Sharpmaker

[bh49]

Note Congress Tools (and others) also sell rods which fit the Sharpmaker and are really coarse, you might want to look at them. They however are solid stones and are going to wear and have issues with maintenance.

I strongly advise against using Congress Tool stones with sharpmaker. I used to to this for few years. There triangular stones are not intend to be used with sharpmaker. They have the same nominal size, but tolerances quite wide, meaning that some of the will not fit into base, some of them can be very loose and sit at slightly different angle and some of them can have one end, which wouldn't fit and another too loose. If you lucky both ends will fit, but angle still will be sligly different. Congress Tool is a local company for me. I pass them on my way home. I use to go there with base and sort stones. Even than going from one grit to next I was able to see that I am grinding not the same area. As a solution I switched to flat 1" wide 1/8 thick stones and clamp them to sharpmaker rods. Angle wise it was much better. Still even using fairly coarse grits (I had ruby set 80,150,300 and moldmaster 120,240 and 400) reprofiling of blades with standard Spyderco steels like VG10 or S30V was taking fairly long time. I also do not abuse knives, nothing more abrasive than a cardboard. I end up buying WE Sport & Field and very happy so far.

[Cliff Stamp]

If you lucky both ends will fit, but angle still will be sligly different.

I would only do that for the shaping part hence the change in angle doesn't matter as the Sharpmaker rods are used for micro-beveling only. In fact I would recommend they intentionally be used at a lower angle by grind with the most coarse Congress stone at 10 dps by tilting the Sharpmaker and only going back to them when the 15/20 dps settings take too long to use with the CBN, Medium and/or fine rods. In fact I would even go beyond that and recommend to just use a Benchstone and make a ghetto sharpmaker out of it by the method Chris uses.

[me2]

Is that what I should call it? Can I write that on them with a marker?

I have rebeveled knives with the SM204 with nothing but the stock stones. I don't really want to do it again, but it's not that bad. It took a few hundred passes per night (quicker than you think) and about a week on a recurve blade I had. However, I highly recommend the SM204 be used as a finishing/honing tool. It does an excellent job of applying the final edge, and I've used it that way exclusively for a long time. There are some videos on my youtube channel (me2bfc) of it resharpening just the microbevel of my Cold Steel Scalper and resharpening a kitchen utility knife from resetting the edge and then applying the final bevel with the SM204.

[HarleyXJGuy]

Is that what I should call it? Can I write that on them with a marker?

I have rebeveled knives with the SM204 with nothing but the stock stones. I don't really want to do it again, but it's not that bad. It took a few hundred passes per night (quicker than you think) and about a week on a recurve blade I had. However, I highly recommend the SM204 be used as a finishing/honing tool. It does an excellent job of applying the final edge, and I've used it that way exclusively for a long time. There are some videos on my youtube channel (me2bfc) of it resharpening just the microbevel of my Cold Steel Scalper and resharpening a kitchen utility knife from resetting the edge and then applying the final bevel with the SM204.

Yeah with the medium stones I am betting it would take a while to rebevel. At the same time I bet with the CBN it would not be bad at all.

I have Multi tools with 440c range blades, AUS 8 or 4 CRKT M16 and mostly new Spydercos here. Not to worried about major reworking of edge angles, just keeping and slightly improving their sharpness. Pretty much what the SM is made for.