Diamond Stone

This is the missing part of a Sharpmaker. The brown stones don't cut aggressively enough to remove nicks or change the profile angle of an edge. What would take an hour with the brown stones is a few minutes with these. I use the large DMT diamond plates for sharpening woodworking tools, so I'm used to not using heavy pressure. Some reviewers have said the diamonds fall off. Not for me with light pressure. Once you have used diamonds, you will quickly grow impatient with anything else for coarse sharpening. I use the diamonds, then side of brown stones, then side of white stones. I don't use the edges for anything except serrations if they fit, or the occasional hooked blade.It is true you can buy a nice diamond plate and a 4000 grit Shapton glass stone for about the same money as this plus the sharpmaker, but for ease of use I would recommend this for knives (not chisels or other woodworking tools of course). It's much easier to hold the knife vertically than to try to maintain an angle on a horizontal plate. Some people have built stands to hold their stones or plate at a similar 15 or 20 degree from vertical angle, if that appeals to you.If you are only going to sharpen short pocket knives, an alternative is to buy the lansky-style DMT aligner sharpening kit and get the optional ceramic stone for it if you want a polished edge.In addition to learning to feel for the burr and maintaining a constant angle, it's helpful to have a 10x triplet magnifier and look at the edge after each sharpening step. I see plenty of you tube videos where people will go through six waterstones in a ritual to get an edge, when a few more strokes on half that would remove any scratches with much less time. Look at videos from knife makers, not users - they don't waste time.

These diamond sharpeners are a really improvement for your existing Syperdco Sharpmaker kit.I have been a faithful user of this kit since 1992. This kit is worth the money: no oil, straightforward and simple to use.If your knife hasn’t been sharpened in a while, or you have the newer, super hard steels, this makes short work of putting an edge on your knife.What would take hours on the medium stones takes minutes on the diamonds.The simple caveat is don’t bear down while using them. A smooth, steady, even, light pressure is all it takes. No muscling is needed.The diamond rods won’t get your knife sharp alone: they will make it very easy to use the medium and fine stones to get a razor edge.Worth the money. They take all the work out of getting a great edge.

I have had the Spyderco ceramic sharpener kit for many years, about 20. They work fine for most of my pocket serrated and straight edge knifes , if not too dull. For fine knifes I prefer to use a larger flat Arkansas stone. I got these diamond rods mostly for my serrated kitchen knifes, some of which were ignored for a while. The ceramic rods that came with a kit just required too much time and patience to sharpen . My hand hurt afterwords. I was going to send them to Wusthof to sharpen, but now during CV19 crisis they are closed. So I looked around and found these, new to me diamond rods. I read the reviews and was a bit concerned about the fit. No issues the uncoated end fits just like the original ceramic rods. I used them with about the same touch as ceramic rods holding the knife lightly and stroking down gently as if I wanted to whittle a piece off. The grit on these felt about like a 400 sandpaper, much more aggressive than the ceramic rods which are used best on semi sharp knifes to hone them. No problems with diamonds coming loose, that would take gorilla strokes. It helped to restore old serrated knifes and then I honed them with the ceramic rods. Now I will use the ceramic rods more frequently on them, mostly the brown one. I also use the honing steel rod that came with the knife set after every use, to smooth the edge.

These arrived quickly and well-packaged, with each rod wrapped and placed in its own plastic tube. As mentioned in my review of the Sharpmaker system, these diamond rods are the missing link that bring it all together: the difference maker between a honing station and a true sharpening station to bring dull blades back to life. The key with these is to go nice and slow, applying very little pressure. Some other reviews mentioned a poor fit of these rods into the base of the station, but I did not have that problem. These rods were very clearly designed to fit onto the triangular holes on the base of the system and fit and function the same as the stock medium and fine rods.

These rods do a good job at getting out chips and reprofiling knife blades. The only reason I gave them 4 stars is that they are quite expensive, about the same cost at the Sharpmaker kit (on sale). There is an insert cautioning users to use gentle strokes so that they don't tear the diamonds off the surface.

These diamond sharpening rods work great to get the blade back to norml before using the finer sharpening rods….RBC

Great sharpening stones by Spyderco. Quick shipping. Excellent communication.

Stones worked as expected and arrived in a timely manner.