron cbn compound.
* 10 laps per side on clean leather.

Results (pictured):
* Fillets 80 lb printer paper.
* Slices horizontal chunks and push/pull cuts receipt paper cross grain.
* Will do a lengthwise cut in Rizla green cigarette paper.

Working conclusion (not firm at this point): This is 1 knife and only a proof of concept. But based on this, I think you can use Sharpmaker with silicon carbide stones to sharpen virtually any knife steel--including super steels up to the vanadium content level of M390--and get pretty good finished results without needing to use diamonds.

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Good post (& experiment). I’ve been thinking about how to get the most out of my Sharpmaker with super steels.
 
Yes, even though I've gone to freehand myself, I still have tremendous respect for the ingenuity that went into the design of Sharpmaker, and the vast amount of things you can sharpen with it despite that 'simple' design. It is a really amazing tool and while I prefer freehand for many reasons (foremost of which is flexibility and control: I can use whatever abrasives and sharpen to whatever angles I want), the Sharpmaker is still useful. And for folks who for whatever reason don't want to learn freehand, and ALSO don't want to get into expensive gadgets or powered sharpening systems, it's the best thing going.

This is why these Congress Tools SiC stones I posted about are so cool: they add a new dimension to Sharpmaker. For the first time that I've ever seen, you can do serious edge profiling in a reasonable amount of time on Sharpmaker.

For a person who wanted to add this capability and wasn't worried about doing things bottom dollar, a good investment on top of the basic sharpmaker setup would be to add the diamond or cbn stones, and the 150-grit Congress Tools Moldmaster stones for profiling. You could use those for setting bevels and repairing edges, then switch over to diamonds for apexing, then finish with a relatively few light strokes on the medium and fine ceramics, followed by a strop. This probably works for steels up to about S30v and M390; after that, I truly don't know and I'd guess this wouldn't work as well on something like S110v. But apart from steels like that, I think this setup would give folks that don't want to learn freehand a LOT more sharpening capability. Now if only Spyderco or somebody would come out with a higher-grit diamond stone, something in the 800-1200 mesh range, life would be grand!
 
maximus83 said:
...Now if only Spyderco or somebody would come out with a higher-grit diamond stone, something in the 800-1200 mesh range, life would be grand!
Click to expand...

Exactly! I’ve been wishing the same for a long time.
 
If you really want diamonds, you can just clamp on a dmt duofold to the sharpmaker rods. You do lose some length, but it works fine. I’ve also clamped on the cheap coarse diamond plates from harbor freight.

It’s not as elegant of a solution as the Congress stone tools, but it works.
 
maximus83 said:
And for folks who for whatever reason don't want to learn freehand,
------------------------------
This is why these Congress Tools SiC stones I posted about are so cool:
the 150-grit Congress Tools Moldmaster stones for profiling.
Click to expand...

Nice post. I finally sold my Sharpmaker a year or so ago...I was not getting satisfactory results from my efforts...(sorry, Sal). I know that everyone else does love the SM, but I have much better edges with my Edge Pro Apex. I use the Moldmaster SIC stones, as reco'd by Jim Ankerson, and for easy profiling, I stick in the Dia-Sharp 2"x6" Extra Coarse diamond hone, and that thing takes no prisoners whatsoever.
My freehand efforts suck. I use it for kitchen paring knives, but that's about all, since a sharp paring knife is fine with me, and I don't care much what it looks like. With the Edge Pro, I just feel no need to free-hand my good knives...when perfection is so close at hand.
 
maximus83 said:
Set a 15 dps bevel on the 150 stones. This was most of the job and took nearly an hour
Click to expand...

I have great respect for the Spyderco triangle rods and use the Ultra Fine very often (free hand).
The Sharp Maker I haven't bought yet though it is continually in a save for later shopping cart here or there ( most of my edges are at or below 15° so the usefulness to me is limited.
I am an Edge Pro fan boy and when I want it done well, relatively quick and brilliantly hair whittling I reach for that.

Reprofiling . . . now THAT is where I get old school and traditional.
I get out a rough brick, be it my Shapton 120 or my huge DMT 220 . . . use a little magic marker on the edge, get my foot up on it and go to town.
Even on S110V it takes just a few minutes literally.

I think maybe the huge grits and the corners of the small surface triangles may be keeping Sal and the gang from going there. Might be easy for the newbie to strip the diamonds (or other material) off such a small surface area then Spyderco is being asked to warranty some very expensive (?) stones that few would buy.

