Spyderco - BenchStone Sharpening Stone with Polymer Case - Medium Grit - 302M

I would say this stone is actually a great stone to start with for anyone, even for beginners. It is a bit pricier up front, but you will save money by skipping lesser stones (and the stuff to maintain those stones) and just getting this one. The big benefit of a ceramic stone even for a beginner is that it doesn't dish anywhere as soon as a traditional water stone (or effectively at all for most people's use patterns), and as others have mentioned, this stone doesn't need water or oil (although the windex tip actually does improve its cutting efficiency a lot and reduces how much effort you have to put into cleaning it. I say this stone is good for beginners too because it gives you excellent feedback, and you can feel and hear if you're off your angle, even by a little bit. This is a great way to train in muscle memory because you can correct in real time. This stone is also great for a wide range of things that need sharpening, and I've even finished a hatchet blade to hair shaving sharp on this stone, no problem. I will say it is worth it to get a coarse diamond stone to pair with this stone if you have a VERY full knife or are reprofiling often. Otherwise you'll spend a lot of time on this stone (which isn't always a bad thing). I will also say this stone handles very high-end steels just fine, if you are good at maintaining an angle well. I have been able to sharpen S30v no problem at all on it, and to my surprise was able to sharpen K390 and S110v (supersteels) to hair-shaving sharp just fine without a problem, and a marginal increase in time spent. I haven't dulled a maxamet blade enough to try on this stone. I even examined the blades under a microscope and found no chips/microchips in the edge at all. If you're concerned about the loading and cleaning of the stone, don't be. The windex trick is great, but even when I'm lazy I don't do that and just sharpen dry. I tend to clean after every 2-3 knives (dry) but you can probably get to 4 or 5 before it's affecting your sharpening. The easiest and best way to clean the stone is to use Barkeeper's Friend or Comet powder cleaner in a paste. You can use an old toothbrush or a sponge or brillo pad to just scrub a paste of the cleaner on the stone for about 5-10 minutes and it comes out very clean. I suspect the BKF cleaner's oxalic acid is actually dissolving the very fine metal shavings embedded in the stone, leaving behind just the stone. As some have stated, this stone doesn't always arrive perfectly flat (I have 2). One of mine the stone is overall curved longitudinally (think slight banana-like curve) but not enough to notice by eye, only enough to notice by pressing a level up to it. If you are planning on sharpening woodworking tools, I would not use this stone. Otherwise this stone is great for general use knives. I think the people the very minimal curve matters for are already people who have the sharpening skills or needs that justify better or other stones. I will advocate for pairing a leather strop with this stone. An inexpensive Sharpal strop is a good option, and the green (chromium oxide) compound works just fine. Even on the super steels. I have the fine and ultrafine stones, and I use those on nice kitchen knives when sharpening for friends/family for a shinier edge, but for the most part they wouldn't really notice the difference if I didn't. I actually don't use the F or UF stones on my pocket knives, as I find it makes it a little harder to cut through cardboard in the end. Moreover with stropping with the medium stone, I can easily get hair-whittling sharp (usually on Vg10, S30V, and S45VN steel). Finally, I'll say that it's easiest to keep a knife sharp rather than sharpening from dull. This stone is perfect for doing that. After breaking down a lot of boxes, I do 15 passes on each side, then alternate sides for 10-15 passes each side, and get back to hair shaving sharp again. Takes 5 minutes. This stone is easily my most-used and best value in my entire sharpening toolkit. I recommend this to anyone getting started or moving from the beginner into the novice phase of sharpening.

Best stone for getting your knives into shape. It lasts forever and I even bought one for my grandpa.

These Spyderco stones are great. I have all three, medium, fine, and ultra fine. I would say they are best for experienced sharpeners though. None of them are particularly aggressive so you can get frustrated trying to bring back a very dull knife. You will want to add something more aggressive to your kit. Do your homework, don't just randomly buy these because you want a 'good' sharpener and don't know where to start. Depending on the steel and the degree of LIGHT pressure that you use, they could load up quickly and stop cutting efficiently. I clean mine with a scouring powder before each use. You can read for weeks on sharpening and get hundreds of opinions on what is 'best'. My main kit includes four dmt diamond stones, x course, course, fine, and x fine. Between those and the Spydercos, I am covered for everything I might need. The Spyderco medium is said to be similar to the dmt x fine. I find it slightly more fine. Maybe they cut similarly, but the Spyderco leaves me with a smoother edge. Some feel the dmt xfine and Spyderco brown are redundant, I don't. Some find the fine and medium too similar, I don't, but I understand their thoughts and experiences. Some prefer the ultra fine over the fine. I only use the ultra for special jobs, others use it routinely. Do your homework, these are good stones, but you need to understand where they fit in a more complete sharpening routine and there are different paths to a great edge.

It might be hard to believe, but given enough time and patience, you could reprofile a knife in this. This is a great intermediary stone (and maybe even finishing if you have a good enough strop and compound). Perfect for kitchen knives, no mess, easy to clean, I don’t have enough good things to say about this quality product. I’m considering buying the next tier up from this for that “extra” sharp polished edged. But these are incredibly expensive putting things into perspective. Also, be very careful with these. Mine didn’t have the “flatness”/“bowing” issues reported in other comments, but it is incredibly fragile. You drop this thing and you’re not going to have a good day. It’s brittle. Nonetheless, this is a very good product and does its job exceedingly brilliantly.

