Brand new ⭐ Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker With Safety Rods, Instructional DVD, Two Premium Alumina Ceramic Stone Sets For Blade Repair And Professional-Grade Finishing – 204MF 🤩

2 reviews for Brand new ⭐ Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker With Safety Rods, Instructional DVD, Two Premium Alumina Ceramic Stone Sets For Blade Repair And Professional-Grade Finishing – 204MF 🤩

1. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Ama_Rev_999 – December 2, 2011

   I have to add my own praises for this little baby. This is a great little unit. In all the years I’ve been buying products from Amazon this is the first review I felt was worth doing (sorry for the length of it in advance). I have Henckel and Wustof knives and noticed that some were in need of a sharpening. First off, like a lot of the folks who bought this, I’m no sharpening master, and someone had recommended a hand-held pull through sharpener from a well-known company. Salesman said I wouldn’t regret it. Wrong! I think it actually made the knife I tried it on worse. Dutifully followed the directions, first pull through slot one then slot two etc, but the knife couldn’t pass the paper cut test (and frankly the grinding sound it made as I pulled the knife through the slots made my hair stand on end so it might have been defective).Spoke to a friend of mine who is a kitchen knife nut. He has many blocks of knives that he collected over the years and still uses. He recommended whet stones and manual sharpening the old school way. So, spent waaaaay too much time on-line looking at youtube sharpening videos. Looked interesting but was not too keen on my chances of getting and keeping the right angles for all the knife sizes. There are tricks on the web like using a certain amount of pennies or quarters stacked up at the back of the knife to raise it up and get the right angel. But the examples I saw seemed to be mostly for bigger chef knives. What happens when the size of the knife changes? If you have to go from a wide Chef to utility, steak or really thin boning or paring knives, then how many pennies? And then I wondered, if I did manage to find the angle can I keep it throughout the sharpening? Maybe not. Might graduate to freehand stones at some point but right now just wanted to get my knives sharp without a lot of fuss.So, kept hunting around for various contraptions (Yes, I was obsessing by this point). Electrics and pull through were out after my last experience. Mechanical contraptions? Lots of them and some looked really good but could cost up to 150-250 dollars. The cheaper ones looked a little flimsy to me and read some bad reviews on construction quality. So came down to a few options like this one. Liked the look of this unit as it looked pretty well constructed and thought out. And seemed simple and fairly fool proof to use, just pull down along the rods. (Hint; This unit comes with a DVD training video as well as a booklet. The actual training video is uploaded on youtube by Spyderco in 4 parts. So you can view the training video before buying the unit and see how it works and what it does. Search for Spyderco Sharpmaker – Introduction uploaded by Spydercoknives. Strongly recommended).Ordered on Thursday, delivered on Monday using standard shipping (extra points for quick service). First up, a by now fairly dull Henckel utility kitchen knife. I had already watched the training video on-line a couple of times so went right to it. A few minutes later the knife sliced through paper like a razor. No fuss, no muss. No worrying about holding angles. Just keep the knife straight up and down, which was very straight forward. I’ve read comments that if you have to aggressively re-profile a badly damaged blade the medium stone on this may not be enough. That’s true of individual whet stones as well. If you have a badly damaged knife that you need to remove a fair amount of metal from you’ll need to buy a very course stone. A medium/fine, 1000/6000 combination Japanese water stone won’t do it either. Did I mention I spent way too much time researching this stuff? The whole stones area is a virtual sub-culture; Arkansas stones, Japanese stones, water stones, oil stones and ceramic stones (which is what the rods that come with this are)and so on.If you had standard stones for manual sharpening you’ll need 3 grades at least if you have a lot of badly neglected knives, coarse, medium and fine. You’d need something like a coarse diamond stone to re-profile the blade and this unit has optional diamond stones/rods that you can buy for just that, if needed. In fact, it also has optional ultra-fine stones that you can buy. That was one of the selling points, that this unit is expandable. That being said, the rods that come with this are probably all you’ll ever need. You probably won’t need those optional rods for most ordinary sharpening. Like I said I had a pretty dull utility knife that couldn’t cut through much anymore that was sharpened razor sharp with the rods provided with this unit. Also all my steak knives, none of which could cut through the paper, now all of them do. Even did an experiment with one of the steak knives. Used the old pull through again, following the directions and it just tore at the paper. Then used this unit. Now it cuts through no problems. You might have to go through the whole sharpening sequence a couple of times for very dull knives but once they’re sharpened just the occasional touchup should do. So I would suggest you start with what comes in the kit and get the optional diamond rods later if needed.Almost all Western style Kitchen knives come at 40-45 degree angles inclusive from edge to edge (20-22.5 on just the one side) on the bevel. Don’t have hunting or field knives so can’t comment on that, but note other reviewers comments that they may have fatter angles and need more effort to reshape to 40 degrees. It also sharpens a bunch of other things like scissors and tools, again I would suggest you watch the training video online, but I haven’t used it for any of that yet so can’t really comment. I really think this is an excellent product and think it does everything as advertised. Would buy it again in a heartbeat. I’m like the other reviewer actually looking around for more things to sharpen now.Only 2 last pieces of advice;Firstly, the video recommends that with the coarse stones you rub them together a little to break them in and get the factory fresh smooth surface off of them. They will do this by themselves when sharpening knives for a while but this gives them a head-start. It’s the coarse grit that does the sharpening. So if you don’t get the results you were expecting for the first knife or two that might be the problem. You need to break them in a little first.Secondly, it doesn’t take a lot of pressure. First couple of times I noticed my hand was starting to get tired. I was pressing way too hard. So if you notice your hand getting tired just ease up on the pressure.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Clod – April 27, 2012

