Arkansas stone for beginners?

I've been using an old stone, left by my great uncle, to sharpen my knives. The stone isn't all that great and has seen it's fair share of dull edges. I'm relatively new to sharpening, but I've heard good things about the Arkansas stones. Are those for experts only?

What about crock sticks or diamond stones?

I've had an EZ Lap Diamond stone since I was 17 years old. I'm 39 now. I can lay an edge on my Buck to shave with in less than 3 minutes with it and it's not near worn out yet.
I've got Lanskys, crock sticks, and other diamond stone systems. My EZ Lap is irreplaceable.

After googling, I see they have all kinds of EZ laps out there now. Mine is the fine stone on a wood paddle.

I like my EZ Lap too. Make sure its wet when ya use it.

To address your question: there are Arkansas Stones and there are Arkansas stones. A good one is a treasure. A bad one is a paperweight. And I dont know how to tell you the difference in print. I NEVER buy one that I cant hold in my hand to examine.

I have a soft brown stone, a washita, and a hard Arkansas stone that I would never part with. The trick to using a stone is holding the cutting edge at a consistent angle.

If the stone is dished (worn in the middle) or glazed from being used without oil, they don't work well. you can recondition a stone using a couple of sheets of coarse abrasive mesh used to sand drywall. Put the mesh on a dead flat surface (table saw top or a heavy piece of glass, etc.) and grind the stone flat by rubbing it on the mesh. This may take a while if the stone is badly dished! I have had to recondition my soft and washita stones twice in the 30 or so years I have had them.

My all time favorite stones are Spyderco's ceremic stones. For what they're are they're reasonably priced. I bought three; medium, fine, and ultra fine.

I bought them for my wood chisel and hand plane sharpening but I use them on everything, all my kitchen, butchering, pocket and hunting knive sharpening. I also use them to polish the burrs of gun sears and hammers.

I've used the old hardware store cheap stones that dished out in short order. I use them on axes, shovels, and lawnmower blades for dirty rough work.

The ceremic crock sticks are tough to beat too, I have a couple of them, one is integral to the sheath on my go to fillet knife, it puts a superb edge on that knife and I don't touch any other stone to that knife anymore, it's not worth it when the included ceremic rods to so well.

What do you guys think of these two options:

Lanksy Deluxe kit

or

Arkansas soft/hard combination stone and a ceramic honing rod

I would make my own leather strop as well; since we have horses at my place, leather is not hard to come by.

I use the rough side of an old leather belt. The buckle lets you attach it to a nail or hook. I used to take my knives to a professional and he had a sander with leather on it to get the prefect edge.

The lanksy thing is ok to rebuild an edge with. I dont think to highly of it for anything else. I use a belt (suede side) for a strop. Works fine

IMHO, what you use to sharpen is not as important as how you use it. The more you sharpen, the better you get at it and you can make almost anything work in a pinch. Of course. good tools make jobs easier, and personally I really like using Arkansas stones in all the various grades of fineness. I like the smell of the cedar boxes and the stones, and I have many antique translucent hard arkansas stones that I like to use to keep a polished and honed edge on my knives once I've gotten them to that stage by using coarser grade Arkansas stones. It's getting harder to find good Arkansas stones. They've kind of gone the way of the old family-owned hardware stores. And sometimes old ones need flattening, but once that's done, you can end up with a real gem of a sharpening instrument. For simple kitchen knife sharpening, I just generally use a medium grade of Arkansas stone to keep a quick useful edge for meat and fruit slicing etc. That's good enough. For my everyday carry pocket knife, I go the extra mile and keep it shaving sharp. For a quick touch up, and/or final polished honed edge, I have a one inch belt sander with a cloth belt on it charged with white polishing compound. 20 seconds or so per blade side on that gets you a scary sharp edge if the preliminary work has been done properly. For woodcarving, this is a necessary final step for me. Really helps the knife or carving chisel whistle through the wood.

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