Sharpening a Mule

[Mini2white]

I just use the Sharpmaker to touch mine up so far.

[rooster81]

I use the "Double Sided Diafold® Diamond Sharpener". They cost $50 each. I have two, one blue/red and one green/white, which equates to coarse/fine, extra fine/extra extra fine. The extra extra fine is 3 microns.

Then I have some rough homemade strops with Diamond paste up to 100,000 grit.

The combination can take a knife to hair splitting sharp. Works on all kinds of steels because everything is diamond. Everything is lightweight and super portable. They last a long time. In my opinion there's no better bang for your buck to take a knife from dull to razor sharp.

[bobartig]

Works Sharp Precision Adjust Elite kit. Worked great on my REX 76.

[tcarltonw]

I use KME with a range of 100 grit diamond stone to 1500. Also have two gunny cloths and a flock of home made bat strops running smooth leather. Still refining the progression of them but have 6, 3, 1, .5, .25 mic gunny juice as well as .1 mic diamond emulsion coming from a friend on Instagram. She helped me with my hunt for a BBB manix so I put together a bat strop for her(I make handles for them on my lathe). She in turn sent me some emulsion. I'd like to get into free hand sharpening but it's more about what I have time to focus on as my free time has been/will be focused on handle making(finally was able to hunt down a counterbore, barrel, screw set up).

[Ramonade]

The continuous belly makes for an excellent experience to sharpen Mules free hand IMHO.
But when setting my first edge, I usually use a fixed angle system to reprofile. Here's my current setup :

- Work Sharp Precision Adjust
- 3D printed 4" stone holder from gritomatic
- Stabilizer thingy my brother printed me (helps a lot)
- Venev Cerberus Dog series stones (and also basic Dog series)

[tcarltonw]

The continuous belly makes for an excellent experience to sharpen Mules free hand IMHO.
But when setting my first edge, I usually use a fixed angle system to reprofile. Here's my current setup :

- Work Sharp Precision Adjust
- 3D printed 4" stone holder from gritomatic
- Stabilizer thingy my brother printed me (helps a lot)
- Venev Cerberus Dog series stones (and also basic Dog series)

How do you like the venev stones?

[Ramonade]

The continuous belly makes for an excellent experience to sharpen Mules free hand IMHO.
But when setting my first edge, I usually use a fixed angle system to reprofile. Here's my current setup :

- Work Sharp Precision Adjust
- 3D printed 4" stone holder from gritomatic
- Stabilizer thingy my brother printed me (helps a lot)
- Venev Cerberus Dog series stones (and also basic Dog series)

How do you like the venev stones?

I love them ! I mostly sharpen in hand so size-wise they are good. The best thing is that they are "affordable" resin bonded diamond stones. The Dog series might need a tiny bit of flattening at first, but the Cerberus Dog come perfectly flat (I have 6 of each). I really want to buy 6" stones later on, and a couple of bench stones. The bench stones range from 100 to 200 USD. If I were to pick the 200 option I might go towards naniwa diamond though.

[tcarltonw]

The continuous belly makes for an excellent experience to sharpen Mules free hand IMHO.
But when setting my first edge, I usually use a fixed angle system to reprofile. Here's my current setup :

- Work Sharp Precision Adjust
- 3D printed 4" stone holder from gritomatic
- Stabilizer thingy my brother printed me (helps a lot)
- Venev Cerberus Dog series stones (and also basic Dog series)

How do you like the venev stones?

I love them ! I mostly sharpen in hand so size-wise they are good. The best thing is that they are "affordable" resin bonded diamond stones. The Dog series might need a tiny bit of flattening at first, but the Cerberus Dog come perfectly flat (I have 6 of each). I really want to buy 6" stones later on, and a couple of bench stones. The bench stones range from 100 to 200 USD. If I were to pick the 200 option I might go towards naniwa diamond though.

Word, I'm not getting much life out of some of my KME stones and have been eyeballing the venev options. Glad to hear about a happy customer!

[jwbnyc]

Interesting result obtained over at Cedric and Ada with an MT35 mule and a non-standard edge:

https://youtu.be/bvPdb-n3__Q

[legOFwhat?]

Interesting indeed

[TTFulltimer]

For all my sharpening I use a Ruixin Pro 009 with a rack and pinion mounted 3 inches behind the stock position to hold the pivot bearing. Stones are all Venev URSA.

I just sharpened my first ever Mule. Rex 76. It is definitely a hard metal. Still easy to sharpen with the bonded diamonds. Burr burr burr burr burr burr burr, and finished with the "400" grit then stropped with 5 and 3 diamond compound on leather. Not polished like my softer 15V or other steels. It is very sharp.