Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker, Complete Knife Sharpening System with Medium Grit and Fine Ceramic Stones for Professional-Grade Finishing - Compact, Easy-to-Use Design - 204MF

I have tried lots of systems over the years and I have not been very successful. This was probably my fault, rather than the systems I was using. The Sharpmaker system overcomes my shortcomings and allows me to put extremely sharp edges on every knife I own.I spent the weekend sharpening 15-20 knives. I sharpened all kinds of knives; kitchen, bush, double sided, recurved, big, small, cheap and expensive. All of them ended up very sharp. If i can do it, so can you. As mentioned by several others, restoring a very dull or abused knife can be a long process. However, I have been very happy with the fact that this system actually WORKS!The instructions, both printed and DVD, are easy to follow and have helpful suggestions and tips to help you along. I thought I would never bother to use the brass 'safety rods', wrong! Once I saw how sharp my knives had become, I did not want to accidentally slip off a stone and slice into the bone. Use 'em. Determining the correct angle is the only part of this whole system that requires a bit of extra thought. I think it was a YouTube video where somebody recommended using a Sharpy to mark a small line on the cutting edges of your blade before you begin. This helps you to determine if you should use the 30 or the 40 degree option. After a stroke or two, the dark line will either begin to evenly disappear on your entire edge, or only begin to disappear from the upper edge of the cutting surface. That would indicate that you need to switch to the other angle option.Other than that, this system is completely intuitive. If you pay attention to holding your knife in a vertical position as you move down the stones, you really can't screw it up. I have not worked on any of the serrated knives that I own. Spyderco says these knives can be sharpened with this system/same stones. I can not wrap my head around running serrations down the critically smooth surface that I use to put a mirror finish on my smooth blades (no guts!). Perhaps in the future.The case/storage container is very well designed, everything fits securely. I believe this will help me not to loose any of the components and help keep the stones unbroken.I could have ordered a couple of nice Arkansas Whetstones for what I paid for the Sharpmaker; as a mater of fact, I already own a couple of really good ones. But I am too lazy or uncoordinated to learn how to use them properly, so they remain in a drawer, unused. The Sharpmaker gave me better than expected result from the very beginning . . . for me, it was worth the price. I recommend you seriously consider picking one up.

Since I got this knife sharpener, all of my knives are really sharp all the time (and some of my neighbor's, too)!One day I looked at my dull and chipped knives and decided enough's enough. I had been using a Wusthof pull-through knife sharpener for years. Even though it had both steel blades and ceramic slots, with angles for both western and Asian-style knives, it seemed that the more I used it, the worse the chips got. So I educated myself on knife sharpening. I got some Japanese style water stones and a diamond sharpening stone and learned to use them. It was fun and interesting and relaxing in a meditative sort of way. But it took quite a bit of time to set up and use and a lot of practice to really get good at it. Browsing the knife aficionado forums, I found that many experts prefer a guided sharpening tool. Among the favorites, and one of the less expensive ones, was the Spyderco Sharpmaker. So when Prime Day came around, I went for it.The tool is lightweight, compact, and safe to use with sharp knives. It is set up to put a sharp edge (with a 20 degree setting for western knives or 15 degrees for Asian knives) on practically any bladed tool, including scissors and most serrated knives. It's really easy to use, and just about any adult can have good results with it. I won't try putting into words how to use it -- just watch one of the many videos already out there. It doesn't take much room in the drawer, and it's ready to go in under a minute. You can use it to relatively quickly get a knife edge that will slice through paper, with no special expertise. If you want to go further, to get to a "scary sharp" level, a few more strokes on a leather strop or a very fine ceramic honing rod (not included) will get you there. There are also optional ultrafine Sharpmaker rods available that are said to do the same thing, but I haven't used them, so I can't say from personal experience.Generally speaking, if your knife is in decent shape to begin with, this tool will hone it to a sharp edge for you and keep it there. If your knife is badly chipped or needs to be reprofiled, you have some options. 1) You could work on it with the standard Sharpmaker rods, but it could take a very long time. 2) You could use bench sharpening stones to fix the edge and then maintain it with the Sharpmaker. 3) You could get it professionally sharpened and then maintain it with the Sharpmaker. If you only have a few knives, this could be a good option. 4) You could buy the optional diamond or cubic boron nitride Sharpmaker sharpening rods. These do a great job (I have used the diamond rods), but unfortunately they aren't cheap. Depending on prices (kit prices fluctuate a lot), they can cost nearly as much as the Sharpmaker kit itself.The Sharpmaker is a great tool for sharpening almost all knives. The basic rods may not be optimal for the hardest super steels / powder steels (though some say they work just fine) -- if you have that kind of steel, you know who you are. For the rest of us, I couldn't recommend it highly enough. I've read of people using these for 20 or 30 years. The rods can break if they're dropped on a hard surface, but they can be replaced for a reasonable price.There's only one problem with it. Sooner or later, you're going to run out of blades to sharpen!