Hello from Pennsylvania

[John Sacchetti]

Hi all,
I am a 47 year old guy from PA. I have always loved a good blade and had knives ever since I was allowed to buy my first Swiss Army Knife for Boy Scouts. I really love all blades including swords and axes. I also enjoy firearms and compete in CMP Service rifle and NRA high power match rifle. This is shooting up to 600 yards with just iron sights; a real test of a rifleman.

I have bought many sharpening products and systems, but have always been disappointed. I hope this system is everyhing I expect it to be! I must get this of my chest. The WE arrived yesterday and I was bummed that it is made in China. For the price of the WE, I had hoped for Made in America.

More to come,
John S.

[Tom Whittington]

Whereabouts in PA are you? I’m down in York!

Welcome to the forums, I have a feeling you’ll find out why we joke about falling down the rabbit hole in short order 🙂

[John Sacchetti]

Philadelphia unfortunatly. I really can’t stand this city, but my father lives here and is 80, I work 20 minutes from home and live 5 minutes away from the only private shooting range in Philly. So leaving is not an option, at this time!

[Mark76]

Hey WolfsLair,

Welcome to the forum! Don’t hesitate to ask any questions if you have them.

It is funny, your first thought about the WEPS was also mine when I got one about a year ago: http://www.wickededgeusa.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=6&id=1502&Itemid=63

Let me say now that you don’t need an iPhone for a proof that a product made in China can be real quality. Both the iPhone and the WEPS were still conceived in the States. Steve Jobs and Clay Allison. Great inventors.

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Tom Whittington]

John,

If you ever need to escape Philly for a bit and want to take a scenic drive for a couple hours west you can swing by and hit the range here! Hopefully by then I’ll have some steel up and some new toys, who knows…

I have to agree with the made in China tag, but I think the key is to combine good quality control with good design. If you’ve got both of those you have a solid product, if you let either of them lapse you get junk! Thankfully we have a very solid product here and great folks to back it up too 🙂

[Geocyclist]

Welcome to the forum.

About China and the US. I work in manufacturing and see both great stuff and crap come from both China and the US. I like to buy from the US. But I don’t blindly buy US just because of the tag. When money allows I buy the best where ever it comes from and take care of it. IMHO WEPS is the best.

With respect to WE or anything being a good product I believe it is not just quality, but also design and customer service. In these areas you won’t be disappointed. More important than all this is passion. I see a passion for this product in WE. Not that they just see this as product to produce. In the end passion drives everything that is important.

DO NOT be disappointed with your first or 5th knife. A.) It takes 5 – 10 or so knives to break in the diamond stones. The first knife will probably not blow your mind. B.) Your technique will improve. It took me to about my 7th knife to finally say I had a Wicked sharp edge, with mirror polish, even bevels, etc.. My first two knives I was worried I had wasted my money. By knife #5 I wasn’t worried any more about if I had wasted my money on the WE. Your first two knives or so should be ones you don’t care much about or worry about messing up.

[cbwx34]

DO NOT be disappointed with your first or 5th knife. A.) It takes 5 – 10 or so knives to break in the diamond stones. The first knife will probably not blow your mind. B.) Your technique will improve. It took me to about my 7th knife to finally say I had a Wicked sharp edge, with mirror polish, even bevels, etc.. My first two knives I was worried I had wasted my money. By knife #5 I wasn’t worried any more about if I had wasted my money on the WE. Your first two knives or so should be ones you don’t care much about or worry about messing up.

Good advice! (Liked it so much, I added it to the Wiki.) 🙂

[John Sacchetti]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I made a rookie mistake on the first blade. I did not tighten the bottom screw and the blade shifted. I just ended up with a secondary bevel. So I either have to blend them or refine the primary bevel. The second knife, a Benchmade Combat/Survival II (CSK-II), is coming along nice. I just can’t get a nice polish with the strops. Perhaps I need another grit between the 1000 diamond stone and 5 micron strop?

