Is WES really that easy??

[Craig]

Good evening, good morning, or good day depending on where you are!! I have been eyeing the WE system for a long time!! And never realized that they had a forum!!! So, my question to the users is, what is the learning curve like?? Was it difficult to get your knives scary sharp?? Is the system quality?? Can you sharpen the secondary edge? I’m on the fence between this system and trying to learn water stones. I have the sharpmaker and not very impressed!! What do you guys think?? Help!! Also if I due buy I like the pro pack 1!! Any thoughts?

[Leo Barr]

I think the WE is an awesome piece of kit especially if it is intended to do a volume of knives and charge for the service if however it is solely for your home use then waterstones are good depending on your dexterity and patience . I have found that waterstones are easier to learn if you have experience on a system such as the WE .
A tool such as the WE teaches you how sharp is sharp and the advantage it has over waterstones is possible more consistency.
I enjoy sharpening and I think the more one goes into it the more methods you may use for different knives or tools.
Apart from a WE I use a Tormek , fine grit sand paper on top of mouse pads , denim impregnated with liquid metal polish stretched over a mouse pad on top of a wooden block & various leather strops these are great when used to create convex edges not to mention waterstones as well for my own Japanese knives.
You can however create convex edges on the WE .
It is a great tool look at the various You Tube videos .
The reality is that it is likely that no one system will do all although the WE is an ongoing development look at more of the posts so possible one day it will do everything that one can sharpen.

It is probable that you have already made the decision to buy normally a decision takes 7 seconds to make what takes the time is accepting the decision .

[Mark76]

Hey Graig. The system is super easy to learn. The fixed angles do nearly everything. You just need to learn how to set up the system with a knife in it, set the angles and off you go. The advice to start with a few old knives is really mainly because even with such a simple system, you can make mistakes like not clamping a knife well enough. And the stones need to get broken in. But this should all be fine after a few knives. There’s many ppl here who posted pics of the first knife they sharpened and it was already nearly perfect.

You may also want to take a look at the beginners guide on the wiki and watch some videos by Clay. Both are on this site.

I have a Sharpmaker myself and for me it works quite well, but the WEPS is truely at another level.

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Randy Calkins]

I used to freehand with Arkansas blue stones. An edge was hit or miss at best for me but after receiving the WEP II the other day I sharpened an old fishing knife I thought about throwing away many times. It’s sitting proudly back in my tackle box with a mirror edge. I have a long ways to go to really get the hang of it but if I can put an edge on a knife like that anyone can. Wife has me doing the entire butcher block and didn’t argue as this system is fun to use as well!

I think you’ll love the WEP I!!! 🙂

[cbwx34]

[Phil Pasteur]

Good evening, good morning, or good day depending on where you are!! I have been eyeing the WE system for a long time!! And never realized that they had a forum!!! So, my question to the users is, what is the learning curve like?? Was it difficult to get your knives scary sharp?? Is the system quality?? Can you sharpen the secondary edge? I’m on the fence between this system and trying to learn water stones. I have the sharpmaker and not very impressed!! What do you guys think?? Help!! Also if I due buy I like the pro pack 1!! Any thoughts?

Nothing, in the pursuit of perfection, is easy!!

Guys around here are tired of hearing this… I hope that you are not.. yet
🙂

I have sharpened for something over 50 years. I started when my Dad taught me to sharpen with a hand crank wheel.. some black stuff like carborundum.

I went on to hand sharpen on bench stones. Synthetics at first, then got to those wonderful Arkansas stones… got some of those “surgical” black and eventually.. WHITE stones.

I went on to getting a RazorEdge system with a guide…

My buddy that I used to go out catching Shrimp with used to try to outdo each other… actually cutting hair off of ones arm without taking skin with it was the test..

I always thought I was pretty damn good freehand… still think that I do OK. I now have something like 25 different stones, including some high end waterstones… diamond plates, and 12 different strops from different kind of leather and nanocloth. I have 20 bottles plus of different CBN and CRoX and diamond compounds for those bench strops…

Why would you care? Just because I have messed with lots of sharpening stuff. I have Gatco sharpeners and Lansky sharpeners with every stone they have for each. I have an Edge Pro Apex with 20 stones, including the full Chosera line. I have 12 grits of 3M films for that thing.

Why should you care.. because of your question. Other than production sharpening for hire, for which I use a belt grinder, the ONLY thing I use to get close to perfection when sharpening these days is the WEPS

OK.. a while ago.. 3 or so years, I got a basic WEPS system… it was the answer to my sharpening prayers. I can now get amazing and repeatable results… every damn time.