   I love knives and have been stuck for years not knowing what to do with my dull knives. I am a bit of a perfectionist and find sharping knives freehand inconsistent and very difficult to master and learn until the sharpmaker came along. With so many positive reviews in Amazon, and Youtube videos showing how ‘fast’ it is to sharpen knives on a sharpmaker, I initially thought that this was the solution to all of my dull knife concerns. The answer is yes and no.I have been using the sharpmaker for six months now since the time of purchase and have already sharpened about 8 knives with good results. And would want to share my experience with newbies who are planning to purchase a sharpmaker.1. Is this the one stop solution to dull knives? NO.The sharpmaker can ‘QUICKLY’ sharpen ANY knife from dull to razor sharp if and only IF the blade has a 30 and/or 40 degree edge/bevel (15/15 degree and 20/20 degree on both sides of the blade). Any other blade angle/bevel from the above. It will literally take you forever to sharpen your blade with the basic set.With blades that do not match the 30/40 degree bevel set on the sharpmaker, a re-beveling/re-profiling must be done. This is a process of removing huge amounts of steel from the knife to correct the angle to 30/40 degrees. This task simply cannot be done by the medium stones (roughest stone in the basic sharpmaker set). Some users recommended purchasing the spyderco diamond triangle rods for re-profiling and will make life much easier. I did not go through this avenue as I personally find an additional USD 40.00+ is beyond my budget. Plus reviews indicating that the diamond stones will still take time doing re-profiling tasks I opted for other solutions.2. Whet Stones as a supplementI strongly recommend that whetstones are a must to supplement the sharpmaker. I use both the coarse and fine side of the whetstone to re-profile a knife, once this is achieved. The sharpmaker is used to finalize the edge to a utility edge, or to a razor sharp edge. Both utility and razor edge can easily cut through paper.So what about my concern with freehand consistency and how to deal with the mess of oil/water whetstones?With the whetstones, I still do not do free hand. My solution was to build a contraption/jig that will hold the whetstone at a 20 degree angle, similar to how the sharpmaker hold its medium and fine stones. This way I use my contraption to re-profile/re-bevel any knife. This saves me a lot of time.For comparison purposes, I have a kitchen knife that does not comply to the 40 degree bevel (about 56 degree bevel maybe). It took me 3 hours without any results on the sharpmaker. With whetstones, the job is done in 15 to 30 minutes. Then another 15 minutes on the sharpmaker to make a razor edge. I have also done the same technique on my cleaver and my cleaver is also razor sharp and takes about 30 mins to sharpen.How about the mess? I use the whetstones dry. There have been a lot of research of using water/oil whetstones dry with promising results. And from my experience this is true. I use the stones dry as how I sharpen with a sharpmaker. My theory is adding oil or water on whetstones is to give the knife edge a semi-mirror like finish. Using it dry will give the blade a dull finish showing the scratch/wear marks done by the whetstones. This is where the sharpmaker comes in. After the 40 degree edge has been established by the whetstones. The sharpmaker will easily sharpen and polish the knife to razor sharp and give it a mirror like finish.I made the jig by using wood, hinges, slotted flat bars, and screws and the whole thing cost me no more than USD 10.00For people who does not want the hassle of building jigs. Some users suggest the sand paper method by wrapping a coarse paper over the spyderco stones. Well this does work, but the sand paper wears down too fast and at times gets sliced by the knife during sharpening. So be prepared to re-wrap sand paper on the stone in each sharpening. I initially did this method but the hassle made me go for a customized solution. For people who do not want to go for a customized solution, you can try the diamond stones but I have not personally used them to comment.3. Is the Sharpmaker recommended?Yes indeed! You just have to understand the design limitations. As long as you have a 30 or 40 degree bevel. The sharpmaker can do the job FAST. But if you don’t have the correct bevel, it will take forever to sharpen a knife. With whetstone and sharpmaker combination I have already fixed kitchen knives with a ruler edge (literally flat edge as how you see the edge of a ruler) to razor sharp and pretty happy with it.4. Other tipsThe more I sharpen, the more I learn about knives and sharpening concept and technique.6 months ago. My thinking was this: I need the spyderco diamond stones and spyderco basic set to resharpen knives.Now. My thinking is: I need the spyderco basic set and spyderco ultrafine stones to make knives hair whittling sharp!From my research, most newbies will always prefer diamond stones. While enthusiasts and pro sharpener will recommend the ultrafine stones.Diamond stones and other coarse stones can easily be bought from any supplier. All these can repair damaged knives whether it be free hand or via contraptions/jigs. But what you pay for in a Spyderco system are the stones, stones that make knife edges beyond sharp. The spyderco medium, fine, and ultrafine stones are what you pay for.My next purchase will most probably be the spyderco ultrafine stones. My dilema is if the premium is worth it or not. As the fine stones already gives me a razor sharp edge and already pretty darn happy with it (i can already shave with my knives). And making hair whittling sharp knives are more of an obsession for me to hone my sharpening skills. As for my daily activities I don’t see an application where I need a hair whittling sharp knife.