Sharpening experts...

Here you go.

You won’t find a better finishing stone period.

http://www.bestsharpeningstones.com/catalog/Black_Surgical_Stone.htm

It’s probably a very good stone for knives, but it is a slow stone.

http://straightrazorplace.com/honing/26735-surgical-black-arkansas-pointers-please.html

That’s where I bought my edge pro. They had the best price at the time. They probably still do.

Has anyone with a Lansky or Gatco stone system used it free hand on occasion?

In other words without the rods. Just having the knife attached to the holder and then use the stones (without rods attached) in a free-hand manner?

Now that I have several sharpening systems and have played with them a bit (still learning some of the finer points of course) I think that you can get a reasonably (paper-cutting) sharp edge using most any method.

I like a method that allows for a least 3 gradations of grit. If a knife comes from the factory with a hair-popping edge I can probably keep it that way free-hand as long as I take care of the knife.

The Lansky ceramic stick system (Crock Box) is probably the easiest to touch up a knife with but I don’t really use it. Probably because it’s too simple. :slight_smile:

I like free-hand methods and I’m liking the Lansky fixed-angle stone system as well. So far I’ve been able to take my “problem” knives and get them paper-cutting sharp with that system.

So far I haven’t been able to get problem knives to hair-popping sharp. That’s probably just an experience thing.

Many of my knives are that sharp (hair-popping) so I don’t want to dull them (potentially) practicing with the Lansky fixed-angle system so I’m mainly practicing on the problem ones.

For free-handing I’ll now be using the Arkansas Tri-Hone kit. It was only about $20 and the stones are longer than what I already had. Having three different grits with this kit is handy as well as is the U-shaped wooden holder box that it comes with. It keeps the stones from sliding around and places them at a more convenient height to work with as well.

Not that it really matters but this kit looks a lot better than a similar Smith Tri-Hone kit which is made of black plastic rather than the lighter colored wood of this kit.

I’ll probably be sharpening half of my knives with the Lansky 5 (6) stone fixed-angle system and the other half with the Arkansas Tri-Hone kit.

My goal would be to get all knives as sharp as my SRM F1-723.

In case this helps anyone else and others have given me this same advice it’s not always clear how long it can take…problem knives are generally just knives that need to be reprofiled.

It can take a while (maybe longer than you think) to reprofile a knife due to the amount of metal you need to remove using something that can do it but generally does it slowly. :slight_smile:

I got my SRM 702 (160G) hair-shaving sharp tonight after a lot of work with the ultra-coarse stone in the Lansky system. Although it’s obvious in one sense it’s always a matter of degree in another sense and that is if it’s not sharp enough the blade needs to be thinner.

My problem blades cut paper well but don’t feel as thin or sharp as my hair-shaving or hair-popping blades. This just means more time with the ultra-coarse stone is needed.

I’d say ultra-coarse and ultra-fine stones are the key to most of these problems…mainly ultra-coarse however.