Blackstone and Knife sharpening

[Brosenfeld86]

I sharpen a lot of knives and find that the regular stone is great for almost everything, but because of volume I would like to reduce my grinding time if possible. Is the Blackstone good for sharpening pocket knives, kitchen knives and such? Or should I stick with the original grindstone? Thanks look forward to hearing from you all! Thanks!

[pcoleviolin]

Hi. Maybe get the Blackstone only if you sharpen a lot of very hard steel, I'm not sure. You might as well use what you've got now and then see . The Blackstone might be harder to re-grade for different applications, and my guess is it may not be worth the effort if you are mostly doing softer steel.

[Brosenfeld86]

I sharpen quite a bit of VG-10 and S30-V, would the blackstone shorten the sharpening time on blades with that kind of steel? What about AUS-8? I basically just need a way to shorten my sharpening times with the Tormek. Go from say 2 minutes per knife to one minute per knife. Thanks!

[Herman Trivilino]

The SB grindstone saves time when sharpening HSS.  To my way of thinking a knife is not going to be that hard.  I've never used the SB, but I'd be concerned that you might not be able to get smooth finishes on the softer steels used for knives.

[Stickan]

You will get a really good finish on the SB-250 but since it made for harder materials it will clogg easier than the SB-250.
You will need to use the stonegrader to hold it activated, but in the same time, you need to use the SP-650 even on the SG-250 to find a good speed of sharpening.

[seamusknives]

I'm a new T-7 owner and went with the Blackstone from the "get-go". I first experimented first with some Stanley chisels and found out that my first mistake was not truing the wheel with the diamond dresser. In relation to the machine, the outboard part of the wheel had a larger diameter than the inboard so the new chisel edge wasn't turning out square. My first impression was that the wheel loaded up quickly and didn't remove metal very quicklly, at all. After dressing the wheel things went a lot better. Things squared up and ground much quicker. I can't help but wonder if I'll need to use the diamond dresser very often to get the reasonable sharpening speed I'm looking for. The stone grader glazes over quickly and doesn't seem anywhere as effective as the diamond. Silicon carbide dressing silicon carbide might be too even of a match. A friend I met online suggested using Lansky's  diamond hones instead of the stone grader. As I said, I'm just going through the learning curve at this time.

[Stickan]

If you move the stonegrader sideways and "tip" it and use some pressure it should not be any problems even on the SB-250.

[seamusknives]

I'll have to give that a try. Somehow, probably from watching clip's on U-Tube, I thought the truing stone was supposed to be held flat against the wheel and also moved left to right. I can see how the edge would be more aggressive.

[Stickan]

Thats works too, move it so you dont get edges in the stonegrader, thats enoying to have.