It is not “easy” there is a learning curve… but it is not steep. Getting one can be your financial demise…the rabbit hole, that you will almost certainly disappear down, but you …if you love sharp edges, will never be unhappy that you made the leap..

Read the threads here, look at the pictures… get it!!

No, Clay does not pay me anything.. he only takes my money to keep me happy!!

:woohoo:

Of that, I can promise you!!

[Phil Pasteur]

I think the WE is an awesome piece of kit especially if it is intended to do a volume of knives and charge for the service if however it is solely for your home use then waterstones are good depending on your dexterity and patience . I have found that waterstones are easier to learn if you have experience on a system such as the WE .
A tool such as the WE teaches you how sharp is sharp and the advantage it has over waterstones is possible more consistency.

Leo..

Did you get your WEPS yet? Ever used one??

I learned on bench stones… it made working with and learning the WEPS easier…
Knowing angles and grits is applicable everywhere in sharpening. Being able to maintain angles and knowing what you need to do to get an edge is a prerequisite to being able to use any sharpening system.
The WEPS simply takes the manual dexterity variable out of the picture. It takes care of the angles… one just learns the other good stuff…
I never bought it for production sharpening… I bought it for Perfection sharpening. A bit of patience and attention to what others have done, and most people can get there with the system!!

For perfection, it definitely excels, beyond any other system, period!

For production… get a belt grinder!! 👿

[Mark76]

No, Clay does not pay me anything.. he only takes my money to keep me happy!!

:woohoo:

😆 😆 😆

This goes into my book of memorable quotes.

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Geocyclist]

Yes it is that easy. The setup is the most critical part. There is a learning curve and it takes patience. Once you get the knife set correctly in the vice using the stones are easy. You will not be an expert immediately. I would say it’s not harder than anything else other than very simple things like a sharpmaker. At the end of the day there is nothing else in the world that will give you the same results unless you are a free hand master.

You said your other option was learning water stones. I take this to mean free hand sharpening (with water stones or other stones).

You can get Chosera and other types of water stones for the WE. They work great. I disagree with Leo about waterstones being easier to learn. I think the majority of us (myself included) can’t hold a consistent angle free hand sharpening. Leo is a free hand master. I can sharpen free hand. But my results are no where close to what I get with WE. To answer your question “is it easy”. I would say compared to free hand sharpening it is 100 times easier to get a even, consistent edge. Overall the system is neither “easy” or “hard” I think the average person is fully capable of learning it.

[Leo Barr]

“I have found that waterstones are easier to learn if you have experience on a system such as the WE” .

Just to clarify freehand stones are very much a discipline but many of the things that you pick up with a system like the WE help in learning to use water stones such as :- pressure , sound and the perception of what is sharp.

But if you want to see what sharp is look at Clays photos on the DMT 3 micron stone that is probable as close to a perfect edge that is achievable and whilst a learner wont quite get that it will probable be way better than any other system you will achieve as a novice .

I hope that clears up any confusion I may have introduced.

[cbwx34]

…but many of the things that you pick up with a system like the WE help in learning to use water stones such as :- pressure , sound and the perception of what is sharp.

I definitely agree with this… setting aside results, using a guided device really helped in learning sharpening… without the added issues of holding (or rather not holding) a consistent angle. :S Even with a WE, you still have to learn the fundamentals (apexing the edge, burrs, etc.)… makes it a lot easier though.

Adding results back in, along the lines of what Geocyclist said… I’ve gotten some pretty good edges freehand (and some pretty bad ones too haha), but my best edges have been with a guide.

[Phil Pasteur]

The hardest thing to accomplish in hand sharpening IS holding a consistent angle. Knowing the basics of grits and angles and apexing (pretty simple concepts) can be quite easily learned from a book or online. All of that information is maybe 10% of the process! The eye/hand coordination, the muscle memory, the calibrated eyeballs, are the hard parts. Some of that can be learned and the skills honed … to a point. These things, in my estimation, are the other 90% of what one needs to sharpen without a guided system. Using the WEPS to produce wonderful edges will not teach any of this!

Some people, like me, will never be highly accomplished at hand sharpening. Sure I can get by, (over 50 years of trying, and I have actually gotten a small number of hair whittling edges, a very few) but I will never be able to produce the results that I get with My WEPS on any sort of consistent basis. All of the knives that I have sharpened with the WEPS have not changed that a whit.

The WEPS cannot teach the real important parts of hand sharpening. It is a crutch that allows you to do things that without it most people simply cannot do. A wonderfully effective aid, but a crutch just the same.

