Wicked Edge or EdgePro??

[Archimedes]

One more thing. I have an edge pro and it is OK. I feel the KO WS is better. Never tried a Wicked edge.

[Ankerson]

What is the lowest edge angle you can set on each?

You can get pretty low with the EP, under 10 DPS actual edge angle if need be.

I don't go below 10 DPS though.

[Evil D]

I'm pretty sure the EP Apex goes down to like 9 degrees and maybe the Pro goes a little lower, but you can also lay cardboard or something along those lines on the table under the knife and raise the edge up which will lower the angle even further. You can basically get it down to where you can zero grind most FFG blades if you wanted to.

[kbuzbee]

What is the lowest edge angle you can set on each?

With WEPS it depends on the depth of the blade. A "skinny" blade like my paring knife will only go down to 15 degrees per side, where as my chefs knife will go down to 10 degrees per side.

There is also a low angle adapter that will decrease those angles to around 9 and 5 degrees respectively.

The issue with WEPS is the shoulders of the clamp being hit by the stones. This only occures in the area being clamped so on a lot of knives you can "cheat". Like my Balance. I clamp it on the tang so the entire cutting edge lays beyond the clamp, effectively removing any angle restrictions.

With a WEPS, you'll probably want an angle cube to make sure the two sides are equal and set where you want them. The clamp jaw only moves on one side so the thicker your knife is, the more different your two angles will be if you just use the guide scale. And since blade depth changes the angle, those markings are only relative anyway.

As to the above comment on clamping FFG blades, wrapping a 1" square of something like chamois around the spine at the clamp pretty much solves it. The issue was these blades could be tipped one direction or the other leaving the blade non-vertical. The chamois allows the blade to be clamped "true".

Hope this helps,

Ken

[kbuzbee]

You can basically get it down to where you can zero grind most FFG blades if you wanted to.

That would be nice. I do wish the WEPS could do that, but that would be a LONG reprofile session! :)

Ken

[Surfingringo]

What is the lowest edge angle you can set on each?

You can get pretty low with the EP, under 10 DPS actual edge angle if need be.

I don't go below 10 DPS though.

I'm not looking to do anything extreme, but I like to microbevel with the sharpmaker. I have a couple of steels that I would like to reprofile to around 25 inclusive and microbevel at 30 just to see how they perform.

[Evil D]

You can basically get it down to where you can zero grind most FFG blades if you wanted to.

That would be nice. I do wish the WEPS could do that, but that would be a LONG reprofile session! :)

Ken

Yeah man no kidding. A crazy though is if you were only a couple degrees higher than the blade grind your bevel would end up looking like a saber grind or a high flat grind.

[Evil D]

How fast do they wear?

What about the 320, how is the finish?

I looked at my 16k and 220 again laying side by side and the wear difference is a lot easier to see. It's almost 1/16. Still not bad for 2+ years of use. I killed the lowest grit stock EP stone (forget what grit it was) just on reprofiling one knife.

[Ankerson]

How fast do they wear?

What about the 320, how is the finish?

I looked at my 16k and 220 again laying side by side and the wear difference is a lot easier to see. It's almost 1/16. Still not bad for 2+ years of use. I killed the lowest grit stock EP stone (forget what grit it was) just on reprofiling one knife.

Figured I would use the Shaptons for my personal knives and continue to use the Mold Masters for testing. :)

[RanCoWeAla]

You have to sharpen both edges at the same time with same angle and exact same number of strokes. The you tube video I watched on the edge pro left me in shock. The guy just about wore out one side of what looked like a Cold Steel Lawman then flipped it over and used totally different strokes with his off side hand and I seriously doubt he was counting his strokes. A friend of mine has the Wicked Edge And as I said before if you can stand the price this is the worlds best sharpener. I'm almost 64 years old and have been sharpening knives at least 55 years and sharpeners are one of my hobbies also just like knives are

[Evil D]

You have to sharpen both edges at the same time with same angle and exact same number of strokes. The you tube video I watched on the edge pro left me in shock. The guy just about wore out one side of what looked like a Cold Steel Lawman then flipped it over and used totally different strokes with his off side hand and I seriously doubt he was counting his strokes. A friend of mine has the Wicked Edge And as I said before if you can stand the price this is the worlds best sharpener. I'm almost 64 years old and have been sharpening knives at least 55 years and sharpeners are one of my hobbies also just like knives are

Hmm...I think this is greatly exaggerated. You either reach the apex or you don't, and if one side takes more strokes than the other, that means your edge is off center or something. I don't count strokes and don't believe I ever have, and my edges get as sharp as anything I've ever felt.

