Blog:Grust Reviews the Smith's 6" Diamond Tri-Hone Sharpening Stones (Birthday Review)

As you all know August is my birthday month and outside of gaming my secondary hobby is to cook and one important thing about cooking is keeping your knives sharp as dull knives are actually much more dangerous as they need more force and can slip from your grip and hurt you as a result (I remember losing chunks of flesh because of that but thankfully didn't need a hospital). So what I wanted for my birthday were some whetstones to do that. So my dad took me to Cabela's to get some for my birthday and we saw the Smiths Tri-Hone Sharpening Stones. After asking a friend of my dad's if these were indeed whetstones, he said they were and my dad bought it. As soon as I got home I ready the instructions and after a bit of practice, my knives are indeed sharper, cutting through paper with little force.

It's called Tri-Hone because it has 3 sharpening stones together on a triangular set, one is coarse diamond stone for quick edge settings for very dull blades (I started naturally with this since my knives have not been sharpened for decades aside from generic knife sharpeners), fine diamond for general purpose, and finally natural Arkansas Stone that hone and polish the knife edges and is likely the most common stone you'll use at least once a month to keep that sharp edge.

The set also contain some honing solution to lubricate the stones to help the knives slide against the stone and sharpen though food oils (go with cheap oil) and water will also work. It comes with instructions in various languages which I read so avoid any screw up i.e. damaging my knives or myself. It even comes with a sharpening guide to help you find the right angle for your knives to sharpen, though with practice and mastery, it'll become useless to you overtime but I keep it anyway just in case.

To put this set to the ultimate test, I took a very cheap knife I actually found while riding my bike years ago and took to sharpening it. My dad said because the metal is cheap it wouldn't work but I was able to sharpen it to the point where it sliced through paper with little effort and even sliced off bad spots from an apple. However to be fair, it'll dull pretty quickly as the metal is cheap but the fact I got it that sharp at all was awesome. It's also good for bushcrafters, outdoorsmen and survivalists as knives are necessary for their work like feathering wood, processing wood and gutting animals for meat and filleting fish and other food prep.

At Cabela's this cost like $30 to $40 but most knife sets cost much more than that, usually in the $100 to $200 range so keeping them sharp means this set pays for itself pretty quickly. And with 3 stones all together, you don't need to grab 3 stones individually. I say this is definitely a must buy for cooks and outdoorsmen.

If requested I'll also review what I can about the Firebox Stove I bought myself.

