Smith’s TRI6 Arkansas Tri-Hone Stone Sharpening System Grey 6” Fine, Medium, ...

I think the Smith's 6" Tri-Hone kit is great. I am a sharpening novice and didn't want to spend much on my first attempt at using sharpening stones.I found this and decided the price was right. I am very happy with my purchase. It got my stainless steel kitchen knives sharper than new! I decided not to use the included honing oil because it is not NSF. I am using water instead Mineral oil was an option, but oil is messy. I clean the stones with Dawn detergent and a toothbrush. I am definitely novice but I have learned a lot. Knife sharpening is not as challenging as it once seemed. and remember it gets easier with practice. 1. Technique - There are a ton of videos from experts on YouTube. Watch them and learn. 2. Consistency is everything - Keeping consistent angle is more important than the perfect angle you sharpen. 3. Keep it even - Pressure and number of strokes should be the same for each side. Be consistent as you draw the blade across the stone. The bevel should be the same thickness from heel to point. 4. Patience - Don't change from coarse to medium (or fine) until the Knife is sharp. A light touch is better. Go back to a courser grit if you need to. 5. Feel the wire - The wire is a burr that develops along the edge. As the knife gets sharp, you'll be able to feel the wire by running a finger across the edge (NOT ALONG the edge). Sharpening your knife reduces the width of the cutting edge thinner than aluminum foil. As you sharpen on one side, The super thin edge is pushed (ie folded) over to the opposite side. You can think about moving to a finer grit stone when you feel the wire. 6. Keep the cutting edge facing away from your hand when you wipe off the knife. The knife may be sharper than you think. A sharp knife will cut right through a towel and your skin before you feel it. 7. Don't let your knife get too dull once it is sharp. Once you get a kitchen knife sharp, you may only need the medium and fine stone. 8. Use a honing steel to align the cutting edge if the knife gets a little dull. 5 Stars.

This is where it all starts. If you’re a knife enthusiast or for any other reason have been curious to try your hand at sharpening your own blades, this is the best tool with which to begin. And, like the best of tools, once you’ve moved pat the beginner’s stage, it will continue to serve you for many years. After 7 years’ use and all the time whetting my skills with it, I’ll say it is best and only tool you absolutely need for sharp, and thereby safe, blades. Course: Rarely used, but have set some new edges with it on cheap knoves that were little more than punched-out sheet metal. Medium: The starting point for seriously dull knives. Can take some serious metal off when needed. Fine: At 1k - 1.2k grit, it’s as fine as many of the more course water stones. If you’re looking for a functional blades tool outside the kitchen or very fine woodworking, this is probably as far as you need to go. I personally add a few passes on my 3k/8k water stone to get that elusive razor-edge, but the Tri-Hone is all you need, beginning to end, to shape a dull tool into a highly functional one. A few tips: - Use an angle guide starting out. No shame. Consistency in the angle is the hardest and most important thing to master in good knife-sharpening. - Use the whole stone. Whichever stone you use, try to use all part of it equally (back-to-front and side-to-side), or else you’ll end up with a concave middle that will prevent you from sharpening. - I use Rem Oil as a lubricant for the stones, for the moving parts of my knives, and for the blades themselves. Has worked well for a decade. I use the same to sharpen kitchen knives, but use mineral oil to coat the blades after a thorough cleaning (food safe and prevents rust). All it all, this is your desert-island sharpener. I use it weekly after a decade, and it predictably produces the results I need. And for the price (compare it to combo water stones), it’s a no-brainer. Tl;dr: If you want a tool onwhich you can learn to sharpen blades that will continue to serve you long after you’ve mastered the basics, this is it.

Good product, you get the three sharpening stones you usually need for most knives, chisels, plane blades that you need all in one package. Stones on one I got were of good quality and not cracked, and seem perfectly flat. It gives great results on everything I have tried it on up to a scythe and machete. I do use a Lansky system Lansky Universal Sharpening System for most kitchen knives, pocket & belt knives and multi-tool blades. However for large kitchen knives such as 12"+ carving knife or 12" chef's knife I will probably go back to this unit as it is faster, not quite same edge and you have to pay more attention to what you are doing, but a lot faster for large blades. DO use OIL on Arkansas stones, they are called Arkansas OIL stones for a reason. Also, use mineral oil or honing oil on the course synthetic stone regularly and wipe it off, this lifts out grit and particles of blades that have been sharpened and restores stone to good abrasive finish and speeds your work. Just don't put oil back on before sharpening with this stone. putting bit of EXCESS oil on the Arkansas stones working it around with your finger for a few seconds and wiping off does same thing with them. Just need to re-oil them after wiping. For cleaning and wiping use most any decent mineral oil, it does not have to be "honing" oil, good price for mineral oil is Great Lakes Wholesale 16Oz Mineral Oil 60061 Health Products 16 oz for about the price (or less) of 4 oz of honing oil. Farmers, cabinet makers and professional sharpeners have used mineral oil for YEARS to sharpen their tools on Arkansas stones even. NOW FOR THE DOWN SIDE! The base is fairly cheap plastic, it will NOT take any significant abuse. It appears it will easily crack so do not drop or drop anything heavy like a hammer on it. Therefore NOT good for a tool box. Use it at home, in your workshop or garage, don't bounce it around.