[Cory]

I would never try to discourage you from getting something to go in between your 1000 and .5 microns. Having said that though it takes your strops a while to wear in. If your just on your second knife they are probably still green and sliding like they have grease on them. Once your strops break in this will change. They will become some what sticky. At that point is when the real polish begins. This process takes a different amount of time for everyone depending on how heavy handed you are and how much paste you applied. But once you get them broke in you will see a big difference. The other piece to this is your diamond plates aren’t broke in yet either. That means they are still cutting more aggressively than normal and it is harder to polish out the marks. If you stick with it though by the time you hit your 15th knife or so the difference will amaze you.

[cbwx34]

Perhaps I need another grit between the 1000 diamond stone and 5 micron strop?

Probably… I tried this in another thread, and couldn’t get to a mirror finish.

Edit: Cory does have some good info in his post though, but I think you’ll need something in between.

[Dennis Hibar]

Welcome John …. you are sure to learn a lot here. I know I have in the year I’ve been using the WE. Understand your feelings about Philly! Went to college there way back in the late 60s – early 70s. Didn’t much care for the city then. Now, I find myself doing 20 – life in Erie County …. pretty much for the same reason you find yourself in Philly …. only for me, it’s my aging in-laws. Welcome and happy sharpening!

Dennis

[Tom Whittington]

What I tend to do when going from the 1000 grit stones (mine are lightly worn in by now) to the strops is simply use the strops as a clean-up pass with 5 to 10 strokes on each grit. It won’t shine the blade up all that much at all, but it will give a little extra razor sharpness to the edge.

For mirror(ish) polish I did the cheapo method and got super fine sandpaper from 1000 to 3000 grit inclusive and tape strips to the 1000# diamond stone. There’s some discussion on using paper strips like this around the forums. It works surprisingly well on a budget but is nowhere near as good as using stones, so most of the folks here wouldn’t recommend it. I’m decently happy with it at the moment, since it’ll be a while before I save up for the stones that would give the same results 😆

[Geocyclist]

I can’t count how many rookie mistakes I made. And all most all of them I had either read about here or watched in you tube videos of Clay sharpening on the WE. While the WE is simple to use, there are a lot of fine points to master and keep in mind to achieve perfection or near perfection. For a while I made a to do list to remind myself to clean the blade after each stone and to check my angle etc.

Everything I studied ahead of time pretty much went out the window on my first knife, I was so to start using the stones. The biggest lesson I learned, and didn’t read anywhere ahead of time is to invest the time needed in the beginning to make sure the knife is set correctly in the vice, check, double check the angles, test with sharpie, verify again with sharpie, then go at it. Sharpie again as needed to check the spots that need extra work. Then re-check again after 100. If you start good you can finish great. If you start out bad you won’t finish any better (without starting over).

[Robert Garrity]

Welcome to the forum.

About China and the US. I work in manufacturing and see both great stuff and crap come from both China and the US. I like to buy from the US. But I don’t blindly buy US just because of the tag. When money allows I buy the best where ever it comes from and take care of it. IMHO WEPS is the best.

With respect to WE or anything being a good product I believe it is not just quality, but also design and customer service. In these areas you won’t be disappointed. More important than all this is passion. I see a passion for this product in WE. Not that they just see this as product to produce. In the end passion drives everything that is important.

DO NOT be disappointed with your first or 5th knife. A.) It takes 5 – 10 or so knives to break in the diamond stones. The first knife will probably not blow your mind. B.) Your technique will improve. It took me to about my 7th knife to finally say I had a Wicked sharp edge, with mirror polish, even bevels, etc.. My first two knives I was worried I had wasted my money. By knife #5 I wasn’t worried any more about if I had wasted my money on the WE. Your first two knives or so should be ones you don’t care much about or worry about messing up.

Thanks Geocyclist I just got my we today and sharpened 2 beater knives and got them reasonably sharp but no where near hair whittleing, which is what I’m after. I was thinking to myself that man my sharpmaker does a better a job than this and this cost me 10 times what that did. Can’t wait for that wow moment!

[wickededge]

Thanks Geocyclist I just got my we today and sharpened 2 beater knives and got them reasonably sharp but no where near hair whittleing, which is what I’m after. I was thinking to myself that man my sharpmaker does a better a job than this and this cost me 10 times what that did. Can’t wait for that wow moment!

Geocyclist is exactly right. You’ll be seeing regular improvement with your edge as your stones break in and your technique builds. I hope you’ll continue to post your results.

-Clay

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