Now, is it BAD to count strokes? Of course not. It's probably a good habit to have, but there's nothing between either of these sharpeners, or a Lansky, or even free hand, that mandates counting strokes per side. You make strokes until you reach the apex.

[Ankerson]

I don't count either, I go by feel personally.

Educated thumb. :D

And by sight as far as keeping the bevels even.

[JD Spydo]

Edge Pro. Just say no to clamp based sharpeners.

OK EVIL I'm going to take your word for it>> because I am very close to pulling the trigger on one of those great sharpening systems but I still have some concerns and a few questions.

The reason I'm going to try to pick your brain on the subject is because I have a lot of the same sharpening concerns that you and I have talked about a couple of times and I'm sure you share most of them that I'm concerned about.

I want to know what both units have to offer for sharpening "Recurves, Reverse S, PE Hawkbills, and most serration patterns? If I'm going to sink four digits into a sharpening system and then on top of that have to buy some additional exotic stones like the ones Cliff talks about then I do want to know the unit's abilities and limitations.

I know you and I both share a lot of concerns about efficiently sharpening serrations ( particular Spyderco's) along with other serration patterns and I do want to know what kind of jigs and rigs that either unit has to accomodate those kinds of sharpening.

[Ankerson]

For the weird stuff a Sharp Maker would be a good start, ceramics would very well, or just use the rods freehand.

Certain things one just has to do by hand, I sharpen all the strange stuff by hand, that's freehand using some sort of ceramic like the 704 Profiles.

[Evil D]

Edge Pro. Just say no to clamp based sharpeners.

OK EVIL I'm going to take your word for it>> because I am very close to pulling the trigger on one of those great sharpening systems but I still have some concerns and a few questions.

The reason I'm going to try to pick your brain on the subject is because I have a lot of the same sharpening concerns that you and I have talked about a couple of times and I'm sure you share most of them that I'm concerned about.

I want to know what both units have to offer for sharpening "Recurves, Reverse S, PE Hawkbills, and most serration patterns? If I'm going to sink four digits into a sharpening system and then on top of that have to buy some additional exotic stones like the ones Cliff talks about then I do want to know the unit's abilities and limitations.

I know you and I both share a lot of concerns about efficiently sharpening serrations ( particular Spyderco's) along with other serration patterns and I do want to know what kind of jigs and rigs that either unit has to accomodate those kinds of sharpening.

OK man you asked for it....huge wall of text time, but here's my full opinion on this debate.

Ben Dale (Edge Pro inventor) says you can sharpen serrations with the EP, by dropping the angle as low as it will go and only sharpening the BACK SIDE. Now, I have no doubt this would work, but I've never done it, for a couple reasons. 1) Seems to me it will inevitably shorten down the teeth, at least until it reaches up into the blade far enough that it hits the inside of the serrations. This may not be a bad thing if you like shallow serrations..and come to think of it I actually do, so I may eventually try this 2) Unless you manage to get all the way down on the blade grind, you're going to create a bevel on the back side. Now, you're likely doing this anyway on the Sharpmaker, so this may not matter to you. When I've been using the SM, I hold the blade as close to the stone as possible to keep the back side angle as low as possible. In the past on some FFG serrated blades like my Stretch, I'll even just lay the blade flat on a bench stone to do that side. Its scratches up the blade of course, but I don't really mind that on a chisel ground knife.

As for hawkbills and recurves and reverse S's, this is an area where just about any sharpening jig won't do a very good job unless you have very narrow stones. I believe there are some 1/2 inch wide stones available for the EP though, which most likely will work for these kinds of blades. That said, I never tried to sharpen my Ulize on my EP because I don't have those stones.




My biggest problem with the Wicked Edge is that clamp. It may be the best clamp sharpener ever invented, but it's still a clamp and it will have a few issues that all clamp sharpeners share. The biggest for me is getting the blade clamped securely in the first place. Now again, this may be far less of an issue on the WE, but with my Lansky it was always a hassle to get the blade clamped securely and not wobble when you put pressure on the edge. There are various ways to get around this, like using foam on the sides of the blade, but when I decided to shell out big money on a sharpener, I didn't want to have to MAKE it work. This becomes an even bigger issue if you're sharpening anything with a significant top swedge like a Breeden Rescue or Captain, and especially so with double ground dagger style blades, because the blade tends to want to slip out from the clamp.

The next big issue with clamps is the distance from the edge of the clamp that the edge of the blade ends up being. Some blades are just taller from edge to spine than others, and this causes the angle to be much lower than intended because the further away from the top of the "triangle" you get the lower the angle gets. Now, the WE is far superior than the Lansky in this area because you can adjust the angle of the stone/rod to compensate for this (whereas the Lansky only has designated/set angle options and cannot be adjusted), but this all just adds up to being more tedious, and takes more time to set up. Again, more of what I didn't want.