At the price range you can get this sharpener, it is a very good buy. Good water stones will cost you $40 a piece but are much larger so easier to move your blade across. This is under $30 for 3 stones and a stand but the stones are about 7/8" smaller in width and 2" smaller in length than a traditional Japanese water stone. If you are used to using larger stones, you may have a hard time adjusting to the size of these stones. If you are a beginner or someone used to more casual sharpening with a rod or a smaller pocket stone, this is a nice step up and perhaps a good introduction to stones especially if you own a few smaller blades or pocket knives. If you haven't used a sharpening stone before, it does take some practice before getting used to. The blade guide that comes with it can be helpful for some blades but not all. If you aren't sure of the edge angle on your blade, it's best to check with the manufacturer of your knife for recommendations on proper sharpening and edge angle. Most of my knives are a Scandi grind which has a very high bevel angle and sharpening them on these stones is super easy without the edge guide. Most importantly I think is using the right stone for the current condition of your knife. Most times you are NOT going to be using the coarse grit stone unless your knife is super dull (usually from not being maintained properly). I often start with the medium grit stone which removes minimal metal from the blade. The fine stone is for taking it that last little bit or maybe just for touching up a bit before doing some more serious work with your knife. You could then finish off with a leather strop block if you wanted but most of the time that is overkill in my opinion. Who really needs to split hairs anyway? Overall, I think this is an excellent sharpening system for someone that is a more casual knife user (camper, hunter, hiker, bushcrafter) that likes maintaining there own blades at home. A more serious user, or perhaps collector, of knives will want a more serious sharpening system like Japanese water stones or a precision diamond/ceramic set-up.

I always wondered which knife sharpener is the best one to get. So I went ahead and setup a test. I just bought a new set of the following sharpeners from Amazon. This is my test: NEW SHARPENERS: Smith's TRI-Hone Sharpening stones($23) Smith's Adjustable Pull Thru Knife sharpener($26) Wusthof 9 inch Diamond Steels (1 Course and 1 Fine Rods. $60 x 2 = $120) Accusharp($10) Wusthof Whetstone fine and super fine(4451 and 4452)($90 x 2 =$180) KNIVES: I have 4 Chicago Cutlery Chef's knives that were collecting dust for years and stopped using them because they were all very dull and nicked. I didn't even bother sharpening them and I just kept buying a new one when the previous one gets too dull to cut. For the test, I tried my best to get the sharpest edge possible within a 10 minute window. Anything more than 10 minutes for me is just too much time. TEST RESULTS: 1. Fastest in getting a sharp edge - Accusharp and Smith's Adjustable Pull thru 2. Sharpest edge - Wusthof Diamond Steel 3. Simplest to use - Accusharp and Smith's Adjustable Pull thru 4. Smoothest in slicing Bond Paper - Wusthof Diamond Steel 5. Most expensive - Wusthof Whetstones 6. Least expensive - Accusharp ANALYSIS: It seemed like the Smith's and the Wusthof Whetstones needed a bit more time than I allocated. So, I proceeded to continue sharpening until I got it as sharp as I could. The Wusthof Whetstone would have won in the sharpest edge and smoothest slicing thru bond paper after about an hour of careful sharpening. The learning curve is considerably longer than the other 3 options. The Smith's TRI-Hone would have been one step below or tied with the Wusthof Diamond Steel in Sharpest edge and slicing, except it took about 15 minutes. It helps that the stones have an angle guide that has 23 degrees. The Accusharp only took 10 seconds to sharpen the knife to a point where it can slice paper and a tomato. I would say it gets you to a usable sharpness. This has no learning curve. Ridiculously easy. The Wusthof Diamond Steels takes about 3 minutes to sharpen with the Course rod then the Fine. But I can clearly tell when I slice through paper that is a smoother edge than the Accusharp. The Smith's Adjustable Pull Thru Knife Sharpener has a selector that you can actually dial in the exact blade angle you want. It is very easy to use and has more features than the Accusharp. I found that you can use this to set the blade angle then use the Wusthof Diamond steel FINE Rod to clean up the edge and give it a smooth sharp edge. Conclusion: My Smith's TRI-Hone is the simplest stone to learn among Stone sharpeners and gives you a good manually created edge. If you are new to sharpening but want to take it a step further than a quick sharpen from Accusharp or the Smith's Pull thru sharpener, you won't go wrong using this. Instructions are clear and gives you performance like the WUSTHOF Diamond Steels for a fraction of the price. It just takes a little more time than the Diamond Steels. Bottom line is you can be like me and buy all of these sharpeners and depending on how much time you can spare, you can use whichever will do the job in the time allocated. So if you have an hour to spare and you find it soothing, get the Wusthof Whetstones. If you are in a rush, a few swipes of the Accusharp and you are up and running. The best middle ground for me are the Wusthof Diamond Steel rods. Easy to use, quick and extremely sharp, but expensive. Mix and match the different sharpening tools and you will find a setup that is perfect for you. I hope this test helped you.

