Hello, I just recieved my new Wicked edge and noticed that one arm was stiffer than the other. On closer inspection I noticed that one came with a single washer installed on it and the other didn’t. Did I get a faulty product? I just need to know real quick. Thanks to anyone who can answer me this. I was really looking forward to starting working with this machine.
Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/wN93P#0%5B/quote%5D
Thanks for writing with the issue. When the sharpeners come in from the factory, we test all the arms for play. If we find more than .5 degrees play, we disassemble the arms, grind the surfaces of the guide rods where they fit into the black hinges so that they’re flat. The factory is stamping the flat surfaces rather than grinding them as they’re supposed to (we only just discovered how they’d changed the procedure without telling us…) so we often need to put them in the milling machine and take a few thousandths off of each side to get them truly flat and parallel. Once we’ve flattened them out, we measure them to see how they’ll fit in the hinge and add washers as necessary. We only add as many as needed to get a tight fit. Sometimes the fit will be fairly snug. We lubricate the joints with a 1 micron diamond oil so that as the rods are worked, they’ll grind against each other and mate perfectly. It takes a fair number of cycles to get them completely smooth. If your arm that feels snug is operable and not too much of a pain, I’d ask that you just use it and let it work itself smooth. If it’s really a pain then we’d be happy to replace it.
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