Introduction

The Sharpmaker from Spyderco like the common crock sticks or "cat's eye" sharpeners has ceramic rods which insert into a syntetic base at preset angles. Sharpening a blade is as simple as pushing the knife straight down into the rod while drawing it along its length. Sissors can also be sharpened in the same manner. The "rods" can also be used freehand as files or attached to the base to make a large ceramic benchstone.

Advantages

After using the Sharpmaker extensively it is clear that it has many advantages for both a novice and experienced user :

Setup

• It takes less than a minute to assemble; unsnap the lid, remove the hones and brass protection rods and pop them into place.
• There are also no small parts to be adjusted or lost, and no moving parts to need replacement from wear.

Ease of use

• The Sharpmaker eliminates having to hold a constant angle as necessary for hand honing with a benchstone.
• The ceramic stones do not dish out like water or oil stones and thus do not need to be lapped nor require water or oil as a lubricant and clean easily with a scotchbrite pad and some water and detergent or mild abrasive.

Versatility

• It can handle even odd shaped knives (recurves, hawkbills and serrations) which would stump a lot of systems and benchstones
• It easily sharpens sizzors
• The rods are very flexible in use with flats and corners and the fishhook groove. They can be used freehand to sharpen very odd and intricate edged such as carrot peelers.
• The rods fit into slots on the base to function as a ceramic benchstone so they easily handle all methods of traditional sharpening and can even work with various jigs and systems like the Sharb.

Quality of edge

• Even when used by a near novice the Sharpmaker can readily produce edges which are sharper than the vast majority of production and custom knives. With just a little practice the edge should be able of push cutting fine paper and approaching hair popping sharpness which is the ability to shave hair above the skin.

Portability

• The Sharpmaker is very light and small enough to fit in a large coat pocket let alone a back pack or carry on bag.
• There can be some rattle though so hunters and the like would want to wrap the stones in tissue paper to muffle the sound, this would also make them less likely to break if the case was dropped.

Upgrades

• Optional diamond sleeves and ultrafine ceramic rods are available. The Diamond sleeves aid in changing the angle of the edge as well as repairing damaged edges, essentially in situation where you want to remove a lot of metal. They also provide a more aggressive edge for slicing various fibreous materials. The ultrafine ceramic rods are for those who demand the highest standards of razor sharpness.

Disadvantages

The Sharpmaker is however not without its faults :

Removing large amounts of metal

• This is the only significant disadvantge. If the knife edge has a thicker angle, or is heavily damaged either chipped, rusted or dented, the Sharpmaker can take a long time to set the edge, more than an hour even on a small knife with the medium stones.

Limited preset angles and grits

• Advanced users may want more versatility in both final grit finishes and sharpening angles, beginners would benefit from a more obtuse option (say 25 degrees) to be able to easier handle thicker edges tactical knives.

Durability

• Like all ceramic stones, the Sharpmaker rods are easily broken if dropped. Note all water and oil stones are very brittle as well, only Diamond plates can take this kind of impact without significant harm.

Tip rounding

• When finishing the stroke of the blade along the hone a common problem is to not rotate the blade, the edge should be kept perpendicular to the stone at all times. This means that near the end when the edge curves uptowards the tip you must rotate your hand down. If this isn't done it will lead to eventually rounding (blunting) of the tip.

Trouble shooting

As noted there are only a few problems with the Sharpmaker..

It is taking too long.

The most common problem is failing to set the edge. While Spydercos knives come with angles that match the Sharpmaker perfectly, other companies and various makers may have sharpened their knives are large angles. If you try to sharpen one of these on the Sharpmaker you will see almost no progress in a long time, especially if the steel is one of the new very hard and very wear resistance steels.

If the Sharpmaker seems to be making little progress, use a marker to color the edge and then make a pass on the stones. As the stones remove the mark when they contact the edge you can see where the hones are grinding. If the metal is being removed above the edge this means that the origional angle is too high. If the grind is close to the edge you can continue and check using the marker periodically to determine the progress.

If the sharpening is taking too long then the edge needs to be radically altered using another abrasive. One solution to this is to buy the diamond sleeves, they are much more abrasive than the medium rods and thus will allow faster sharpening. The same result can be achieved by simply wrapping the rods in very coarse sandpaper (get a metal cutting grade) or leaning a very coarse stone up against the rods.

However I would in general suggest that if the edge angle is really different, or the steel very difficult to sharpen then cut the angle down by hand. Use a very coarse benchstone or some sandpaper and just freehand sharpen the knife. Of course you might ask if you can do this why would you need the Sharpmaker in the first place. The answer is that all you are doing here is just shaping the edge. It can be done with little skill, you are just changing the edge angle from something like 30 degrees to 20.

Once you have thinned out the edge angle by hand now you return to the Sharpmaker to finish the sharpening. It should now only take a few minutes to achieve razor sharpness. You then use your newfound shaping skills when ever the edge is heavily damaged. Remove all visible dents and chips and rust before you use the Sharpmaker. You may be hesitant at first so practice on some old kitchen knives (you can even use files on them).

The edge was set right but doesn't get sharp.

If the edge was set right on the medium stones but refuses to get sharp it generally indicates that there is a burr. If the knife was recently heavily used the metal along the edge can be bent or fractured just enough so that you can't see it but it is preventing the edge from getting a nice crisp finish. The solution in this case is to go back to the medium stones and remove the weakened metal. You can remove the guesswork if you have a way to check the edge under magnification, even a simply 20x magnifier ($10) will do. The edge should show an even scratch pattern (compare it with an edge which sharpens well to see the difference).

There is one other case which is fairly rare. If you are pressing too hard or too light the edge will not form well. If you are pressing too heavy the edge might simply get pushed over, if you are not pushing hard enough then it might not even be getting honed. In general this isn't a problem as most steel will sharpen under similar pressure and there is a lot of flexibility in the responce. the main problem blades are very soft cheap blades which require light pressure to keep them from bending and very hard and very high alloy blades blades which need more pressure to get them to hone. For the very soft blades it is often better to just work on the flats because the corners cause too much pressure.