I'm a chef and needed a sharpening stone for my home knives. After doing the research I purchased the TRI-6 (six means the length of the stones) three-stone sharpening system with plastic base, medium Arkansas stone (600 grit), fine Arkansas stone (1,000 grit), coarse synthetic stone, and bottle of premium honing solution were all excellent in quality. I want to point out that some reviewer's feel that the Tri-6 is too short for longer knives, if you place the stone in an vertical position towards 12 o'clock, and you're right handed, and place the heel of the knife facing away from you on the left at the right angle at the six o'clock position, and with your wrist you flick the knife away from you, you can control its length so that it fits the stone. As far as pressure, you can use up to 5 lbs. or so depending on the condition of the blade. There are many times that I use very little pressure much less than 5 lbs. it depends on the blades condition. You do not have to place your left hand on the blade for general maintenance, but you can if you need to (wear safety gloves.) If you use a steel it should be longer than your knife blade when you hold the steel secured on a towel in an upright position, and you use a downward wrist flick motion with the right pressure for the blade condition. If not you will hit the surface the steel is pointing on, or yourself! In the finest knife shop in New York City for Japanese knives (Korin) they use stones that are all shorter than the blade with no problem, but they use them correctly. Do not just watch someone on the internet and copy them. Use caution when sharpening your knives or let a professional do it for you. For those of you who have not use a stone at home the fine 1,000 grit is like a Diamond Steel, (not like the steel in your home kitchen set that is only around a rockwell scale 55 on average, and will not sharpen your knives only straighten them) either the Tri-6 or a Diamond, or Ceramic steel will sharpen your home knifes, and then you can use your home set steel to feather them as you use them. Then, you can sharpen your knives with the Tri-6 once or twice a week depending on how much you use them. If you don't use them you don't sharpen them. I also use sushi grade professional knives and I can't use the Tri-6 because my knives are (63 rockwell) which needs (whetstones) and/or a ceramic steel as well. The Tri-6 is excellent for the home chef or hobbyist, but don't forget the (safety gloves) and take your time. A great product at a great price.

I truly enjoy using this tri-stone to sharpen my pocket knives. I can also sharpen my large kitchen knives with the 6" tri-stone i thought at 1st the plastic base would be a disadvantage but the plastic makes it lighter and I just hold the stones in my hand to sharpen my pocket knives it is great to work with very happy with this product. Only down side is that the stones are permanently attached to the plastic triangle stones holder. But for $30 bucks just get a new set in 5-10yrs.

Bottom line up front: You get what you pay for. For the rest of the review, here we go... I bought this as a knife sharpening system to use while deployed. I used to have a mechanic that had a fetish about sharpening knives, always had about a dozen on him, and demanded to check the sharpness of any on your person. Hand your knife over to himin the evening, the next morning it came back razor sharp. He wouldn't even charge, he was just that maniacal about it. Unfortunately, he and I aren't working together anymore, and my knives have lost their edge. So, I'm back to sharpening my own blades. I bought this as it was inexpensive, had three stones, and if I had to leave it behind somewhere I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. So, it is inexpensive and it does have three stones. However, the Coarse stone is about the texture of a cinder block. Don't get me wrong, you can sharpen a knife on a cinder block (or the bottom of a coffee cup, or the edge of a pane of glass), there's videos on the internet showing it. However, unless you are radically changing the angle of the blade, or putting the first grind on a machete you've fashioned out of an old leaf spring, I don't find it terribly useful. So it has three stones, but only two are of much use, in my humble opinion. The other two are ok, with only the fine actually being an actual natural Arkansas stone. The Medium and Coarse are synthetic. Not a bad purchase, just not terribly excited about it, either.

Width of the stone is less than 2-inch, Fine stone is not fine, don't know what kind of stone?

I bought this knife sharpening set to use when I travel. I have the Wicked Edge sharpening system which is outstanding in my view. I decided I dont want to cart that around when travelling. The Smiths Tri Hone is easier to travel with. I hate using blunt knives and I get annoyed if I am at someones place and their knives are blunt. Not that this happens that much. Probably only at 98% of peoples places I visit. In use the Tri Hone does a good job. Going through the grits you can put a very good edge on a knife. For the price they are excellent value. It doesn’t replace my Wicked Edge but complements it nicely.

Afila muy bien los cuchillos, muy completo.

そもそもの仕様なのか荒砥と中砥は油を吸い過ぎてほぼ乾いた状態で研ぐことになる、仕上げの白い面まで研ぐと切れ味は必要充分になるが同じオイルストーンなら国内メーカーの方が研ぎやすい

Good... But not the best