Just recently received my ultimate hone kit from sharpeningsupplies.com. Kit comes with a 8x2 coarse/fine India stone, 8x2 soft/hard arkansas stone, 8x2 wood mounted leather strop, some norton mineral oil and a bar of chromium oxide. My first hones on my $10 gerber folder and my kabar went ok, I got them both mildly sharp. today I touched up my folder and now have it to the point that it's shaving hairs with some pulling and cutting up a magazine well. I can't wait to redo my kabar. its a really nice basic kit. Took a week to ship from the states and cost me $75 plus s&h. It's clear that with practice I can put a nice polished edge on my blades. One more step towards really knowing my knives. in other news I also got my first pieces of steel in, progress is slow going just using files but I am making headway. I tried also using the electric grinder at work but I found it just wasn't removing much metal. I was almost making more headway using the files :S is it possible a coarser grinding wheel would be beneficial for stock removal or are 1/3hp grinding wheels just that slow?
1/3 horse is pretty low for any heavy removal. I used to use a 1.5 horse 3450rpm 8" grinder after cutting my blanks out and It worked pretty good.
