First Use!
- This topic has 22 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 03/23/2021 at 1:58 pm by
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For now cut two fingers off an old glove, poke A hole in the end of those two fingers and slide one down each “guide Rod” to cover your “Ball-Joints”.
Put a hole in a rag that fits the base of the vice at the “Numbered Angle Settings” blue plate.
Then put two more holes in that same cloth or towel for for the “Guide Rod Post” or “L-Bracket” that allows for the “Guide Rod Post” to extend all the way out.
Welcome to the “Wicked Edge” Forum, Chefy It is good to have you with us.
Welcome Chefy from one relative newby (several weeks on Wicked Edge but 30+ years sharpening (and making knives). Get some stone stops (forum members here or what I did was buy a couple of shaft collars on Amazon) because you will sooner or later run a stone off the edge and down the side of the blade without them. It leaves some very ugly scratches that you can’t get rid of without refinishing the whole blade. But you still want to use all of the stone during break-in because you never know when a particular knife needs a longer stroke. What I did was buy a package of floor scraper blades (8″ long carbon steel) and remove the stone stops and intentionally run the stone off the edge – so that I got use out of not only the middle of the stone but the extreme ends of it too. And don’t forget the edges – they are not sharp but rounded (so you can handle a re-curved blade) but they will also have diamond clumps and need to be used. If you see a big scratch in your edge bevel – check the rounded edge of the stone too. Stubborn clumps can be removed by using a piece of glass (as though it was a knife blade) to remove a clump.
Practice all the different kinds of strokes – they all create different scratch patterns and all are useful at different times. Part of the “break-in” is to not only prepare the stones (by removing clumps of diamonds left from the manufacturing process) but also develop the muscle memory to use the best stroke at the right time.
Something to magnify your apex is very helpful but you can tell a lot about your edge with just a strong light – I use an LED flashlight to look at reflections off the apex (or sometimes take the knife outside in the bright sunlight). You should get no reflection from the real apex (a so-called “dark edge”) – if you see bright reflections at the apex you’ve got a rolled edge, or a burr, or a wire edge, a chip or a problem of some sort.
And lastly (for now) be careful. That knife you just sharpened to slice a paper thin slice of tomato will do a dandy job slicing a paper thin slice off your finger. So be careful. The one big lesson I’ve learned is that a knife sharpened on a Wicked Edge ends up being sharper than that knife ever was before.
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Chefy, This video is worth watching. I try to recommend it to all our new users. It goes through some of the common W.E. sharpening strokes and explains well how to use these. Ignore the title, it’s misleading.
Marc
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This is going to sound odd. I’m thinking about returning the unused Gen 3 and getting the we130 from Optics Planet.
It just seem so tall?? Also, I found a granite base at Knivesshipfree
https://www.knivesshipfree.com/wicked-edge-granite-base/I haven’t done it yet, any thoughts?
Thanks
I purchase my Gen 3 Pro with the granite base directly from W.E.. The granite base was drilled with four mounting holes. You can see two of the screws in the front corners of the Gen 3 Pro’s black base plate.
I’d think that any local stone shop that could cut and and polish the granite could also drill the mounting holes. Just take with you the Gen 3 Pro, removed from the shelf base, or a template which you could easily draw up.Marc
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