Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker
Spyderco make some pretty decent knives, but before they got into making knives they were into making other peoples knives sharp, or as they put it "first we made things sharp, then we made sharp things", or something like that anyway.
Well I have tried lots of sharpening methods in my time - stones, steels, sandpaper, ceramic rods, diamond rods, dremels, knife shops...all with mixed results and usually end up with me scratching hell out of the blade but not really getting it all that sharp, so I read about, googled this sharp maker thing and you tubed a few people using it (hence no photos here) and decided to give it a go.
Mine came with a poor quality dvd, which is basically an infomercial, but the actual device is a rectangular plastic box inside of which are two brass rods - to keep you from chopping your fingers off, two rough triangle ceramic (grey) rods (can you call a triangle a rod?) and two fine triangle (white) rods. The plastic box is great, it holds everything tidy and also contains all the hole and angles needed to sharpen stuff.
Once you unpack it you choose either a 30 degree angle (15 per side), or a 40 degree angle (20 per side) - I only use this one.
You drop in the two brass rods - seriously do this! then slot in the rough trianle things in so the pointy side is facing each other.
Then you take your blunt knife and run it down the right hand side rod, then down the left hand side rod, do this 20 times per side, then turn the ceramics so that the flat side is facing each other and repeat, then remove the rough one, put in the fine ones, stroke, turn them and repeat, if you have been counting you will note thats about 80 strokes per side - you could do more or less depends on how sharp you want your blade, also I have gone and purchased additional ultra fine triangles and can now get a bit of a mirror polish on my blades, but thats probably noir needed.
So the first time I did this I managed to both scratch up a kitchen knife and take a ok sharpness and make it blunt. Completely worthless as far as i was concerned, tried again, no scratches but blunted two more kitchen knives...jumped on some forums and tried the sharpie trick-basically run a felt pen on the part of the blade you intend to sharpen, take a stroke on the rods and see what you are doing - I found my angle was all wrong, within half an hour I had fixed it and now all the knifes in the house are razor sharp, and the good ones also have a mirror finish.
The sharp maker is not as easy to use as I had hoped, you can't watch tv and sharpen your knives at the same time, and to get the best angle I can't even sit down, I set it up on a mat on the table, get a good light on overhead and go to work, it normally takes me three lazy days to sharpen a knife to a mirror finish, I start with the rough, next day go fine, last day ultra fine - and do a LOT more than 20 strokes...but it works and works better than anything else I have used, I have used it on big knives, small knives, recurved knives, straight knives, even serrated knives, have not tried it on my axe yet but will soon. Its a good system, and once you take the time to use it properly is great, the fact that it all packs up into its own box means you could take it away with you to a hut or something, although I would really only do so for an extended trip, I just tend to maintain the edges before I go. Oh, apparently you can also sharpen broad heads, scissors, fish hooks on it but I have only done knives so far.
After a while the rods get a bit dirty and I just wash them with jiff and a brush and they clean right up, no more need to use oil, or soak stones in water, nice.
So if you struggle with sharpening your knives, then this little gadget is worth a shot.
Shelley
