Mounting a knife

Welcome to the Wicked Edge Forum, Roikyou.  I’m sorry you’re having troubles with your system.  We’re here to try to help you.  Please start with telling us which particular system you’re using.  From the issue of blade canting left it sounds like the WE 100 or WE 120.  This is a known characteristic of that style screw wedge clamping vice.  The clamp left side is fixed.  As it’s tightened the right side leans because it is floating.  Please post back to confirm your model and we’ll try to help you through the learning curve.  There are a lot of previous posts on how to work around the knife lean.  I’ll see if I can locate some to share with you.

Here’s a link to a post I made that links to some others that may also help you deal with the clamping issues.

The WE130 has the self centering floating cam vice.  I’m trying to understand your terminology, “screw up the Knife”??  Are you sure WE130? This vice should not cause a blade cant if the knife is clamped properly.  Pocket knives are not where my experience is centered so I’ll share with you what I can till others with better experience chime in.

I looked up the knives you referenced to get an idea of their shape to see why you’re have this issue.  You probably have to clamp them higher in the jaws, not resting down on the depth key.  They both have a narrow flat area just at the spine.  I like to use a piece of real leather chamois between the knife and the clamp.  Just a very small patch.  Enough for the clamp to tightly compress it.  For me this method holds the blade very securely.

Are you setting the bevel angle you’re trying to sharpen at with an angle cube, or using the scale on the WE base?  The base is not a true indication, just a guide.  You need to use a digital angle cube to get a true angle.

I see SkSharp on line.  Hopefully he’ll step in.

If you are hitting the low angle adapter at 22 degs. then you have the knife clamped to far toward the tip and/or to low in the low angle adapter. I have to ask how you are measuring your angles though. More details of exactly what your method of clamping a knife is would help us help you.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Marc H

I use the clamp made by Tormek “SVM-00” to hold small knives above the vice and it holds the knife by the handle so nothing is in the way of the blade when i am sharpening. I also check the angel of each stone with an angle cube or some kind of level because one side of my vice is stationary and the other side moves when I clamp the knife. So the angle bar below the vice can only get the angle close.

To move on, first if you can visually see the knife is leaning, it’s not clamped centered.

For the uneven bevels, work a little to one side then switch to the other side. Keep going back and forth, a little at a time.  As you gain experience you’ll get a handle on how much you can do to one side before you need to switch.  Try to keep your efforts more even.  For this a visual aid like a lighted loupe or a USB Digital Microscope is necessary.  There’s nothing quit as helpful as seeing what your doing up close.

Your stones are new, not yet broken in.  They’re very coarse and don’t work as well as they will when they break in.  Your results won’t be as good as you hope for now.  It’ll get better as you gain experience.

Roikyou that looks pretty good.  I experienced the same troubles as you are, when I first began.  It’s not easy to learn how to use this.  There’s quite a learning curve.  Everyone of us is trying to do the same thing with a different size, shape and style knife.  So even if the technique, in general, applies to every knife, the differences in the knife can make a big difference in your personal experience.

Using something between the knife and jaws, like chamois, helps it get better purchase when holding just a small piece of steel.