PS : probably the way to go with the Sharp Maker is to put the stones in the plastic block side by side down flat like in Sal's vid and that way the corners of the stones are protected and there is more surface area to cut with.
Kind of contradicts how the SM is billed to be used to remove metal the fastest . . . if you see Sal's dilemma.

PS: Wow . . . looking back I can tell when I made a post on my old first gen. iPad. Not the most comparable with this forum for spell checking and cutting and pasting.
Sorry Sal I didn't mean to type "Spuderco" / I meant Spyderco obviously.
Any one who made it through this original post I give you high marks for tolerance and perseverance.
 
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Wow! Reprofiling m390 on sharpmaker with ceramic rods takes patience. I have no doubt it will work but you would have to clean those stones every few minutes to remain effective and keep the project moving forward as efficiently as possible. I too appreciate the sharpmaker. So versatile and with consistent results. Will your edge slice paper towel clean and do a wavy cut through phone book paper?
 
I didn't reprofile with ceramic rods and wouldn't recommend that to anybody based on painful past experience several years ago. :) The profiling was done entirely with 150-grit SiC rods, which made pretty short work of it considering Sharpmaker and the small surface area for grinding. The resulting edge would pass the sharpness tests indicated in the OP, which according to the Sharpness chart linked in the forum sticky, correlates to an edge width range of 0.25 to 0.3 micron, and a shaving sharp edge (yes it shaved too, in addition to the indicated tests).

The total time to sharpen including the full edge profile, was only just over an hour, with most of that going into the first profiling step. The SiC rods are what makes that possible, I wouldn't even want to attempt that on the Spyderco diamond rods.
 
Perfect timing for this thread, as I am about to purchase some of the Congress stones for my Sharpmaker. The number of choices has me baffled. How did you select the Moldmaster?
 
The main criterion for selecting their Moldmaster stones is that they are made out of silicon carbide (SiC), whereas their other models are mostly made of aluminum oxide. SiC stones can abrade modern super steels like M390, so that's why SiC/Moldmaster was the best choice vs the other options.

If folks are doing what I did--essentially you want to enable your SM to handle modern super steels well, and you also want the ability to profile an edge and reset bevels in a reasonable amount of time--you need more stones than just the medium and fine ceramics that come with SM. If I were buying brand new today to enable my Sharpmaker to do full edge profiles, and also handle super steels well, I'd buy 2 add-on items:

* The Spyderco CBN rods (400 mesh). Or the diamonds, they work equally well and that's what I have.
* The Congress Tools Moldmaster 150-grit stones. These are what you'd use for profiling edges, resetting bevels, and major edge repair, prior to going to diamonds. Because these are SiC stones, they will work on all steel types you have for the purpose of profiling.
 
You could go either way. For folks trying to save a few $$ and don't already have the diamond/cbn stones, you could go with all SiC stones using the 3 grits I indicated in the OP. Those will get even super steels pretty darn sharp. However, a slightly more expensive option, and one that I've observed gets slightly better results on super steels if you're willing to spend a little more money, is what I recommended in my last post above. Use the SiC 150 grit primarily for edge profiling and bevel setting (something that is otherwise VERY slow and hard to do on Sharpmaker--even with the diamond stones). Then use the diamond or cbn rods as the primary sharpening stone. And in both scenarios, you use the fine ceramics only to very lightly refine and finish your edge (or micro-bevel if you do that), followed by a strop.
 
Got it. Thanx. I think I'll try a progression of the Congress stones, and keep the Spyderco diamonds on my Santa list. Thanks for the help. I'll report back with my results.
 
I'm getting my sharpmaker/UF rods in soon, and will probably get the 150 and the 400 moldmaster exclusively when I am confident enough to sharpen my super steels. From what I have seen online, and even in your OP, moldmasters do the job well. I do wonder if you used yours dry or wet, as from what I have seen, the stones (specifically the 600), do not get the best results when used dry.
Edit: claim to 600 moldmaster's problems changed
 
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Hey Mrt.SATism, if you want the best setup you can get on Sharpmaker for sharpening super steels, and don't mind spending a couple extra bucks, I'd recommend what I mentioned above, basically:
* 150 grit moldmasters for profiling
* 400 mesh spyderco cbn rolds for apexing
* Spydie UF ceramic for refining prior to strop
* And plead/beg/threaten (ok, not really :) ) Spyderco to come out with a 1200 mesh CBN rod. :)

You definitely can get pretty sharp just using all moldmasters as in my OP, it's definitely do-able and a little less expensive. That's why I ran that experiment, it's a nice budget option. Honestly if it were me, I'd just spring for the extra $ and add those Spyderco CBN rods though.
 
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