So I guess that in some ways using the WEPS can help in learning to hand sharpen,in that it sort of forces you to learn the basic concepts that comprise a very small part of being an effective hand sharpener, but those are the very easiest things about hand sharpening to learn. It really cannot help, or make any easier, the learning of the critical parts of getting an edge by hand. The critical parts will only come with lots of repetition, and having the natural ability to start with. The latter being the biggest contributor… IMHO.

What the WEPS does, is to allow anyone with the desire, the ability produce superior edges every time they try, but that is a different subject entirely…

[cbwx34]

The hardest thing to accomplish in hand sharpening IS holding a consistent angle. Knowing the basics of grits and angles and apexing (pretty simple concepts) can be quite easily learned from a book or online. All of that information is maybe 10% of the process! The eye/hand coordination, the muscle memory, the calibrated eyeballs, are the hard parts. Some of that can be learned and the skills honed … to a point. These things, in my estimation, are the other 90% of what one needs to sharpen without a guided system. Using the WEPS to produce wonderful edges will not teach any of this!

I don’t think I can agree with this. I used to regularly read other sharpening forums, and, (not to include my own experience), there seems to me a LOT of posts that start… “I’ve read everything I can on sharpening, but when I try, my knife is as dull or duller than when I started.” “Knowing the basics” and correctly understanding and applying them are very different.

Here’s an example of a knife I got a few years back, with a note… “I got this back from another sharpener, and the knife won’t even slice thru a piece of paper”…

… while the bevels are “fairly even and consistent” it appears to me there was a lack of understanding of the other concepts of sharpening. So I can’t agree that it’s easy or only 10%, because far too many sharpening issues are in this area, and can be learned on the WE without the additional issues of sharpening freehand that you mentioned.

Some people, like me, will never be highly accomplished at hand sharpening. Sure I can get by, (over 50 years of trying, and I have actually gotten a small number of hair whittling edges, a very few) but I will never be able to produce the results that I get with My WEPS on any sort of consistent basis. All of the knives that I have sharpened with the WEPS have not changed that a whit.

That’s because this is backwards from what I posted. You started freehand, and learned many of the principles of sharpening, so not the same scenario. My experience was different, while I started freehand, it wasn’t until I got a guided device, and learned many of the different points, not to mention what a knife was capable of becoming, without the influence of my “lack of skill”, that I really understood it, and could apply the points. I’ve learned other points on the WE and this forum that have helped my freehand… for example, I learned that my coarse edges should be better than they were, and applying this has improved my freehand edges.

The WEPS cannot teach the real important parts of hand sharpening. It is a crutch that allows you to do things that without it most people simply cannot do. A wonderfully effective aid, but a crutch just the same.

I consider it an aid, not a crutch, although I see your point. To me, an aid is learning and understanding the principles of sharpening, and using the WE to assist in the process. A crutch would be clamping the knife in, running the stones back and forth, and hoping the knife is sharp at the end, with no real idea how or why.

So I guess that in some ways using the WEPS can help in learning to hand sharpen,in that it sort of forces you to learn the basic concepts that comprise a very small part of being an effective hand sharpener, but those are the very easiest things about hand sharpening to learn. It really cannot help, or make any easier, the learning of the critical parts of getting an edge by hand. The critical parts will only come with lots of repetition, and having the natural ability to start with. The latter being the biggest contributor… IMHO.

Again, I don’t see this, “the basics” you refer to is a lot of the issues people learning to sharpen have. Another example is someone sharpening a knife with a “zero grind”… basically laying the knife flat on a stone and sharpening. No real need to have all the hand sharpening skills you mentioned, but they’ll still report not being able to get it sharp.

What the WEPS does, is to allow anyone with the desire, the ability produce superior edges every time they try, but that is a different subject entirely…

I’ll stick with what I said, that if you really want to learn sharpening, the WE can be an excellent tool to learn and study many of the aspects of sharpening, in a controlled manner. Plus even after learning the basics, you can test various scenarios, for example, “what will sharpening at this angle do?”, or “what will this grit level achieve?”, in a controlled environment, the results of this will improve your freehand effort, or perhaps tell if it’s your skill level or the idea your testing. That’s the way I see it anyway.

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[Phil Pasteur]

It is all good, and we can agree to disagree.
Those people who can’t get a knife sharp freehand don’t have the technique down for holding the proper angle consistently. Using the Wickededge will not teach them that. Without that, they will never get anything sharp. No amount of the grasp of theory (which the WEPS can help teach) will change that.

[Author]

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