Sharpmaker purchase help

[Evil D]

Just curious, is there a vender offering the whole package with all available rods (apart from SFO obviously)? I rather like one stop shopping :D

[Michael Janich]

The standard Sharpmaker comes pre-packaged with all the standard components (base, cover, two safety rods, two fine stones, two medium stones) plus an instruction booklet and a DVD. Any vendor selling it should be shipping the entire pre-packaged set.

Stay safe,

Mike

[tvenuto]

all available rods

I'm assuming this means diamonds, UF, and CBN as well. Not that I know of.

[MacLaren]

all available rods

I'm assuming this means diamonds, UF, and CBN as well. Not that I know of.

+1
I was able to get what Mr. Janich stated, plus a couple extra fine rods that were seperate the original package.
But, I havent a clue as to whom would have the whole shootin match. It would be nice though....

[Donut]

The Diamond and UF rods tend to be a little expensive from most normal dealers, probably because they are an odd size to ship.

I usually direct people to Amazon for a good price on the UF and Diamond rods and it comes with free shipping.

I bet you can order everything from amazon, but I doubt it will all ship from the same location or be a very good price, I think the sharpmaker kit is a little expensive from Amazon.

[Evil D]

I haven't paid much attention to the CBN topic, not sure if I'll bother with those or diamonds as I don't plan on ever reprofiling anything on it, just touch ups and seeing what I can do with my serrations. Then again they may be useful for working out chips in serrations.

Brian, if not Amazon for the SP, where?

[ohcyclist]

I have done well getting various parts from amazon as well as knifeworks. I do not know of anyone selling it all together.

[elduderino04]

I bought my CBN rods from gpknives, and it looks like they sell all of the other available rods as well (including medium and fine separate from the standard package). They don't offer them all as one "package" though, if that's what you're going for.

[JD Spydo]

In the past I've bought a lot of Spyderco sharpening tools from New Graham>> and even if they are just a bit higher than some other dealers I would still recommend them. I've been dealing with them for years and I haven't once ever had a problem with them at all.

I've bought many Spyderco knives and Spyderco sharpening tools from them with excellent service and that means a lot to me. I've been staying away from a lot of the dealers on the auction sites because there are just too many tried and true dealers like New Graham.

[Surfingringo]

I would go ahead and get the cbn/diamond rods. You will definitely end up using them...plenty. If you want to same a bit of coin, the uf rods aren't really necessary and are more just for fun IMO.

[elduderino04]

I would definitely second what surfingringo said. The CBN (and diamond) rods will have an appreciable effect on your sharpening, particularly the amount of time it takes to bring a dull edge back to shaving sharp. The UF rods, while they're great for getting a scary sharp edge, aren't really necessary. Plus, you could always just wrap some very high grit sandpaper around the other rods to get a similarly polished edge (though it would be hard to keep the angles as consistent as you would get from the UF rods).

[Donut]

Hmm, I guess I got mine from Amazon for $53.25 shipped in 2009. I remember hesitating on the buy for quite some time before biting the bullet. The $10 shipping always seemed to kill the deal in my head.

But now it's $58 ish on Amazon. Once you add diamond and UF rods, you're at $140.16. It used to be about $30 for the diamond pair and $15 for each UF on Amazon. I guess it's not TOO much more expensive than it used to be.

I'm probably just being cheap. :)

[Evil D]

Turned out my local shop had everything in stock. It was a few bucks more from them than the online places I checked, but I have to support my local businesses when I can. I went ahead and got the diamond and ultra fine rods, I'll look into the CBN rods later.

I've started with the two worst kitchen knives I own, which have plenty chips in them and are dull as snot. I've already got my chef's knife quite sharp, and already my arm/shoulder are also quite tired :P

[Donut]

Let us know how it works for you.

Remember Cliff's revelation that 1 degree variation of the stones can be the difference between hitting the edge and not hitting the edge.

[elduderino04]

Congrats on finding everything you needed. If you already got the diamond rods, you probably won't ever need the CBN rods. I believe I recall from Cliff's testing that the CBN rods were a similar grit to the diamond ones, they just cut differently (though it has been some months since I read up on them, I may be mis-remembering).

[Matus]

I would just shortly mention that IMO it may be worth to get some sort of coarse diamond instead the CBN rods. Do not get me wrong - I like my spyderco for touching up small blades (clean, easy and relatively fast), but when I wanted to set the edge bevel on Caly 3.5 super blue (not thinning, just 30 deg. inclusive) it took for ever and a little more, even though not that much steel had been removed. That is to say - I do not think that the CBN rods are a bad product, but for coarse work a diamond stone (or Japanese water stone if you manage to keep the mud away from the rest of the knife) will be much faster and you can also use it for thinning or adjusting the blade geometry. I would see the CBN rods as a tool to remove small chips from the blade.

[Evil D]

Let us know how it works for you.

Remember Cliff's revelation that 1 degree variation of the stones can be the difference between hitting the edge and not hitting the edge.

Admittedly, I haven't really followed any discussion regarding the Sharpmaker, so I missed this info. But, you (well, Cliff) couldn't be more right. I've spent the better half of this entire day racking my brain and going over everything I know about using my Edge Pro, because I thought I had been setting it up incorrectly simply because my edge was hitting so differently on the Sharpmaker compared to the Edge Pro. I guess my confidence got the best of me, because in the end it's simply user error and my inability to hold the knife perfectly at 90, and as Cliff points out it literally only takes 1 degree variation between hitting the shoulder and micro beveling.

Unfortunately, this only supports the reason I've taken this long to buy a Sharpmaker to begin with, because even though it's one of the simpler sharpening tools to use, there's still a very precise level of accuracy involved and user error can completely throw that off. Still, I've already had some great results with my serrated knives and I've only been playing with the SM for one day, so I'm not giving up on it yet. If I only ever use it to sharpen serrations and to touch up my PE blades, I can live with that. I'm a bit concerned about deforming the teeth on my serrations though, so we'll see how that goes.

[Donut]

The idea behind it is that people have the natural ability to hold a knife vertically very well. There is variation in the manufacturing of the stones that can change the angle.

I always thought it was the angle on the blade or me... and I would just reprofile or put the knife down. It turns out if you have trouble, just swap the stones to the other side and it should fix it.

I find that it is pretty reliable for getting things very sharp, relatively easy.


Maybe someone needs to test the consistency of the angle that people hold a knife vertically.

[Evil D]

I think it's just as easy to get right as it is to get wrong. 1 degree isn't hard to hit or miss. It would be very easy to convex an edge if you aren't careful.

[Donut]

So, I was rethinking your comment about not being able to hold a consistent angle.

In my head, not holding a consistent angle will not hurt you in trying to get a sharp edge. If you have a 1 degree or even two or three degree convex edge, you will still get a sharp edge. If anything, having a degree or two variation will help people hit the edge with the stone.

In the past, I have had a hard time getting an edge right on the sharp maker and I've purposely increased my angle about 5 degrees per side to make sure I was hitting the edge.