Sharpmaker stones

[Supacede]

Hi all,

Went to slide my (new!) sharpmaker out of the way on our quartz countertop and a medium stone fell out of it's horizontal retainer space, nothing happened beyond clinking on the counter but made me wonder; are these stones prone to chipping or breaking if dropped?

Just curious to other experiences, love this thing!

[Joey]

I got mine used with a chipped rod in each grit. The brown was pretty bad, and had a chunk taken out. I haven’t chipped them further, but the nature of these stones makes them prone to chipping. They’re EXTREMELY hard stones.

[vivi]

They chip easily. Be careful with them.

I dropped one and had it split in half before. It was my fault though.

[JD Spydo]

I got mine used with a chipped rod in each grit. The brown was pretty bad, and had a chunk taken out. I haven’t chipped them further, but the nature of these stones makes them prone to chipping. They’re EXTREMELY hard stones.

The brown/gray-Medium Sharpmaker stones are extremely vulnerable to chipping, cracking and breaking easily. The fine and ultra-fine can be as well if you are careless or abuse them. Whenever I do my cleaning of any of my Spyderco ceramic stones I take great care to do them individually and I'm also very carefully not to bang them against each other as well.

Now on the Spyderco 302 Benchstones I've not yet ever had one of those with a chip, crack or break ever come about ( Thank GOD!). I've got some real money tied up in all my sharpening stones so cleaning and maintaining them is something I take really serious. But for some reason those 204 Sharpmaker stones seem to be very fragile under certain circumstances.

Usually I have to get a replacement set of the gray-medium stones replaced about once a year or so. I almost automatically order them from New Graham about every February or March. I've been doing that for the past 5 years or so. I've only ever had to replace a set of fine stones once in the past 15 years>> so I can live with that one.

[Evil D]

They're ceramic so yeah they will chip and break like any other ceramic like a coffee mug or pot, though they're probably much harder and higher quality ceramic.

[Supacede]

Appreciate it!