Lastly, there's the issue of blade length with clamp sharpeners. Because the blade is fixed in one spot relative to the sharpening arm/rod, the further from that clamp the stone gets, the lower the angle gets. When you sharpen chef's knives or anything more than 5-6 inches in length, this becomes an issue. At that point you have to move the blade around in the clamp to reach the entire edge. Again....more tedious fiddling. I can sharpen a samurai sword on the EP just as easily as I can a Ladybug. I have sharpened a ~20 inch butcher's blade on my EP with no problems at all.

So, after all that the only thing the WE had going that interested me was being able to do both sides at the same time, but that alone isn't near enough to sway me over the other issues.

My biggest complaint with the EP is that some blade designs are just simply easier to sharpen than others. This issue is something that will only matter if you genuinely care to know EXACTLY what angle you're sharpening at, and otherwise will not prevent you from making a blade sharp. The design of the EP is such that the edge of the blade, or in other words the center line of the blade itself, needs to be parallel with the surface of the table (the spot that the blade lays on). If the edge/center line aren't parallel with the table, the the stone will hit the edge at a lower angle. The way this makes some blades easier than others is because a lot of Spyderco blades have a flat spot at the ricasso that the blade can lay on, which keeps the edge parallel. Other blades that are saber or hollow ground won't have any issues like this at all. On FFG blades, you either have this flat spot or you try to compensate the angle difference as best as you can. On my kitchen knives, I don't care one bit because I always grind a very low back bevel anyway and then micro bevel them on the Sharpmaker. That way I know what the very edge is, so the back bevel degree doesn't matter much to me. If you find that you can live with this on your pocket knives, then it won't be an issue there either.

Oh, and one of the big draws for the EP for me was the relatively huge selection of stone options. But, I have no doubt that eventually the WE will have just as many options available too. And, now that I have some Sharpmaker stones, I'm already working out a way of getting them mounted on the Edge Pro. When THAT happens, I'll be polishing serrations like a rock star. :cool:

Otherwise, I've never had any issues with blade sizes or lengths. I have actually sharpened a Spyderco Bug on my EP with no issues. I couldn't get my Vic Classic on there though

[JD Spydo]

OK thanks for the rundown EVIL D That does answer a lot of questions>> I'm wondering if it's fair to say at this point that even though the EDGE PRO may not have all the abilities I'm looking for without the use of specially sized/shaped stones>> but on the other hand it looks to me like they are ahead of the game with the potential of solving some of these specialized sharpening jobs and that it's just a matter of having the right stones and making the correct modifications.

I'm sort of coming to the conclusion that with sharpening special blades like Reverse S, Recurves, PE Hawkbills, Karambits and inter-planetary designs like the C-111 Captain there may just not be any shortcuts and to sharpen all of those to your satisfaction one may just have to do it the hard way using manual tools like the 701 Profiles and other exotic type sharpening stones and/or tools. And that's OK if that is how I ultimately have to do it because in a warped way I sort of enjoy sharpening specialized blade designs the hard way.

This discussion is now making me even more anxious for the release of Spyderco's upcoming GAUNTLET system. But Brother I do thank you for taking the time to give me a concise rundown on the EDGE PRO and I'm now pretty much leaning in that direction>> that clamping system of the WE unit is now making me doubtful as you've explained the problems associated with it. I hope that they release the GAUNTLET before the holiday season this year. I have a sneaking suspicion that Spyderco has addressed a lot of their unorthadox blade designs with that system>> and I hope my hunch is right.

[jabba359]

This discussion is now making me even more anxious for the release of Spyderco's upcoming GAUNTLET system.

Somehow I had missed the news about the Gauntlet system. After perusing a few threads, I'm not sure what exactly it is. Obviously it's a new sharpening system, but that covers a pretty wide gamut of possibilities.

[chuck_roxas45]

Any info about this Gauntlet?

[Brock O Lee]

... I killed the lowest grit stock EP stone (forget what grit it was) just on reprofiling one knife.

That's interesting. I now replaced my 120 (lowest grit) and 320 grit stones, after about 3 years and 30 reprofiles. I did flatten them after every session.

[Evil D]

... I killed the lowest grit stock EP stone (forget what grit it was) just on reprofiling one knife.

That's interesting. I now replaced my 120 (lowest grit) and 320 grit stones, after about 3 years and 30 reprofiles. I did flatten them after every session.

Well, it was my own fault and I did leave out the most important detail.. It happened when I was reprofiling the tip of my Vallotton, and because of the angle of the blade, I unintentionally wore a spot right in the middle of the stone so bad that it wasn't even worth lapping flat again.