Good stone. It's not flat enough for chisel backs, at least not the whole back. For carving tools though it works very well. Wood carving tools put a lot of pressure in a small area when sharpening so oilstones, Arkansas, Diamond or ceramic are the best choices. Water stones are too soft for carving tools and groove fast. The ceramic is faster than Arkansas and finder than diamond. I hot rodded mine by taking a 400 grit atoma to the one side. So this became a double sided stone. The original side is medium and the side I took the Atoma to cuts finer. Probably as fine as the fine Spyderco. I'm basing this on the white Spyderco slip stone I own which is rated at fine. My medium benchstone lapped with the atoma cuts as fine. If you go the lapping route to flatten be advised it will take a long time and to make sure you are flushing the diamond stone the whole time under running water. Otherwise the swarf/grindings/tailings of the ceramic stone will eat away the nickel the diamonds are embedded in and suddenly your fancy schamncy diamond hone is a piece of steel. Minus one star for flatness. It is 100% flat enough for knife sharpening, chisel sharpening, carving tool sharpeing, but would not be good for initial flattening of chisel backs. I'll take it over water stones any day.

I own the Spyderco Medium Bench Stone, the Spyderco Fine Bench Stone, & the Spyderco Ultra-Fine Bench Stone. This will be my fourth or fifth edit, and hopefully, last edit...after owning all three several years. Pros: 1) Each Will last forever (I've never wavered on this.) 2) Not as messy as water or oil stones 3) Nice results once I broke them in and started using the edges of the Medium to speed things up. In this way, the Medium is like two stones in one. Using the edges allows a much higher force per area [I got the idea from a Spyderco video on the use of the Spyderco sharpmaker.] It sets the bevel quickly...then I can use the flat sides, finer stones...and a strop. Probably I was never patient enough using only the flat sides. Speaking of "flat" I should say that I was FAR TOO concerned with making the stones perfectly flat. I attacked them with diamond stones and then rubbed the ceramic stones against one another for hours--I did make them flat but I also made the Medium and Fine smoother and SLOWER. If I had it to do over I would break them in with an AXE or a super dull knife. A piece of good news here is that on the edges I achieve such a force per area during knife sharpening that I do expose new material and those surfaces are nice and rough (remember I only use edges on the "Medium" stone. Cons: If you want perfectly flat you will be disappointed: My Medium was bowed quite a bit. The Fine, Was clearly not flat (bowed), and the edges of mine were higher than the center. I see no reason to own the Fine AND UF--because they are (grit wise) too close--I'd say Choose One. Some people complain about the tool marks on the UF. My stone did display such marks when used--like when one takes a notepad and goes over the entirety of the top sheet w/ a pencil and indentations become apparent from writing that was done on previous top sheets. Those marks didn't bother me; It also came w/ something like a boulder on a runway--but I've now been over all my ceramic stones w/ a diamond stone so these features no longer exist...and in the case of the UF I will never complain that I made it too smooth--that's a complaint I only have with regard to the Medium Stone.

This stone is perfectly flat and very high quality. The only thing to note is that this is not exactly a medium stone but more of a medium fine so if you need to cut metal quickly I would recommend starting on a more corse stone then moving onto this one but if your blade is not completely dull this stone is really all you need for a good working edge.

I always use a bench stone to sharpen my knives. Not on purpose--in fact I have tried every new fangled doohicky out there, lansky, the spyderco sharp mate, diamond impregnated xyz, and I always go back to my norton bench stone. Always, like everytime. Why? Because a 2x8" flat stone has so much more surface area than all those new fangled creations that you can set a completely dull/ruined edge in a matter of a minute or two and sharpen a dulled but workable edge to razor sharp in about 20 seconds. Both my lansky and spyderco sharpmaker take 5-10x longer and require more hand effort. I never, ever use them and have been meaning to give them away. Anyway, I said I always went back to my norton bench stone. NOT ANYMORE! Holy !**@&&# this thing is amazing. I used it once and literally just went and put my faithful norton stone away in the garage. This spyderco stone is 10x easier to clean, it cuts and takes metal like crazy, you lube it with soapy dishwater instead of oil (ie this thing actually cleans your countertop while you use it, instead of spreading cutting oil everywhere). How you use it--It basically sits in the plastic metal box it comes in, you splash some soapy water over the stone and into the plastic box, sharpen sharpen until the stone stops cutting, then BAM flip the stone (now lubed by the bath of soapy water its been sitting in) and finish your edge. This stone took a ruined 4" 154cm blade pocketknife I'd been cutting WIRE and cardboard with and digging with (roots etc in garden) and made it razor sharp without having the clean the stone until I was done (I did have to flip the stone and that amount of sharpening clogged both sides). Basically the first stroke you take with this will feel amazing--it cuts very aggressively but leaves an unusually smooth surface for how aggressively it cuts. For me this is all I need for work, hunting, and cooking knives. Leaves an edge which will cut arm hair easily with moderate pressure, though not POP the hair. To pop hair you'll need the finer stone. But for 99% of knives you'll never need an edge that fine. Did I mention I love this thing? It's a game changer.