Consensus:Diamond or CBN sharpmaker rods

[Robert Ptacek]

I have a set of diamond rods and I like them.Are there any advantage to the CBN rods?What say you.May You have a Blessed Easter.

[Evil D]

Seems to me that diamond cuts slightly more aggressively but CBN wears slower. I go back and forth between both.

[soc_monki]

I've had my diamond rods for a few years, and lots of reprofiles. They are still good and work quickly. No need to get CBN if your diamonds are fine IMO, unless you just want to experiment, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would wait until they are worn out then replace.

[yablanowitz]

I bought both at the same time, and I use both. The diamond rods cut faster and leave a coarser scratch pattern. The CBN rods cut slower and leave a finer scratch pattern, but are still far more aggressive than the brown rods. I use them as an intermediate step. As an aside, I only use my SharpMaker for serrations, so the flats are practically unused.

[ZrowsN1s]

I believe CBN is more uniform in grit size.

[Robert Ptacek]

Thanks for the input

[Evil D]

I bought both at the same time, and I use both. The diamond rods cut faster and leave a coarser scratch pattern. The CBN rods cut slower and leave a finer scratch pattern, but are still far more aggressive than the brown rods. I use them as an intermediate step. As an aside, I only use my SharpMaker for serrations, so the flats are practically unused.

I'm gonna see if I can notice any difference viewed with a loupe, and then see if it's worthwhile to try to use diamond-CBN as another step in grit progression. It still feels like there's a massive leap in grit progression between either of these rods and the brown rods and it takes so many passes on the browns to remove the scratch pattern from either steel rod.

[ZrowsN1s]

It's the balance of how long is it going to take me to reprofile this if I don't use the diamond/cbn rods VS how long is it going to take me to get all these scratches out with the brown rods.

[Matus]

Both work, both need tone used gently, both will be slower that 400 grit water diamond stones because you can not apply much pressure. I am still on the fence when it comes to using them as final step in a sharpening progression, though with SE edges they may well be the only option if one is after a really toothy edge.

[Ramonade]

There are stones where the grit goes right to the corners. And the corners are nice and 90°.
Sharpening SE on those is very doable.

As far as CBN vs Diamond on the sharpmaker, every argument that i know of have been written already.

I can add that my CBN rods do not get much use at all because the blades get stuck at various points of the flats and the corners. I guess pour use will wear them in, but I haven't done that already

[cjk]

My impression from googling and reading some months back is that the CBN and diamond sharpmaker rods are pretty interchangeable and that I didn't need both. I bought the CBN rods because my go to knife shop had those in stock, but didn't have the diamond ones.

[vivi]

I bought both at the same time, and I use both. The diamond rods cut faster and leave a coarser scratch pattern. The CBN rods cut slower and leave a finer scratch pattern, but are still far more aggressive than the brown rods. I use them as an intermediate step. As an aside, I only use my SharpMaker for serrations, so the flats are practically unused.

I'm gonna see if I can notice any difference viewed with a loupe, and then see if it's worthwhile to try to use diamond-CBN as another step in grit progression. It still feels like there's a massive leap in grit progression between either of these rods and the brown rods and it takes so many passes on the browns to remove the scratch pattern from either steel rod.

This is the beauty of microbevels, don't need to spend time removing all those scratches. Diamond rods at 15 degrees, brown or white rods at 20. Saves so much time.